When Olivia Papa signed up for a new health plan last year, her insurance company assigned her to a primary care doctor.

Covered California has enlisted 14 trade groups - including the California Medical Association and California Hospital Association - to urge health providers to promote health insurance during open enrollment for the state health benefit exchange.

National health spending grew 3.6 percent in 2013, the lowest annual increase since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) began tracking the statistic in 1960, officials said Wednesday.

Just two weeks into Obamacare's second open-enrollment period, more than 765,000 people have selected insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act's exchanges, the Health and Human Services Department said Wednesday.

Health care systems experimenting with a new way of being paid by Medicare would have three extra years before they could be punished for poor performance, the federal government proposed Monday.

As the California Legislature began its new session on Monday, first-time and returning lawmakers introduced a number of health-related bills, the Sacramento Bee's "Capitol Alert" reports (Rosenhall/White, "Capitol Alert," Sacramento Bee, 12/1).