The Wall Street Journal: White House Opens Health-Insurance Portal To Small Businesses In Five States
The Obama administration has opened a new health-insurance portal to small businesses in five states after a yearlong delay of the Affordable Care Act’s online marketplace for small-employer health plans. The exchange, which was shelved last year amid mounting technical problems, quietly went live for the first time over the weekend in Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey and Ohio. Companies in those states that have fewer than 50 full-time workers can start using the site now to buy insurance for workers for 2015. (Radnofsky, 10/27)

The Hill: Soft Launch For Obamacare's Business Exchange
Businesses in five states received early access Monday to select features at ObamaCare's online health insurance marketplace for small employers. The soft launch for the SHOP system is an effort by federal health officials to troubleshoot any problems at the exchange before Nov. 15, when it will open to all states that did not elect to build their marketplaces. (Viebeck, 10/27)

The Associated Press: State To Have 60-plus Health Care Plans In 2015
There will be more than 60 health plans available to consumers in New Hampshire when enrollment begins next month, up from the 11 offered during the first year of the federal health care overhaul. Five carriers will be offering plans starting Nov. 15 and individuals will have 40 plans to choose from, while small businesses will have 21, according to Covering New Hampshire, the organization that provides information about the Affordable Care Act in the state. (10/27)

The Denver Post: Colorado Health Insurance Buyers May Get Smaller Tax Credits In 2015
Colorado health-insurance consumers relying on tax credits will see their share of premiums rise an average of 77 percent next year if they keep the same plans, according to the state's preliminary analysis. While premiums overall are not expected to increase significantly in 2015, the way tax credits are calculated under the Affordable Care Act is creating challenges for Colorado consumers. (Draper, 10/27)

The Associated Press: Renewal Costs May Surprise MNsure Customers
Minnesotans who bought policies on the state's health insurance exchange are starting to get their first renewal notices, and many could be in for a jolt. Premiums for most of the more than 55,000 individuals signed up for private insurance plans via MNsure are going up. For the nearly 33,000 who have coverage from PreferredOne, most who want to keep those policies next year will have to pay over 60 percent more, according to officials with the Minnesota Association of Health Underwriters who've seen the company's rate data. (Karnowski, 10/27)

Meanwhile, California Healthline takes a look at how Covered California's open season will impact Medi-Cal sign-ups --

California Healthline: How Open Enrollment Affects Medi-Cal
Covered California's three-month open enrollment period starting Nov. 15 is expected to boost signups for Medi-Cal -- even though the open enrollment period doesn't apply to Medi-Cal. (Gorn, 10/27)

USA Today: Some Doctors Wary Of Taking Insurance Exchange Patients
Now that many people finally have health insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchanges, some are running into a new problem: They can't find a doctor who will take them as patients. Because these exchange plans often have lower reimbursement rates, some doctors are limiting how many new patients they take with these policies, physician groups and other experts say. (O'Donnell, 10/28)

KSNW-TV: Dodge City Doctor Says Goodbye To Insurance
Jim Moffitt and his wife started practicing family medicine in Dodge City 14 years ago, but with the Affordable Care Act and changes to insurance procedures he says the claims process has gotten to be too much . “14 years ago my nurse and I could take care of the paperwork we needed to do and have everything done by the end of the day,” Moffitt said. Now it takes more time with twice as many people. So he has decided to stop taking most insurance and instead charge his patients a membership fee. The prices start at $65 a month for a single adult and includes general services and generic drugs. (Cobb, 10/27)

Kaiser Health News: Reno Finds Medicaid Expansion Tough Hand To Play
For Carolyn Oatman, enrolling in Medicaid this year was “a dream come true.” Uninsured since she lost her job five years ago in this desert gambling city, Oatman, 57, often couldn’t afford the drugs to control her asthma and high blood pressure. She would sell her blood plasma to scrape together enough money to see a doctor. Since she signed up for Medicaid, though, her care is free, including her medicines. But there’s a downside: It can take two months to get a doctor’s appointment at a local community health center, or an all-day wait if she just shows up. Such delays are a result of the surge in newly insured patients seeking care as Nevada became one of 26 states to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act in 2014. The Reno area has seen its Medicaid enrollment nearly double this year — one of the biggest jumps of any metro area nationwide. (Galewitz, 10/28)

