A new push for accountable care organizations -- called ACOs -- is driving a consolidation trend among health care companies that's increasingly being felt in Minnesota, the Pioneer Press reports. One recent example: the combination of HealthPartners and Park Nicollet health systems into one of the state's largest nonprofit health companies,

Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth, the nation's largest health insurer, told the Associated Press it plans to keep and extend some provisions of the federal health-reform legislation regardless of whether the law is overturned. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling later this month on the law's constitutionality.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will be in the Twin Cities on the two-year anniversary of the landmark health care legislation. Sebelius will highlight insurance policies that she says discriminate against women. Meanwhile, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is using the law's anniversary in a fundraising appeal built around her goal of repealing it.

While medical students are busy learning how to provide care, their education does not seem to include much about the big picture of health care policy. A University of Minnesota doctor surveyed the state's medical students last year and found fewer than half could say they understood the basics of the country's new health care overhaul.

The federal health care overhaul was aimed at providing affordable health insurance to millions of Americans who lack it. But a low-income group falls into a kind of no-man's land for affordable coverage, and Minnesota officials are considering an optional program to help fill this gap. But there is a huge unknown: cost.

A new federal analysis of hospitals, clinics, nursing homes and other medical providers ranks Minnesota's health care system the best in the U.S. The Star Tribune reports the state was first in care at medical clinics, fourth in care at hospitals, eighth in nursing homes, but 43rd in home health care. Wisconsin fell to second after it was ranked first last year. Iowa ranked sixth, North Dakota eighth and South Dakota 11th.