Health Care

SALT LAKE CITY -- The Obama administration says it is bending over backwards to help states carry out the federal health law. Utah’s top health insurance exchange official says the federal government could do more.

“There’s hasn’t been much dialogue,” said Patty Conner, director of the Utah Health Exchange, which recently rebranded itself Avenue H.

Did you know the Affordable Care Act stands up for gun rights? The “Protection of Second Amendment Gun Rights” section says the health law’s wellness programs can’t require participants to give information about guns in the house. It also keeps the Department of Health and Human Services from collecting data on gun use and stops insurance companies from denying coverage or raising premiums on members because of gun use.

CARSON CITY, Nev. -- Sandy Parcells is one of more than a half million Nevadans who are uninsured. On a recent Thursday, she waited at the Sierra Nevada Health Center in Carson City for a follow-up appointment.

President Barack Obama’s re-election ensures the survival of his landmark health care law, but predominantly Republican state officials will get a big say in how it is carried out.

State lawmakers will control whether millions of uninsured people get coverage through Medicaid beginning in 2014, as the law envisions. They’ll also decide whether to set up online markets where individuals can shop for coverage and seek federal subsidies to lower their costs.

LAS VEGAS -- Mary Berg is paying the price for a shortage of U.S. doctors that by most accounts is about to get much worse.

ROY — An emergency care center is coming to Roy to serve residents in Weber and Davis counties.

There’s nothing unusual about the way The New England Journal of Medicine displays the "Perspective" section this week: In dueling columns, under an "original article" on a "novel androgen-receptor blocker" for prostate cancer. But the authors of two of the perspectives are far from typical: B. Obama and M. Romney.