health care

The Obama administration just released the latest sign-up numbers for its troubled health insurance exchange website. Enrollment picked up last month, after a disastrous start in October. Still, the number of people signing up for coverage is below the administration's original forecasts.

As a Dec. 23 enrollment deadline for health insurance that starts Jan. 1 looms, New York state is staffing up its call center and smoothing out the rough spots on its application to meet growing demand. As time runs down, the state is trying to fix technical and design issues that came up when the site debuted in October.

Ozy co-founder Carlos Watson tells host Arun Rath about a new food delivery service, a chess master who is making the board game sexy and President Bill Clinton's comments on the rollout of the Affordable Care Act.

Probably the best feature of the retooled HealthCare.gov website is that you can actually use it. People are now able to get a customized list of plans and prices, and click through to see an insurer's provider directory. Still, better though it is, it's clearly not 100 percent.

Since the rollout of HealthCare.gov, many have wondered whether a private company could have avoided the federal site's many pitfalls. Oregon took that route, hiring Silicon Valley titan Oracle to create its state insurance exchange. But two months after its scheduled launch, the website is still not working.

A woman in Michigan says that a Catholic hospital failed to give her adequate health care when she came to the hospital after her water broke when she was 18 weeks pregnant. That has sparked a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union.

Right now, there are about a dozen full-time navigators and a few part-timers to help 200,000 Iowans make decisions about health insurance. In the countryside, it's particularly hard to get help to people who want it.

For the first time, doctors have a financial incentive to keep patients out of the hospital. That's leading to some interesting changes.

Workers on the "tech surge" to fix the error-riddled website have just days to meet the Obama administration's self-imposed deadline for a functioning site. Public confidence in HealthCare.gov has already taken the kind of hit that may be hard to overcome.

The ads suggest the Affordable Care Act is good for young adults because it'll save them money on health care, leaving them more to spend on liquor and birth control. (This piece initially aired Nov. 24, 2013 on Weekend Edition Sunday).