The Piper Report has an excellent summary of state health care initiatives. These include plans to encourage employer-based funding of health insurance; reform payment mechanisms for uncompensated care; create better care management for high cost Medicaid patients; and new (and old) pharmaceutical purchasing programs.

States are often the best labs for health care reform, and those states with particularly attractive results (financially and politically, that is) often see their governors move into national roles (see Tommy Thompson and Mike Leavitt, ex governors who went on to run HHS).