With increasing competition hospitals, insurance companies and health associations are feeling immense pressure and to overcome this pressure the big names in the industry are staking out new ground, neglecting the lines between shear business and social care that were different earlier. Hospitals are expanding themselves like anything, they are merging themselves with the big names and the big names are taking over the smaller ones. They are approaching directly to the clients for providing them insurance and cutting the cost of an agent.

According to Michael O. Leavitt, a former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, "Even if the Supreme Court undo part of the law, the changes occurring now aren't likely to end because the pressure to reduce the price of health coverage won't go away. We are looking a marketplace reacting to an economic imperative," Micheal is now chairman of a health-information company. The trends have freeze over the past year in a series of high-profile deals and quiet, under-the-radar developments. For a close look at what they mean, here are snapshots of five people a doctor, a hospital CEO, an insurance company official, a human-resources executive and a patient on the front lines as much of the $2.6 trillion U.S. health-care industry tries to remake itself.