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Only 17 states and the District of Columbia have proposed running their own insurance markets. Experts had expected mostly small states to seek federal help, but some of the nation's largest have said they will not run an exchange on their own.

People hoping to save a few dollars by choosing insurance with low upfront costs may be losing out. Hospitals and other health care providers sometimes fail to apply discounts when individuals, rather than insurers, are paying the bills.

Health insurers sometimes pay too much to a doctor or hospital for services rendered. When insurers look to get their money back, patients may be surprised to get stuck with the bills.

A growing number of teenage girls are incarcerated each year. Many have injuries consistent with sexual assault, and up to a third are or have been pregnant. But the care provided in detention is often inadequate for girls because the assessment of their needs misses the mark.

The nation's biggest insurer is starting to dole out bonuses and penalties to nearly 3,000 hospitals as it ties almost $1 billion in payments to the quality of care provided to patients.

Hospice policies that reject patients on the grounds that no one's at home to care for them, while increasingly rare, do still exist around the country. But for many families, that's just not an option.

Without rules that spell out which health plan takes the lead, a young person who lives out of state and is covered by his parents' plan and a college health plan might run into trouble trying to get in-network care when far from hometown.

Some of the priciest markets for insurance include rural counties in Georgia and the areas around ski resorts in Colorado. While many people in these places will receive government subsidies to help pay for premiums, the portion that they pay will still be higher than what they would have to foot elsewhere.

The insurance pool for people with expensive pre-existing conditions will stay open until the end of March, after another extension by the federal government. Starting this year, the Affordable Care Act bars insurers from rejecting people because of health problems, but they may need more time than originally thought to sign up for coverage.

Health plans of all kinds typically cover rehabilitative services, such as physical therapy to help people after an accident or illness. But before the Affordable Care Act passed, coverage of similar services to help people learn or maintain functional skills, rather than regain them, was often excluded.