Bloomberg News

The health care reform law imposes billions of taxes and fees on insurers and companies that provide the highest level of overage, and Stop the HIT, a new coalition of trade groups, will be petitioning to lessen the levy.

States received an extra month from the Obama administration to decide whether to build online marketplaces for medical insurance after Republican governors pressed their resistant to the president’s health care law.

Several Republican leaders have either confirmed that they’ll be letting the federal government handle their states’ health care exchanges, or have yet to say, and the deadline is Friday.

More than half of American smokers tried to stop at some point in the past year, and the average number of cigarettes smoked per day dropped.

President Obama’s re-election rallied shares for hospitals last week as the number of insured Americans is set to rise. Health insurance companies, however, face profit limits and new taxes.

Those buying homes as an investment now represent 18% of sales as many are disappointed with bank savings and wary of the stock market.

The health care industry will change its focus from expanding the insurance market to reining in medical costs now that the presidential election has been decided, says the CEO of the main lobbying group for health insurers.

The Hartford Group plans to offer cash to holders of variable annuities in attempts to give up the contracts as it seeks to reduce financial risk.

Up to 20% of those who take currently available medication to lower bad cholesterol suffer from side effects, but new medicines may take unusual forms — engineered tomatoes and yogurt.

President Barack Obama’s re-election means his overhaul of the U.S. health-care system, opposed by most Republicans, will move ahead in all 50 states, with or without the cooperation of their governors.

The average worker who files long-term disability from acute coronary syndrome misses 397 days of work, for which they will only be paid 271, finds a new study presented at an American Heart Association meeting this week.

In the final hours, both candidates have shifted from making their pitch to striving to get out the vote.

Romney and Obama’s teams both try to spin the most recent batch of unemployment data, and one index has consumer confidence hitting a five-year high.

Record-low interest rates could hurt insurers that sell guaranteed-income retirement products, as they rely on bond investments, according to Limra.

The Department of Labor reports that the employment cost index increased by 0.4% in the third quarter, with benefits costs rising by the most since the first half of 2011. Many economists believe spending could soon take a hit if worker pay holds steady.

Sue Shepherd’s experiments with ‘Fodmaps’ diets are changing the way doctors and nutritionists look at unhealthy stomachs, and healthy ones too.

Boosted premiums revenue and reducing costs have allowed two of the three largest U.S. health insurers to beat analysts’ expectations for 2012 profits.

Even as scientists predict DNA testing will transform medicine, advocates say that doctors and hospitals are ignoring existing tests that could help prevent thousands of cancer deaths and medical companies aren’t promoting their less-lucrative products enough.

Insiders say Sun Life wants to focus more on group and voluntary benefits and one investment firm or another could pay more than $1 billion for an annuities business to access a stable pool of funds for their investment-management operations.

Some $7.5 billion in pension obligations has been transferred from Verizon to Prudential Financial after GM has led “large, traditional companies with old, traditional pension plans to think hard about what they should be doing.”