The Associated Press: Democratic Attack Ads Aim To Save Senate Majority
Their majority in jeopardy, Senate Democrats unleashed a late-campaign round of attack ads Monday accusing Republicans in key races of harboring plans to cut Social Security and Medicare. The commercials in Iowa, New Hampshire, Louisiana and elsewhere appear aimed at older voters, who cast ballots in relatively large numbers in midterm elections and have tended to support Republicans in recent years. (10/27)

Los Angeles Times: Key Races May Hinge On What Voters Distrust More: Obama Or Congress
In a year in which Obama's unpopularity has been used by Republicans across the country to bludgeon Democratic senators, Kentucky — which Obama lost in 2012 by 23 percentage points — seems like the last place the party would have a chance to pick off a Republican incumbent, let alone the party's Senate leader. Yet a recent poll showed the race is within the margin of error. Ultimately Kentucky's Senate contest, and many others across the country, may come down to what voters distrust more: the Obama administration or longtime congressional incumbents like [Mitch] McConnell. Just 30% of voters here had a favorable opinion of the president in the most recent Bluegrass Poll, compared with 38% for McConnell and 40% for Grimes. (Memoli, 10/27)

CBS News: What Will Congress Do If Republicans Control The Senate?
Much of next year's congressional agenda would comprise smaller, more incremental accomplishments that could win bipartisan support. That might include repealing the Medical Device Tax from the Affordable Care Act, a tax that's unpopular with both Republicans and Democrats. (Condon, 10/28)

Los Angeles Times: CDC Recommends Looser Ebola Monitoring Than State Quarantines For Health Workers
The federal government announced new guidelines Monday for monitoring healthcare workers returning from West Africa that are far less restrictive than the quarantines that some states put in place for aid workers at risk of contracting Ebola. The guidelines call for medical workers at high risk to isolate themselves and those at lower risk to regularly report their temperature to local health officials to see whether symptoms of the virus develop. They are merely suggested practices for state and local officials, who may quarantine as they see fit. (Susman and Parsons, 10/27)

The Washington Post: No Unity Over Ebola Monitoring Of Travelers
The Pentagon announced Monday that Army personnel returning to their home base in Italy from Liberia will be held in quarantine for 21 days — even though none have symptoms of Ebola or were exposed to patients infected with the virus. The military’s policy does not appear to track new guidelines announced Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which called for “high-risk” individuals and health-care workers without any symptoms to be directly monitored by state and local health authorities. Nor do the states have to follow the CDC’s recommendations. (Achenbach, Dennis and Sun, 10/27)

Politico: CDC Outlines Ebola Monitoring Policies
The new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines come after a weekend in which several states, beginning with New York and New Jersey, announced policies of their own, including mandatory quarantines for returning health care workers. Many public health officials say that’s an overreaction that may cause more harm than good. New Jersey, in particular, came under scrutiny for quarantining in a tent a nurse who had returned from working with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, one of the three affected West African countries. (Norman, 10/28)

The Wall Street Journal: CDC Rejects Mandatory Ebola Quarantines
The new guidelines, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recommend that people at high risk of developing Ebola voluntarily isolate themselves from others for 21 days. That is less stringent than recent guidelines from New York and New Jersey, which imposed mandatory quarantines on such people and stoked tensions with the White House. (McKay, McCain Nelson and Armour, 10/27)

USA Today: CDC Says People At High Risk For Ebola Should Stay Home
The issue of how to monitor travelers from West Africa -- and other contacts of Ebola patients -- became a matter of national debate Thursday when a New York physician was diagnosed with the disease after working with Doctors Without Borders in Guinea. The doctor, Craig Spencer, had not treated patients since his return but had ridden the subway, gone bowling and gone to a restaurant. He is being treated at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York. (Szabo, 10/27)

News outlets also report on the lines between federal and state authority on issues related to public health quarantines.

The Associated Press: Federal Health Official Fauci: States Have Options
For Americans wondering why President Barack Obama hasn’t forced all states to follow a single, national rule for isolating potential Ebola patients, the White House has a quick retort: Talk to the Founding Fathers. A hodgepodge of state policies, some of which directly contradict Obama’s recommendations, has sowed confusion about what’s really needed to stop Ebola from spreading in the United States. While public health advocates denounce state quarantines as draconian and scientifically baseless, anxious citizens in non-quarantine states are asking whether they’re at greater risk because their governors and the president have adopted a lesser level of caution. (Lederman, 10/28)

Los Angeles Times: Disorder Among States' Ebola Strategies Raises Worries
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidelines on dealing with travelers from Ebola-stricken regions Monday, but its lack of firm rules left a patchwork of state-by-state strategies that include mandatory quarantines for some travelers. The different rules among states, and the CDC's recommendation of looser monitoring than what is being carried out in several states, highlight what some public health experts said was the problem with the current system. (Susman and Healy, 10/27).

