Brief update - As expected, the Pennsylvania House did approve a scaled-back version of Gov. Ed Rendell's health coverage plan this week. Rendell has now embraced the compromise and strongly urged the state Senate—which has been more skeptical about the finances—to pass it. As coverage expansion needs to go hand in hand with insurance market reform, particularly to help small businesses and individuals purchase policies, Rendell is also pushing for an insurance package in the House. AP has the details.

Also in Pennsylvania - Patients can now go to a single user-friendly web site- instead of a confusing array of them - to learn about local hospital quality in four key areas: heart attacks, heart failure, pneumonia, hospital-associated infections. The site was developed by the Pennsylvania Health Care Quality Alliance - a coalition insurers, hospitals, doctors and government agencies, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

"Our goal has been to work together on a common way of understanding and sharing the quality measures data that providers are already required to report," Carolyn F. Scanlan, president of the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, said in a statement.