The Washington state Health Care Authority has chosen five health plans to provide managed care for more than 700,000 Medicaid clients and Basic Health subscribers.

A push to create a publicly owned financial institution in Washington has gained traction among key legislative leaders in Olympia, with 44 House members and 11 state senators signed on to bills that would put the state in the finance business.

New federal rules give travelers more information and flexibility when making airline reservations.

By Jessica E. Vascellaro Silicon Valley start-ups are trying to re-create the milkman. A host of new tech companies are creating ways to buy food directly from local food producers, cutting out grocery stores and some of the middlemen. They are also providing new services to educate consumers about what they are eating, down to the growing conditions of a carrot.Founded by alumni from tech giants like Google Inc., the companies are using the same sorts of online tools that changed how people rent an apartment or find a date to make it easier to buy locally grown food. They are part of a growing class of start-ups targeting food and eating, from sites that deliver celebrity-chef meals to your door to a business that aims to turn roofs into vegetable patches. Many are steering clear of delivering fresh foods to your door, trying to avoid the pitfalls that felled some food-delivery companies in the past.Among the new entrants is Farmigo Inc., a San Francisco company that has 50,000 subscribers after launching late last year. Founded by Microsoft Corp. and SAP AG veteran Benzi Ronen, Farmigo allows consumers to search for and buy produce and meat from local farms that deliver to pick-up locations in their neighborhood, including offices like Yelp Inc., Twitter Inc. and Google. Many of those inclined to shop from the source rather than the store currently have to hunt for a seller via word of mouth. Farmigo tries to automate that process and hopes its technology increases the number of farmers that sell directly to consumers in the first place. "At the end of the day farmers want to be in the field," not cobbling together technology, says Mr. Ronen. The company has raised $2 million from Silicon Valley angel investors.Farmers like Annie Salafsky, just south of Olympia, Wash., say they appreciate how Farmigo lets customers register themselves online rather than having to enter in all their data manually. Farmigo takes a 2% cut of a farm's sales through the system and allows farmers to build their own Web store to sell additional products like lamb and honey. Those add-ons have brought Ms. Salafsky's farm, Helsing Junction Farm, about $35,000 in sales over the past year or so, out of annual sales of $500,000, she says. Meanwhile, former Silicon Valley engineer Karl Rosaen co-founded Real Time Farms LLC and is building a database of farms and their growing practices, making it possible, for instance, to find a place to buy a tomato grown without synthetic pesticides with a few clicks. So far, the site has growing-practice information for a few hundred farms.And Rob Spiro, co-founder of Good Eggs Inc. in San Francisco, left Google in June to start developing software for local food producers, testing ideas like allowing them to sell their products via mobile apps and helping them market with email newsletters. Good Eggs is testing a consumer site offering information about where local foods are available, along with recipes. The goal is to "make local food even more convenient than typical grocery shopping" for national food brands, Mr. Spiro says. His company—which raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Silicon Valley venture-capital firms Baseline Ventures and Harrison Metal Capital in August—plans to launch its service this year. Write to Jessica E. Vascellaro at jessica.vascellaro@wsj.com ...

Average deductibles for employer-based, family health insurance doubled from 2003 to 2010, a report from the Commonwealth Fund finds.

New school meal rules aim to cut obesity, TiqIQ is the Kayak of live-event tickets, defend your phone against hackers and other consumer-focused news from The New York Times.

