Bloomberg News

Hospital admissions have been falling as patients who have seen their deductibles rise put off seeing a doctor and as some types of services are being shifted away from inpatient to outpatient treatment.

The share of Americans who work part-time for economic reasons, meaning they can’t find full-time jobs or because their hours have been cut, is 78% higher than in December 2007, when the 18-month recession began.

The Republican-led U.S. House voted to postpone two significant provisions of the Affordable Care Act Wednesday.

Premiums for health plans to be sold to the uninsured next year will be less costly than government analysts expected under President Barack Obama’s signature health care law, his administration will report today.

Health insurance premiums will drop by about 50% on average for consumers in New York who buy new plans through a state-run marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act.

Nine of 32 hospitals and health systems dropped out of a U.S. pilot program created through the Affordable Care Act to reduce medical costs by moving away from a traditional fee-for-services model, the government said.

In the U.S., 70% of the blood supply comes from repeat donors, who can put themselves at risk.

The largest U.S. pension earned 19% on its publicly traded equity holdings. “When things got rough, we didn’t panic,” says the chief investment officer.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. says it will more than double payments to physicians tied to quality and cost efficiency within five years, in the latest sign of transformation in the American medical system.

About 25 million Americans are projected to gain insurance under the health care law, including 13 million through the state-federal Medicaid program for the poor.

Misuse of drugs like OxyContin is driving up the cost of insurance claims, and abuse of opioids is killing more people than cocaine and heroin combined.

The U.S. government is set to decide this month whether federal health insurance should cover the cost of a $3,000 test that for the first time accurately identifies the signature brain plaques of Alzheimer’s disease.

“Our results support the ancient proverb: ‘Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper,”’ says Hana Kahleova, a researcher at the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Prague, Czech Republic.

Consuming an additional half-serving a day of red meat during a four-year period increased a person’s chance of developing diabetes by 48% in the subsequent four years, according to a study this month in JAMA Internal Medicine.

The nation’s largest pension fund and health insurer WellPoint Inc. cut medical costs 19% by capping the price of some surgeries, in the latest sign payers are taking a tougher line against rising hospital claims.

A Government Accountability Office report released this month shows computer systems for the insurance marketplaces may not be ready on time and training for the people who will assist consumers is behind schedule.

Computer systems to help Americans gain coverage on the Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchanges may not be ready on time, and training for the people who will assist consumers is behind schedule, a government report found.

Hostility over traditional public DB plans escalates.

Prudential Financial Inc., the second-largest U.S. life insurer, authorized the repurchase of $1 billion in shares through the end of June 2014.

The Affordable Care Act’s initial success next year depends on President Barack Obama’s ability to coax at least 2.6 million people who are young and healthy to sign up for health insurance.