In a scramble to keep people enrolled in health care plans, what did New Jersey, Vermont and the District of Columbia do earlier this year that California has not done?

The rate of U.S. healthcare spending growth slowed from 2016 to 2017, driven by reduced use and intensity of hospital care, physician services and prescription drugs, according to the new annual report by CMS' Office of the Actuary published in Health Affairs. 

California lawmakers had been in session for just 24 hours by midday Tuesday, and majority Democrats had already proposed tens of billions of dollars in new state spending.

Denise Roberts is still coping with complications from a life-threatening bout of Valley Fever three years ago that claimed part of a lung. Roberts, who lives in Doyle, Calif., a tiny rural community near the Nevada border, typically drives to Reno for the care she needs. Specialists in her own state, she said, are too far away.

A federal judge could throw a wrench into the mega-merger between health giants CVS and Aetna.

Six in 10 U.S. adults say they worry about having to pay higher health insurance premiums, according to a Gallup poll.