By Sarah E. Needleman The small-business help desk is going corporate, with initiatives from companies like Apple Inc. bringing new competition to independent consultants who typically handle the IT needs of U.S. start-ups and small companies. The move comes as the use of external IT support among small businesses is exploding. Information-technology services can include setting up new computers, upgrading software, protecting against malware and troubleshooting. U.S. businesses with less than 500 employees spent roughly $23.5 billion on IT services last year, and are projected to spend $27.2 billion on IT services by 2015, according to estimates by research firm IDC. Best Buy Co. sees "significant, untapped potential" in small business IT, a company spokeswoman said. The national retail chain in December bought Mindshift Technologies Inc., a Waltham, Mass., provider of IT services to more than 5,400 small and midsize businesses nationwide. Apple in June formed a partnership with OnForce Services Inc., an eight-year-old IT services network based in Lexington, Mass., to provide small businesses with IT help on their own premises. "Everyone's talking small business right now. There's a huge opportunity," says Peter Cannone, chief executive of OnForce.Apple stores already feature a "Genius Bar," where customers have their products serviced. A year ago Apple introduced "JointVenture," a program providing small businesses with limited tech support offered by Apple employees in Apple stores and over the phone. That program starts at $499 a year for those who buy a new Mac. But in-store support isn't ideal for many business owners who may need to carry multiple computers or devices from their office into an Apple store.While many small businesses and start-ups are still reluctant to hire new employees, spending on technology and IT services is seen generally as smart if it can help a company operate more efficiently, or make it possible for an owner who travels to manage his or her business from a remote location. "I don't have an IT department," says Kevin Kay, owner of an Easley, S.C., health-care company with just 53 employees. "It's not a luxury I can afford." Mr. Kay, who says he has been cautious in his overall spending in recent years due to the economy, sought Apple's help in updating and transferring accounting software to three new iMac computers from older personal computers earlier this month.Apple referred him to OnForce, which then dispatched a technician from its roster of more than 100,000 partners—independent IT-service providers nationwide who pay OnForce a referral fee of 10% of sales—to Mr. Kay's business. Mr. Kay paid the technician $1,050, or $150 an hour, for seven hours of labor, an amount he describes as "costly but necessary." That's on top of the $5,600 he shelled out for computers, iPads, software and data backup.Thanks to the advent of cloud computing, the options now available to small businesses go well beyond what was typical for a help desk just a few years ago. They include analytics, software customization, disaster recovery and video conferencing, for instance. Such options and others only recently became feasible to dispense on a widespread scale—and at prices the average small business can afford. Spending on IT services by U.S. companies of all sizes has been growing at a rate of about 3.2% annually over the past five years, and reached $304 billion last year. That total is about 55% more than their spending on computer hardware and software sales combined, according to research firm Gartner Inc. About 71% of small and midsize U.S. companies said they planned to increase their IT budgets by an average of 5.2% over the next 12 months, according to a July survey of 602 companies with less than 500 employees by the Computing Technology Industry Association, a trade group.The small-business IT market is alluring to many in part because no single player dominates it, even though some large corporations have been in the space for longer than Apple and Best Buy, including International Business Machines Corp., Staples Inc. and AT&T Inc.PlumChoice Inc., a midsize IT-services firm in Billerica, Mass., has signed partnerships with five large corporations in recent years to provide help-desk support to those outfits' small-business customers. "When things don't work, you can't even run your business in many cases," says Ted Werth, its founder.There are roughly 300,000 independent IT consultants, and another 114,000 small IT companies, according to the trade group. Some independent consultants believe they can thrive despite potentially increased competition for mom-and-pop shops and other small-business clients. "A college kid offers better pricing than I do but I'm able to give my clients the answers they need in ways they can understand," says Allan Sabo, an IT consultant in Flushing, N.Y., who charges $100 an hour, or $500 a month, for service for clients who have one server and as many as five workstations. Small-business owners "want to work with local people," says Jason Comstock, an independent consultant in Marysville, Ohio, who says he visits his clients on site at least once a month even though he can assist them remotely with many IT issues. "They want to know who you are, where you go to church, are you a member of the local chamber of commerce, all those things. They're really about the relationship."Best Buy so far isn't planning to carve out dedicated space in its stores for Mindshift, as it currently does for Geek Squad, its tech-support service for consumers. Rather, Mindshift will serve the businesses in most cases via remote access to a customer's computer or over the phone. "We can do 99% of the work remotely," says Paul Chisholm, Mindshift CEO. "More and more customers want to go to the cloud, and the independents and small regional providers don't have the financial capital and expertise to develop scalable cloud offerings."Keeping a team of IT professionals can be too costly for a start-up. "The minute you bring them in, unless you spend a tremendous amount on training and keeping them up to date, their skills deteriorate," says Rick Rodgers, co-founder of Tesaro Inc. The two-year-old biopharmaceutical company, based in Waltham, Mass., paid Mindshift about $40,000 for all of its 2011 IT needs. Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com ...

A new apartment complex is now open to Clark County’s poorest senior citizens.

