In the first three months of 2014, 18.4 percent of adults under age 65 lacked health insurance, down from 20.4 percent last year.

Women who work for religious nonprofits will have access to birth control at no cost under a procedure the Obama administration said would also relieve their employers of any moral objections to the coverage.

WellPoint Inc., the second-largest health insurer in the United States, plans to change its name to Anthem Inc., the brand under which it sells most of its coverage.

Cerner Corp. agreed to buy Siemens AGs health information technology unit for $1.3 billion as the U.S. electronic medical records provider plans to tap rising spending on software by hospitals and doctors.

Health care plan premiums will rise an average of 4.2 percent next year in Californias insurance exchange, the largest Obamacare market in the U.S., state officials said.

The principle deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would not promise that healthcare.gov will be fully ready in November, when people can start buying insurance plans for 2015.

The price tag for healthcare.gov, the PPACA website, is approaching $1 billion even as key features remain incomplete, congressional auditors said.

Longer term, questions remain on whether the slowdown seen recently in health-care costs can be definitively tied to PPACA or whether it was the result of a slow recovery from the 2008-09 recession.