WellPoint Inc.'s second-quarter net income fell 3 percent as Medicare Advantage expenses climbed, and Wall Street punished the health insurer's stock in Wednesday trading even though the company raised its 2011 earnings forecast for the second time this year.

A budding model for primary care that encourages the family doctor to act as a health coach who focuses as much on preventing illness as on treating it has shown promising results and saved insurers millions of dollars.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. said Tuesday its second-quarter earnings rose 13 percent, as enrollment gains helped fuel revenue growth and consumers continued to moderate their health care system use.

The economy has made consumers more cautious about health care spending and forced some to reduce it considerably, according to a Deloitte Center for Health Solutions survey.

Enrollment in high-deductible health insurance plans that can help consumers save for medical expenses climbed 14 percent this year and has jumped 87 percent since January 2008, according to the trade association America's Health Insurance Plans.

Aetna Inc. said Monday it will buy the Medicare supplement business of Genworth Financial Inc. for about $290 million, as it becomes the latest health insurer to announce a plan that capitalizes on the aging baby boomer population.

Health care costs will take another leap next year, and more employers will ask their workers to help absorb that by paying deductibles even if the care is within a plan's network of providers, according to the consulting firm PwC.

Health care costs have more than doubled for some American families over the past nine years, and they show few signs of dropping, according to a report released Wednesday by the actuarial consulting firm Milliman Inc.