Affordable Care Act

Warnings about red tape, long waits and multiple visits to sign up for Medicaid didn't scare Brad Stevens half as much as the alternative — paying $2,500 out of pocket to see a thyroid specialist.

President Obama often said that March 31 was the hard deadline to sign up for individual health insurance. But it turns out it's not so hard. Here's the latest on that slightly squishy deadline.

The difficulty states have had getting their marketplaces working has been one of the biggest setbacks for Obamacare. Miscommunication, technology failures and management errors all hit in Minnesota.

Florida has resisted the Affordable Care Act from the get-go, so one of the state's large insurers and Spanish-language media have done most of the outreach to Latinos.

The Obama administration is again delaying a part of the Affordable Care Act that requires most companies to provide employees with health insurance. This time, smallish firms — those with fewer than 100 workers but more than 49 — get a reprieve until 2016.

Some conservatives say the health care law is here to stay. They're urging Republicans to shift their focus from repealing it to changing parts they don't like. The Tea Party wing calls that capitulation. And it's pushing primary challengers against Republicans they say are soft on repeal.

Much has been made of the need for young, healthy people to sign up if the Affordable Care Act is going to work. But it may be that the key word here is not young, but healthy. Insurance companies get paid more for older people, regardless of their health.

Michigan is one of only a handful of Republican-led states that is expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. It did it by forging a plan that worked for Republicans, Democrats and business interests, as well as doctors and hospitals.

In a state where politicians have adamantly rejected the Affordable Care Act, the area around Atlanta has a growing number of health tech companies. Many are seeing business benefits from the law. Companies that once would have been a hard sell are seeing more sales and customers.

Health care costs grew at 3.7 percent in 2012, the fourth year of a trend of smaller annual increases. The Obama administration says that the Affordable Care Act is a factor. But the actuaries who wrote the report beg to differ, saying the recession is a more likely cause.