By Emily Maltby President Obama's State of the Union Address Tuesday night touched on deficit reduction, tax and regulatory reform, exporting, and other issues of interest to small business owners. But some entrepreneurs and small-business groups said that they believe the speech didn't go far enough in citing specific solutions that can help spur growth and hiring, among other things. The president highlighted the importance of small firms in the U.S. economy. He also emphasized the need to help them grow and hire in the U.S., through tax reform and regulatory reform. But he stopped short of listing the small-business tax provisions and regulatory challenges he hoped to change. For a detailed look at other aspects of the address, click here. For an analysis of his proposals for Congress to consider, click here. Small-business owners didn't get anywhere near the level of attention that they received in his State of the Union address two years ago. Then, Mr. Obama mentioned small businesses more than a dozen times. He also called on Congress to craft several pieces of legislation that directly impact small businesses, a few of which were later signed into law.Leading up to this year's address, Mitch Marrow, founder of SPOT Group LLC, a New York doggie day care and dog services firm, said he hoped the president would address liquidity issues facing small firms. His company has grown to 135 employees at six locations and is poised for expansion. But Mr. Marrow has had trouble accessing a line of credit that could help his firm meet its potential because, he said, he's only been in business for about a year. Mr. Obama touched on capital constraints but didn't offer specifics on how to loosen credit for small firms. Mr. Marrow, who formerly worked in the hedge fund industry, said he was discouraged that the president opted instead to speak about the need for strict oversight in the financial sector because "that equates to less lending and liquidity," he said. Mr. Marrow says he is a fiscally-conservative Independent who didn't vote for Mr. Obama in 2008. Mr. Marrow also wanted to hear about employment incentives, such as tax breaks for hiring and training new employees. But the president focused instead on incentives for bringing overseas jobs back to American shores, which doesn't apply to Mr. Marrow's business. "My general reaction was that it came off much more like a campaign speech," said Mr. Marrow. "He sort of pushed the ball back to Congress. That didn't give any immediate hope of getting anything done."Spokespeople for the National Small Business Association and the National Association for the Self-Employed, both trade groups in Washington, D.C., said they were pleased that the president noted the importance of creating a level playing field for businesses, despite the absence of details. "I forgive politicians who run a country and have one hour to outline plans," said NSBA Chair Chris Holman, adding that Mr. Obama's key themes of eliminating regulations, cutting the deficit and creating a fair tax code, were on point. The NSBA, a non-partisan organization that does not endorse candidates, has 150,000 members. Kristie Arslan, president and chief executive of NASE, said that the overall message of fairness resonated with the self-employed population because "they are dealing with their own legal work and regulatory work, as well as being CEO." NASE is a non-partisan organization that represents about 200,000 member businesses. It does not endorse candidates. "[Our members] wanted to hear concrete steps and it was short on details," said Cynthia Magnuson, spokesperson for the National Federation of Independent Business. The group, a conservative lobby based in Washington, D.C., has about 350,000 members. It has a track record of endorsing more Republican than Democrat politicians, but it does not endorse presidential candidates, according to Ms. Magnuson. Mr. Obama lingered on the idea of international trade, without specifically mentioning the role small firms play. The Export-Import Bank, the export credit agency of the U.S., authorized $789 million to small firms in the first quarter of fiscal 2012, ended December 31, 2011. And the number of small-business customers went up 10% compared to a year earlier. "Between 85% and 87% of transactions that Export-Import Bank does is for small businesses," said Fred P. Hochberg, the agency's chairman. "Our economy is growing in the 2% range right now and what we care about is growing more than 2% a year, so we need to be looking at export markets."But the agency, whose charter expired at the end of September, is running on a temporary charter. "We need to be reauthorized and we need to be reauthorized at the [lending] level the president has asked for," said Mr. Hochberg.For some small firms, exporting is a critical path to growth, said NSBA's Mr. Holman. And a reauthorization, he said, is "a no-brainer."Mr. Obama also called for immediate and comprehensive immigration reform, and mentioned the need to support "everyone who's willing to work and every risk-taker and entrepreneur who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs."Steve Case, chair of the Startup America Partnership, a public-private program intended to spur entrepreneurship, said he is in favor of a variety of legislative proposals that aim to keep high-skilled and entrepreneurial-minded workers in the country, as well as reforms that can make it easier to go public and to get funding through crowd-based platforms. "There are almost a dozen bills in Congress" that touch on these issues, Mr. Case said. Although the president didn't call out any one particular legislative proposal, Mr. Case said he was pleased that Mr. Obama asked on Congress to put pro-entrepreneurship policies in place. "He said, we should get this done now," Mr. Case said. "That was encouraging." Write to Emily Maltby at emily.maltby@wsj.com Corrections & Amplifications The Export-Import Bank is running on a temporary charter. An earlier version of the article incorrectly stated that the agency was running on temporary funding. ...