Politico: White House, States Fight Over Power To Quarantine
The White House threw a fit this weekend when two governors defied its Ebola policy and ordered mandatory quarantines of aid workers returning from West Africa. But then Obama officials threw up their arms, suggesting they didn’t have the legal authority to overrule the governors – even though they very well might. (Gerstein, 10/27)

And, in other Ebola coverage -

NPR: Medical Journal To Governors: You're Wrong About Ebola Quarantine
The usually staid New England Journal of Medicine is blasting the decision of some states to quarantine returning Ebola health care workers. In an editorial the NEJM describes the quarantines as unfair, unwise and "more destructive than beneficial." In their words, "We think the governors have it wrong." (Beaubien, 10/27)

NPR: New York's Disease Detectives Hit The Street In Search Of Ebola
A little-seen force has fanned out across New York City intent on stopping the spread of Ebola virus – disease detectives go looking for contacts who might be infected. "They're just really good at finding people," says Denis Nash. He worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the New York City Health Department, tracing the spread of HIV and West Nile virus. He says these trained applied epidemiologists are experts at finding almost anybody, with only a vague description. (Mogul, 10/27)

Bloomberg: Aetna Boosts Profit Forecast As Health Enrollment Climbs
Aetna Inc., the third-largest U.S. health insurer, raised its profit forecast for the year as enrollment increases. Enrollment in Aetna plans reached 23.6 million in the quarter, an increase of 470,000 members from the second quarter. Aetna will offer coverage in 18 Affordable Care Act exchanges in 2015. UnitedHealth Group Inc., the nation’s largest insurer, is expanding to as many as two dozen states. About 7.3 million Americans were enrolled in plans as of mid-August through the exchanges that are a centerpiece of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare. (Chen, 10/28)

The Wall Street Journal: Aetna Raises Outlook, Cites Strong Results
The insurer has posted higher membership and revenue of late, but medical costs have also increased, although it has categorized that trend as moderate. Expensive treatments for hepatitis C have been among the biggest pressures on results, along with the company’s involvement in public health exchanges. Aetna’s total medical benefit ratio—the amount of premiums used to pay patients’ medical costs—was 82.3%, compared with 83.1% a year earlier. The ratio rose on the commercial side due to costs associated with hepatitis C treatments and the Affordable Care Act health law, among other reasons, but it declined for its government business. (Calia, 10/28)

The Wall Street Journal: Universal Health Services Revenue Up 11%
Universal Health Services Inc. said its third-quarter revenue rose 11% as the hospital operator continued to benefit from a rebound in admissions. Like some other hospital operators, Universal Health has been benefiting from a wave of newly insured patients under the Affordable Care Act. (Stynes, 10/27)

Kansas Health Institute News Service: Candidates Battling For Insurance Post Differ On Big Issues
The top-of-the-ticket races may be commanding the most attention in this year’s Kansas election, but significant issues also are in play in some of the down-ballot contests. The insurance commissioner’s race is one example. Like the higher-profile races, it features candidates with very different perspectives on key issues. But unlike those races, the contestants remain largely unknown to Kansas voters. A poll taken as the race headed into its final week showed Republican Ken Selzer leading Democrat Dennis Anderson by double digits – but nearly half of voters didn’t know either candidate. (McLean, 10/27)

Sacramento Bee: Voters Have Say In Doctor-Lawyer Battle Over Malpractice Cap
Proponents contend their measure will save lives by deterring medical negligence, stepping up enforcement of prescription drug abuse and protecting patients from impaired doctors. Opponents cast the drug testing and prescription drug provisions as cynical ploys designed to mask the real intent of the measure – raising the cap – which they argue will force doctors and medical professionals to quit or move to states with lower medical malpractice insurance premiums. (Cadelago, 10/27)

KSNF-TV: Missouri Reaches Medicaid Fraud Settlement
Organon will pay the state more than $600,000 over allegations ranging from improper kickbacks to falsifying drug costs to Medicaid. The lawsuit stems from two whistleblowers speaking out against the former Netherlands company. All 50 states took part in the lawsuit, resulting in a $31 million settlement. (Bolander, 10/27)

