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Former President Barack Obama released a video earlier this week urging people to hurry up and shop for health insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchange. "This year I'm giving it to you straight," Obama says in the video. "It's important to have health insurance in case, God forbid, you get really sick, or hurt yourself next year." (Kodjak, 12/14)

It's not too late yet, but time is running out to enroll in the Affordable Care Act marketplace health insurance for 2019. The marketplace sells private insurance, and those who qualify are eligible for federal subsidies to help pay for it. (Innes, 12/13)

As the deadline to sign up for insurance on Connecticut’s Affordable Care Act’s marketplace looms, officials say enrollment in the state is matching last year’s pace. The state ACA marketplace, Access Health CT, has already signed up about 100,000 individuals and families in the enrollment period that began in October. (Radelat, 12/13)

Kaiser Health News: Health Insurance Costs Crushing Many People Who Don’t Get Federal Subsidies 

Like millions of Americans in this final week of open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, Diane McCabe is shopping for health insurance. “At my age, I can’t go without it even though I’m healthy now,” said McCabe, 62, a self-employed real estate agent in Luzerne County, Pa. “But the process is frustrating, and the expense significant.” That’s because McCabe is one of the 5 million people who buy their own coverage and pay the full cost. Her income is too high to qualify for a government subsidy to help defray the premium. (Findlay, 12/14)

A federal appeals court on Thursday narrowed an order that had blocked President Donald Trump's administration from enforcing new rules that undermine an Obamacare requirement for employers to provide insurance that covers women's birth control. Last year two federal judges - one in Philadelphia and one in Oakland, California - had blocked the government from enforcing a new guideline allowing businesses or nonprofits to obtain exemptions from the contraception policy on moral or religious grounds. The Justice Department appealed both rulings. (Levine, 12/13)

Thursday's ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concerned changes to birth control coverage requirements under President Barack Obama's health care law that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued in October 2017. States were likely to succeed on their claim that those changes were made without required notice and public comment, the appeals court panel said in a 2-1 decision. (Thanawala, 12/13)