Faced with soaring health care costs and shrinking Medicare and Medicaid financing, nursing home operators are closing some facilities and embracing an emerging model of care that allows many elderly patients to remain in their homes and still receive the medical and social services available in institutions.

Two Republican senators are unveiling a Medicare rescue plan that features an accelerated transition to private health insurance for many seniors, a gradual increase in the eligibility age, and higher premiums for middle-class and upper-income retirees.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Monday warned Florida’s seniors that the Democrats’ health law would limit their access to doctors and dollars and criticized his main rivals for backing its requirement that younger Americans buy health insurance.

Paying the gym-membership fees of seniors joining private Medicare supplemental insurance plans -- which by law cannot deny coverage based on illness -- attracts healthier adults, potentially saving the U.S. insurer money, a new study suggests.

Officials announced that 32 networks of doctors and hospitals around the country are becoming Pioneer Accountable Care Organizations, or ACOs.

Thirty-two groups were named Monday to test a new health-care model, called for in the health-care law and designed to improve care for seniors while reducing costs.

While many Americans may not experience concrete benefits until the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented in 2014, there are a number of health reform "gifts" available to some Americans this year.