Reuters: U.S. Sues NYC, Computer Sciences For Alleged Medicaid Fraud
The United States on Monday sued New York City and Computer Sciences Corp, accusing them of defrauding Medicaid into making millions of dollars of improper reimbursements by exploiting a computerized billing system that the company designed. According to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, the defendants took advantage of the system's automatic default settings, enabling the city to improperly boost the amount and speed of reimbursements for services provided to infants and toddlers with developmental delays. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan said some of these services might have been covered by private insurance, while others should not have been billed to Medicaid at all. (Stempel and Raymond, 10/27)

The New York Times: New York City Agency And Vendor Bilked Medicaid, U.S. Says
Federal authorities have accused New York City officials of a five-year effort to defraud Medicaid, working with a contractor to exploit loopholes in Medicaid’s computerized billing system to collect reimbursements that amounted to tens of millions of dollars. (Weiser, 10/27)

The Associated Press: U.S. Sues NYC Over Medicaid Claims Worth Millions
The federal government has sued New York City, saying it ripped off Medicaid for millions of dollars by submitting tens of thousands of false claims. A civil lawsuit seeking unspecified damages was filed Monday in Manhattan federal court. (10/27)

Boston Globe: In A First, Mass. Town May Prohibit Tobacco Sales
The Central Massachusetts town of Westminster would become the first community in the state, and perhaps the nation, to ban all tobacco sales under a proposal made public Monday that regulators say is designed to improve health, especially among the young. (Lazar, 10/28)

The Associated Press: Lawmaker: New York Jail Heath Care Needs Oversight
A city councilman on Monday said he will hold an oversight hearing this year to examine health care services at Rikers Island and other city jails, where documents obtained by The Associated Press raised troubling questions about quality and timeliness of care in more than a dozen inmate deaths since 2009. (10/27)

Reuters: Why Finger Pointing About Ebola Makes Americans Less Safe
With widespread accusations of repeated errors rampant in the media, it is easy to see how the public may feel the system’s response to the Ebola threat is one big mess. ... But finger pointing can backfire and lead to even more mistakes being made. Consider how much worse healthcare would be if these mistakes were kept under wraps, as would undoubtedly have been the case as recently as 15 years ago. Hospital culture has since changed to encourage transparency. Transparency– especially about errors — is vital to the delivery of quality healthcare, because acknowledging an error gives hospitals the chance to prevent a recurrence. ( Joan Bregstein, 10/27)

Bloomberg: How To Quarantine The Ebola Panic
A 14th-century weapon is not the best defense against a 21st-century illness. That's not simply common sense, it's also the scientific consensus, and why public officials in the U.S. are wrong to insist on mandatory quarantines for health workers returning from Ebola-afflicted West Africa. (10/27)

Politico: All Ebola Is Local
The widely varying responses between New York and Dallas tell us a lot about the nation’s uneven preparedness for a deadly disease outbreak. So far, with Ebola, we seem to be dodging the contagion bullet, but mainly because the virus is not easily transmitted. Yet what if this had been a more infectious kind of virus? What kind of a nationwide contagion might we be facing now, all because of a few missteps in Dallas, or if New York City hadn’t had proactive measures in place to deal with its first Ebola victim? (Stephen E. Flynn, 10/26)

USA Today: Hasty Quarantine Adds To Ebola Problems: Our View
In the face of Ebola, what's needed most are cool heads and swift, decisive action. Over the weekend, the governors of New York and New Jersey got the swift part down pat, but in their rush to impose a quarantine, they made a hash of it. The governors — Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie — seem to have ignored the impact of their actions on the people being quarantined, some of whom are health workers who risked their lives to fight Ebola in Africa, as well as the quarantine's effect on the essential U.S. effort to control the disease at the source. (10/27)

USA Today: Quarantine Has Negative Consequences
Last Friday, the governors of New York, New Jersey and Illinois announced that U.S. health care workers returning from West Africa who had direct contact with Ebola patients will be placed under quarantine for 21 days upon arrival at airports in their states. Even though New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo have softened their stance in recent days, some continue to call for a strict 21-day quarantine of all those returning from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Such a policy would likely lead to unintended negative consequences. (Rick Sacra, 10/27)

The Washington Post: Ebola Fears Should Not Lead To Overreaction
One of the profound challenges of our age is how to evaluate risk from complex threats. At one level, experts provide scientific facts about, say, the transmissibility of a disease, and they can quantify the prospects for contagion. At another level, human emotions measure risk with irrational but powerful gut feelings. ... Maintaining public confidence is a big part of protecting public health. The decision over the weekend to quarantine a nurse, Kaci Hickox, who had returned to New Jersey from working in Sierra Leone with the charity Doctors Without Borders, overreached. (10/27)

