HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Last-minute applicants for health insurance strained enrollment offices over the weekend, triggering long lines, extra security and hours of waiting across the country ahead of Monday's federal deadline. HealthCare.gov, the federal website, blocked some applicants late Friday but didn't show major technological problems as consumers rushed before the end of the 2014 open-enrollment period for obtaining insurance under the Affordable Care Act. But the system's human capacity maxed out, with too few "navigators" and other enrollment workers to steer consumers through the complex application process.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: The U.S. House of Representatives voted Thursday to extend the deadline for implementing ICD-10 by one year, pushing the mandatory compliance date to October 2015. The Senate is expected to vote today. The provision for extending the delay was tucked into the House bill to extend the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula for another 12 months rather than finding a permanent solution to the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, which attempted to rein in Medicare reimbursement to physicians.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Yesterday, the Obama administration expanded the list of people who could sign up for health insurance after the March 31 deadline, announcing “special enrollment periods” for legal immigrants, victims of domestic violence and tens of thousands of people who experienced various problems trying to complete their applications for coverage.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Two of the three federal judges hearing a challenge to the Affordable Care Act appeared open on Tuesday to the argument that people buying health insurance in the federal marketplace should not be eligible for tax subsidies, the first indication that the White House could be facing another potentially serious legal challenge to a central part of President Obama’s health care law.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: In an argument that touched on medical science and moral philosophy, today the Supreme Court wrestled with whether corporations may refuse to provide insurance coverage for contraception to their workers based on the religious beliefs of the corporations’ owners. The court seemed ready to accept that at least some for-profit corporations may advance claims based on religious freedom.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Middle and high school students who used electronic cigarettes were more likely to smoke real cigarettes and less likely to quit than students who did not use the devices, a new study has found. They were also more likely to smoke heavily. The study’s lead author, Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who has been critical of the devices, said the results suggested that the use of e-cigarettes was leading to less quitting, not more.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: As Americans race to sign up for health insurance in the final days of open enrollment, many consumers and consumer advocates say the names of plans are unhelpful, confusing and in some cases misleading. A number of insurers sell their plans under names like Select, Preferred, Premier, Exclusive, Enhanced, Essential, Essential Plus, Prime, Ultimate and Deluxe. Multiple offerings from one company may have the same benefits and cover the same share of a consumer’s costs, but go by different names. Buyers beware!

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Transplant leaders are debating national rules for the distribution of deceased donors' faces and hands, tackling ethically challenging questions such as which disfigured patients across the country should get priority for these surgeries as they become more common. The thorny issues are likely to include whether certain patients, such as children or the most severely maimed, should go to the top of waiting lists for donor faces and hands.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Nearly six months after the disastrous launch of Healthcare.gov, with the website running smoothly and more than five million people signed up as open enrollment heads to a close, a new glitch has come to light: Incorrect poverty-level guidelines are automatically telling what could be tens of thousands of eligible people they do not qualify for subsidized insurance. The error in the federal marketplace primarily affects households with incomes just above the poverty line in states that have not expanded Medicaid.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: The AMA and dozens of other physician groups have urged the Obama administration to spell out how and when insurers must notify physicians when their patients fall behind on premiums. If an enrollee in a subsidized plan falls behind on their premium payments, the Affordable Care Act requires insurers to cover their medical bills for 30 days. But for the next 60 days, insurers may “pend,” or hold off paying the claims -- and ultimately, deny them if the patient doesn't catch up on his premiums. That means doctors don’t get paid for their services.  If the insurer ends up canceling the policy after 90 days, doctors can bill patients directly but may face difficulty collecting.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: New information has emerged suggesting that obesity in those with ADHD is caused by the medication used to treat it. According to Reuters, scientists at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore are re-evaluating the way that doctors link obesity and ADHD. The study, conducted by Dr. Brian S. Schwartz, hopes to educate parents of children with ADHD of the possible rapid weight gain that, according to him, occurs as a direct result to stimulant treatment. Dr. Schwartz and his team's ground-breaking study not only helps to explain why obesity may occur in ADHD teenagers, but it is also the first to suggest that it is linked to the use of stimulants such as Adderall and Ritalin.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Many of us have long been told that saturated fat, the type found in meat, butter and cheese, causes heart disease. But a large and exhaustive new analysis by a team of international scientists found no evidence that eating saturated fat increased heart attacks and other cardiac events. The new research, published on Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, did not find that people who ate higher levels of saturated fat had more heart disease than those who ate less. Nor did it find less disease in those eating higher amounts of unsaturated fat, including monounsaturated fat like olive oil or polyunsaturated fat like corn oil.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: In one of those satisfying moments where science confirms common sense, a British microbiologist from Aston University in Birmingham, England, has come to the conclusion that food from the floor is okay to eat as long as you pick it up really fast. “The findings of this study will bring some light relief to those who have been employing the five-second rule for years, despite a general consensus that it is purely a myth,” says Prof. Anthony Hilton, who led the study.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: The Obama administration is requiring health plans in Obamacare insurance marketplaces to include a more robust offering of care providers in 2015 after some early backlash over limited networks in the health care law's first year. Health plans selling on the federal marketplaces in 2015 must include 30 percent of area "essential community providers."

