Emergency departments (EDs) play an increasingly important role in U.S. healthcare by sorting through possible hospital admissions and supplementing the work of primary care doctors, according to a new study.

The RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, found that emergency rooms (ERs) accounted for almost all growth in hospital admissions between 2003 and 2009. Emergency departments now pass on about half of all admissions to U.S. hospitals.

The study challenged a powerful narrative about ERs, an expensive medical venue that has been blamed for rising healthcare costs. Researchers with RAND argued that ERs in fact prevent unnecessary hospital admissions, engage in preventive care and provide complex diagnostic work-ups that many primary care doctors do not. 

Two key rules within ObamaCare are set to be published this week in the Federal Register.

Democrats in the House and Senate are looking to stop what they say are deceptive advertising practices by anti-abortion health clinics that imply they offer abortion services, but instead encourage birth and promote adoption.

The legislation is aimed at crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), which are clinics often set up by a church or other anti-abortion groups. Democrats in Congress and other pro-abortion groups say these clinics are known to indicate they can perform abortions in order to attract pregnant women patients, and then try to convince them to carry their babies to term.

House Republicans will take up the abortion issue this week as Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) expands his proposed ban on late-term procedures to apply nationwide.

Franks announced Friday that he would expand his current D.C.-only measure, which failed to pass under suspension of the rules last year, in light of Philadelphia abortion provider Kermit Gosnell's conviction on three counts of first-degree murder.

Gosnell was convicted last week of killing three viable infants after failed abortion procedures. His grisly trial has been a rallying cry for opponents of abortion rights seeking to raise objections to late-term abortion.

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The Arizona congressman will revise his measure banning late-term procedures in the District of Columbia to apply nationwide. 

President Obama's budget proposal would save the Medicare program $364 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The CBO largely concurred with the White House's estimates, which pegged the budget's Medicare savings at $370 billion.

Obama's budget called for a range of cuts in Medicare's payments to healthcare providers. The most controversial proposals would let poor seniors buy prescription drugs at the price Medicaid pays, rather than the higher Medicare price.

A federal judge on Friday temporary blocked the enactment of Arkansas's new abortion ban, which would prohibit the procedure in most cases after 12 weeks of pregnancy.

U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright granted the preliminary injunction after a request from several abortion-rights groups who filed suit against the law.

The Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), one of those groups, praised the decision in a statement.