The New England Journal of Medicine: Ebola And Quarantine
The governors of a number of states, including New York and New Jersey, recently imposed 21-day quarantines on health care workers returning to the United States from regions of the world where they may have cared for patients with Ebola virus disease. We understand their motivation for this policy — to protect the citizens of their states from contracting this often-fatal illness. This approach, however, is not scientifically based, is unfair and unwise, and will impede essential efforts to stop these awful outbreaks of Ebola disease at their source, which is the only satisfactory goal. The governors' action is like driving a carpet tack with a sledgehammer: it gets the job done but overall is more destructive than beneficial. (Jeffrey M. Drazen, Rupa Kanapathipillai, Edward W. Campion, Eric J. Rubin, Scott M. Hammer, Stephen Morrissey and Lindsey R. Baden, 10/27)

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Researchers Need Consistent, Long-Term Funding
Current U.S. efforts to defeat Ebola at the source are rightly a top priority, but the question remains: How do we get there? While the threat on American soil remains relatively small, the fact is that the Ebola outbreak is far from contained in Africa. Funneling travel from West African destinations through a small number of airports, creating new protective guidelines for medical personnel, and designating more hospital isolation units are not the only answers. The key is a refocused effort at home - host to some of today's brightest scientific minds - to develop a vaccine or drug to halt the spread. However, this has been hampered by the federal government's commitment to biomedical research, which can be described as tepid at best. (Russel E. Kaufman, 10/27)

The New York Times' The Upshot: AIDS Activists Oppose Cuomo On Ebola Quarantines
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Ebola quarantine policy is drawing strong opposition from people who work closely with him on another infectious disease: AIDS. New York State’s imposition of a 21-day quarantine on health workers who have had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa “is not supported by scientific evidence” and “may have consequences that are the antithesis of effective public health policy,” according to a letter released Monday with signatures from over 100 H.I.V. activists, researchers and clinicians. (Josh Barro, 10/27)

The New York Times: Don’t Forget About AIDS
But as engaged as the gay community and civil rights activists have been in the fight for marriage equality, we have lost ground on the fight that so intensely galvanized the gay community to begin with: H.I.V. and AIDS. We need the same coalition that brought about marriage equality — from gay activists, human rights champions and social justice advocates to legal experts and courageous policy makers — to address the spiraling AIDS crisis again. (Elton John, 10/27)

The New York Times' The Upshot: Choosing A Health Plan Is Hard, Even For A Health Economist
A confession: I am a health economist, and I cannot rationally select a health plan. I buy health insurance through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, or F.E.H.B.P., which is very similar to the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges. Like the exchanges, the federal employee program runs an online marketplace with a choice of plans, which vary by region. (Austin Frakt, 10/27)

The New York Times' The Upshot: What To Look For In Judging The Affordable Care Act
A year in, how’s the Affordable Care Act doing? That’s the question a team of Times reporters has examined in a series of stories and charts running today. Next month, the Affordable Care Act’s second year of open enrollment will begin, and with it an appropriate focus on the operational performance of Healthcare.gov and state marketplaces. (Margot Sanger-Katz, 10/27)

Los Angeles Times: A New Sign That Opting Out Of Medicaid Expansion Will Cost States Money
The Kaiser Family Foundation's latest issue brief on Medicaid offers new evidence on the fiscal implications for states that have opted out of the Medicaid expansion available under the Affordable Care Act. Opting out, the foundation says, is very costly. The bottom line: Governors and state legislators who opted out of expansion should be quarantined to keep them from hurting their residents, and their states' budgets. (Michael Hiltzik, 10/27)

Los Angeles Times: Yes On 45 Campaign Hypes Millions Spent By Opponents
A direct attack on the insurers' bottom lines, [Proposition 45] would give the state insurance commissioner the same veto power over rate hikes for individual and small-group health plans that Proposition 103 gave the commissioner over auto and home policies. Blue Shield, Kaiser and other health insurers have contributed more than $55 million directly to the No on 45 campaign fund, which reports its receipts and expenditures to the California secretary of state. Now, proponents of Proposition 45 are trying to turn the insurers' opposition into a selling point for the measure. (Jon Healey, 10/27)

Bloomberg: Better Food Labels Won't Make You Less Fat
Do we need better food labels? That’s the argument of public health experts interviewed by food and health writer Jane Brody. It’s too hard, they say, to tell exactly what you’re eating all the time, which contributes to the nation’s rising tide of obesity. Color me skeptical. (Megan McArdle, 10/27)