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For Tambra Momi, who has Dercum's disease, health coverage can't come soon enough.

Uninsured Fret About Getting Health Coverage By New Year's Day

The technological trials for the online health insurance exchanges have turned an enrollment period that was supposed to be a leisurely three-month stroll into a last-minute sprint for millions of Americans. People who want coverage that starts at the beginning of 2014 need to sign up no later than Dec. 23.

Edward Avalos, one of the first certified enrollment specialists in California, is a very busy man.

California Trains Helpers To Meet Demand For Health Insurance

The California health exchange has focused on drumming up interest in coverage during the first month of operation. Certified enrollment counselors can barely keep up with the requests for assistance that are rolling in.

Stacy Riggs of Fairfax, Va., is prepped for a screening for atrial fibrillation by Life Line Screening medical assistant Kennea Blake at Messiah United Methodist Church in Springfield, Va.

Some Health Screenings May Harm More Than Help

The medical screening tests offered by churches and other nonprofits may sound like a great idea. But some of the tests, which are performed by for-profit companies, are not recommended by national organizations because they can lead to invasive testing and unnecessary treatment.

Jackson Memorial Hospital is preparing for more Medicaid patients by renovating rooms. Jackson is the area's safety net hospital, which means it doesn't receive reimbursement for quite a bit of the care it gives.

Medicaid And A Tale Of Two Miami Hospitals

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.

Surgical robots like this one are wildly expensive. Before the economic troubles began, investment in such high-tech medical devices was plentiful. Now, hospitals are looking for comparatively simple solutions to cut costs: streamline medical billing and even investing in $1 catheters that can save upwards of $50,000.

Forget The Robots: Venture Capitalists Change Their Health Care Investments

As biotech investments and medical device development falters, hospitals are turning to other avenues to help cut costs: streamlining billing systems and investing in simpler medical products.

Newly covered Iowans with pre-existing conditions run up monthly costs of about $4,800.

States Struggle To Cover Uninsured With Pre-Existing Conditions

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.

Connecticut is rethinking who should be allowed to give medicines to Medicaid patients cared for at home.

Connecticut Considers Letting Health Aides Give Medicines To Homebound

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.

Onita Sanders (right), a certified application counselor at the Southeastern Virginia Health System, helps Virginia resident Brenda Harrell with health coverage options at Enrollfest in Hampton, Va., on Tuesday.

Obamacare Day One: A Tale Of Two States

There was a party atmosphere at Affordable Care Act events both in California, where the law has been embraced by the state government, and in Virginia, where it has been resisted. But consumers will have very different experiences in the two states.

President Obama laid out a plan Thursday to allow people who received insurance cancellation notices to keep their coverage, at least for a while.

Consumer Guide To Obama's Plan For Canceled Health Policies

The president offered a fix for people whose insurance coverage has been canceled because it didn't meet the minimum standards of the federal health law. But will insurers follow through? And even if they want to, will state regulators let them?

Maryland's Evergreen Health Co-op will eventually be owned by its policyholders. For now, the co-op is scrambling to find customers after the state's online health exchange got off to a rocky start.

Hitches On Health Exchanges Hinder Launch Of Insurance Co-op

Maryland-based Evergreen Health Co-op is one of nearly two dozen nonprofit insurers created by the health act. They will be owned by the policyholders and are supposed to add competition and lower prices for coverage. they're supposed to add competition and lower prices for medical coverage. But they can't do either without customers.

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