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Wednesday that there would be no delay of Obamacare’s individual mandate, the penalty for violating it or the March 31 closing date of the enrollment period, the strongest statement yet that the administration has no plans for more major changes to the law in the final weeks of the first sign-up period.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Under pressure from patients, pharmaceutical companies and members of Congress from both parties, the Obama administration on Monday withdrew a proposal that would have allowed insurers to limit Medicare coverage for certain classes of drugs, including those used to treat depression and schizophrenia.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Open enrollment ends March 31, and President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and top administration officials all have events this week that aim to reach America's moms, who typically drive health care decisions for their families — including the young adult children who are a key demographic for the new insurance exchanges.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: The latest delay in the Affordable Care Act means people enrolled in plans that don't meet Obamacare's stricter coverage standards can keep them for another two years. It could create a two-tiered system, because states will get to decide whether to allow the delay and because people in the plans that don’t comply with Obamacare tend to be healthier, not having them in the broader insurance pool means insurers have to shell out more money, and that cost will be passed to consumers.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Gary M. Cohen, the official in charge of the federal health insurance marketplace, who repeatedly told Congress before its troubled rollout that it would work well, said on Thursday that he was resigning. Mr. Cohen is the chief architect of federal rules regulating the operations of private health insurance under the new health care law. He said he would leave his post to return to California at the end of this month, when the open enrollment period closes for individuals and families shopping for insurance.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: The investigative arm of Congress on Wednesday agreed to look into problems with state health exchange websites around the country. The U.S. Government Accountability Office accepted an initial request from a group of House Republicans seeking an audit on how $304 million in federal grants were spent on the Cover Oregon website, which has yet to enroll a single person online without special assistance.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: The Obama administration is preparing to announce that Americans who want to keep their old health plans may do so for at least one year longer than they expected, even if the policies don't comply with law, according to insurance industry officials familiar with the latest rewrite of federal health-care rules.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: The Obama administration is set to announce another major delay in implementing the Affordable Care Act, easing election pressure on Democrats. As early as this week, according to two sources, the White House will announce a new directive allowing insurers to continue offering health plans that do not meet ObamaCare’s minimum coverage requirements.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Pressure is rising on the White House as ObamaCare reaches its final month of enrollment roughly 3 million sign-ups behind its target goal. The administration hoped to enroll 7 million people in private plans during the reform's first year, but that became all but impossible after the botched launch of HealthCare.gov. Now, with 4 million people signed up as of this week, officials are counting on a final pre-deadline rush to bolster the exchanges and raise morale among vulnerable Democrats already exhausted by ObamaCare attacks.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: The Obama administration said Friday that it would allow some people to receive federal subsidies for health insurance purchased in the private market outside of health insurance exchanges. The sudden shift was the latest in a series of policy changes, extensions and clarifications by federal officials trying to help beneficiaries and minimize political damage to Democrats in this election year. Federal officials said they had agreed to provide such assistance retroactively because technical problems had prevented consumers from using online exchanges to obtain insurance and financial aid in some states.