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A change in guidelines for psychiatric diagnoses would add problem gambling as an addictive disorder. The designation would clear a path to add other behavioral problems — such as sex or Internet addiction — in the future.

The government has identified hundreds of hospitals where Medicare patients are incurring especially high or low bills. Hospitals around McAllen, it turns out, aren't as terrible as they were made out to be, according to Medicare's calculations of how much it spent for the average patient from three days before admission to a month after discharge.

Last year, a little more than half of employers offered health benefits for domestic partner according to a nationally representative sample of about 3,000 employers surveyed by benefit consultant Mercer. That's up from a little less than one-third in 2010.

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.

Enrollment in health savings accounts grew 18 percent last year as employers continued to steer workers into high-deductible medical plans.

Unlike Louisiana, Alabama, Florida and other conservative states in the South, Mississippi is well on its way to having an insurance exchange ready for operation by the 2014 deadline laid out by the health overhaul law.

Even as Florida leads the Supreme Court challenge against the federal health law, a private and a public hospital both prepare for an influx of new patients if the law's Medicaid expansion survives.

Students aren't employees, and student health plans are generally individual policies that the students buy on their own, even if they're offered through the college. So mandatory coverage of birth control for students shouldn't be delayed past August, but it could take longer for the faculty, advocates say.

The state legislature is now mulling a change to allow trained home care aides to administer medications to Medicaid patients while working under a nurse's supervision. If the proposal becomes law, it could save the state a bundle.

Until a national health insurance mandate takes effect in 2014, states run stopgap pools to cover people with pre-existing conditions. The federal funds to pay for the coverage are being stretched thin in many states.