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Insurers sometimes wrangle with patients and for months before paying a bill. A new six-month waiting period will give consumers time to resolve disputes and avoid having their credit ratings dinged.

Under the federal health law, employers with 100 or more full-time workers can enroll them in the company plan without their say as long as the coverage is deemed affordable and adequate.

Americans spend billions of dollars every year on annual physicals. But there's little evidence that a yearly checkup helps healthy adults. Some doctors are telling patients to skip it.

Nearly half the states in the U.S. require that women be notified if mammograms detect that they have dense breasts. Critics say the information raises anxiety more than it improves care.

How some insurers pay for treatments means that cancer pills can wind up costing a patient more than an IV. Some states have passed laws to make sure that patients don't have to pay more to take pills. But those laws don't apply to Medicare.

Babies are born too soon at a higher rate in the United States than in 125 other countries. The first worldwide rankings of preterm births show the problem isn't limited to the developing world.

In Michigan, areas with more cardiac catheterization labs — places where patients are diagnosed for heart problems — tended to have more interventions than those with fewer labs.

Under some state laws, a patient's positive test for alcohol can mean that insurers won't pay hospitals and doctors for care after an accident. To sidestep the potential problem, hospitals often don't screen patients for alcohol use.

Nonprofit hospitals pay no federal, state, or local taxes. In return, they are expected to offer a community benefit, including free and discounted care for low-income patients. But a study by the Congressional Budget Office found that, on average, not-for-profits are providing only slightly more uncompensated care than for-profit hospitals.

The state is one of just a few that is expanding Medicaid ahead of a major expansion called for in 2014 by the federal health law. Though the state estimates that 50,000 people meet the income bar, Colorado will only be able to offer coverage to 10,000 people.