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The U.S. economy grew by an annualized rate of 1.7 percent in the second quarter of 2013, according to Gross Domestic Product data released Wednesday morning. The Commerce Department says the rise stems from business investments, particularly in buildings, and an upturn in exports and the civilian aircraft industry.

The data represents the agency's first estimate of the value of all goods and services produced in the United States. The growth exceeds economists' expectations, which had called for a 1 percent rate of expansion, as Bloomberg News reports.

The new data shows a modest increase over the results for this year's first quarter, which were revised downward to 1.1 percent, according to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis. It also reported gains in Americans' income.

"Real disposable personal income—personal income adjusted for taxes and inflation—rose 3.4 percent in the second quarter after falling 8.2 percent in the first quarter," the Bureau of Economic Analysis says.

Purchases of goods and services by U.S. residents rose by 2.4 percent in the second quarter, from 1.4 percent growth in the first.

Personal saving also rose by half a percentage point, from 4 to 4.5 percent. Rises in prices for goods and services were slight, at 0.3 percent, compared to a 1.2 percent rise in the first quarter of 2013.

In other economic data released today, the payroll firm ADP says U.S. companies added 200,000 new jobs from June to July. That means American businesses "hired in July at the fastest pace since December," according to the AP.

The payroll company also revised its June figures upward, from 188,000 to 198,000.

By industry, the biggest job gains were in professional and business services, as well as in trade, transportation, and utilities, ADP says. The construction sector added 22,000 jobs in the month, while manufacturing lost 5,000 jobs.

A year ago, Montana opened the nation's first clinic for free primary healthcare services to its state government employees. The Helena, Mont., clinic was pitched as a way to improve overall employee health, but the idea has faced its fair share of political opposition.

A year later, the state says the clinic is already saving money.

Pamela Weitz, a 61-year-old state library technician, was skeptical about the place at first.

"I thought it was just the goofiest idea, but you know, it's really good," she says. In the last year, she's been there for checkups, blood tests and flu shots. She doesn't have to go; she still has her normal health insurance provided by the state. But at the clinic, she has no co-pays, no deductibles. It's free.

That's the case for the Helena area's 11,000 state workers and their dependents. With an appointment, patients wait just a couple minutes to see a doctor. Visitation is more than 75 percent higher than initial estimates.

"For goodness sakes, of course the employees and the retirees like it, it's free," says Republican State Sen. Dave Lewis.

He wonders what that free price tag is actually costing the state government as well as the wider Helena community.

"If they're taking money out of the hospital's pocket, the hospital's raising the price on other things to offset that," Lewis says.

He and others faulted then-Gov. Brian Schweitzer for moving ahead with the clinic last year without approval of the state legislature, although it was not needed.

Now, Lewis is a retired state employee himself. He says, personally, he does like going there, too.

"They're wonderful people, they do a great job, but as a legislator, I wonder how in the heck we can pay for it very long," Lewis says.

Lower Costs For Employees And Montana

The state contracts with a private company to run the facility and pays for everything — wages of the staff, total costs of all the visits. Those are all new expenses, and they all come from the budget for state employee healthcare.

Even so, division manager Russ Hill says it's actually costing the state $1,500,000 less for healthcare than before the clinic opened.

"Because there's no markup, our cost per visit is lower than in a private fee-for-service environment," Hill says.

Physicians are paid by the hour, not by the number of procedures they prescribe like many in the private sector. The state is able to buy supplies at lower prices.

“ Because there's no markup, our cost per visit is lower than in a private fee-for-service environment.

Home prices continue to rise, according to the latest numbers in the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index. Home prices were up 12.2 percent in May from a year ago.

S&P/Case-Shiller's closely watched 20-city index found the average price of a home climbed 2.4 percent in May compared with April. The city with the biggest average monthly gain was San Francisco, where home prices jumped 4.3 percent.

Higher price tags haven't deterred home buyers, who pushed up sales of new homes in June by 8.3 percent, according to the Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development, as Mark wrote last week.

Despite the boom in home sales, consumers in general aren't feeling as carefree. The Conference Board, a private business research organization, reported Tuesday that its monthly Consumer Confidence Index dropped slightly in June. It's down to 80.3, compared with May's 82.1.

Lynn Franco, director of economic indicators at the Conference Board, said in a written statement, "Consumer confidence fell slightly in July, precipitated by a weakening in consumer's economic and job expectations. However, confidence remains well above the levels of a year ago."

Of all the contentious claims about the Affordable Care Act, few have been more contentious than over the impact it's having on employers.

It's hard to pick up a newspaper or turn on a television without seeing a story about some boss cutting workers' hours or saying he won't be doing any more hiring because of the health law.

But is the law really having an impact on the economy?

Not surprisingly, it depends whom you ask.

Opponents of the law point to anecdotes in industries with a lot of low-wage workers, like restaurants.

They also point to employer surveys like one from the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. It found that nearly 1 in 5 small businesses said it was reducing hiring to try to stay under the 50-worker threshold that exempts companies from an ACA requirement that full-time employees be offered health insurance. An additional 16 percent said they planned to adjust hours so fewer workers would be eligible for health insurance.

But now the law's supporters, including the White House, are fighting back.

They're putting out their own data showing that part-time employment is no higher during this economic recovery than during other recent economic recoveries.

That includes people working part time who'd rather be working full time. Those data show that most of the people involuntarily working part time are in that situation owing to state and federal budget cuts, not the health law. They've also pointed out that weekly hours have risen since the health law was passed, including in the restaurant industry.

So who's right?

It's entirely likely that both sides are. One of the White House talking points is that only about 1 percent of the workforce would be impacted by the Affordable Care Act requirements. Those are typically people who don't have health coverage and who work more than 30 hours a week for companies with more than 50 employees.

That's not a big enough group, they point out, to really affect the economy on a macroeconomic level. And it's not.

But 1 percent of the workforce is more than 1 million people, more than enough to make for a lot of anecdotes. There's also the issue that the administration and its allies are looking back at what's happened so far, while opponents are looking mostly forward at what may happen in the future.

Still, there are efforts on Capitol Hill to address one point of contention: The law defines full-time work as more than 30 hours per week, rather than the traditional 40.

Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., have introduced the Forty Hours is Full Time Act of 2013, which they say would "ensure that the definition of full-time employee and full-time equivalent in the ACA is consistent with the traditional full-time 40-hour work week." A similar bill has been introduced in the House.

The prospects for the legislation, however, are not good.

One reason is that Congress is so gridlocked and Republicans are so dug in against the law that even when there is a consensus that something needs to be fixed there is little likelihood of its happening.

And on this issue there's no consensus that changing the definition of a full-time workweek would actually change employers' incentives.

University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan, writing in the New York Times, suggested that such a change could create its own set of disincentives, with a 39-hour-a-week job with no insurance potentially paying more than a 40-hour-a-week job with employer insurance, because of subsidies available for health insurance in the new health exchanges.