In November, after a bad fall, 85-year-old Elizabeth Cannon was taken to a hospital outside Philadelphia for six and a half days of “observation,” followed by nearly five months at a nearby nursing home for rehabilitation and skilled nursing care. The cost: more than $40,000.

The region's average penalty was just over one-half of 1 percent of total Medicare reimbursements; last year it was one-third of 1 percent. Still, that's lower than the national average, says Jordan Rau, a Kaiser Health News journalist who interpreted the annual Medicare data.

The judge overseeing two U.S. cases challenging mergers among four of the biggest health insurers gave up one, improving the odds for rulings on both tie-ups by the end of the year and reducing the chance they fall apart beforehand.

Last fall, a bladder condition forced Carmen Anguiano to leave her job at a packing shed in Salinas, a farming community off California’s Central Coast.

Tens of thousands more immigrant children in California are receiving full Medi-Cal benefits just a few months after a state law took effect that expanded their access to the government-subsidized health program.

Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange, has released a draft of a waiver under Obamacare that must be approved by the federal government before the exchange can begin selling health plans to undocumented immigrants.