Dept. of Justice lawyers strategize on how to win key SCOTUS votes

Media outlets report on this and other health law implementation developments, including news about health exchanges and the measure's pre-existing condition insurance plan.

Politico: Who's Health Care's Key SCOTUS Vote?
Administration lawyers have peppered their briefs with citations to opinions written by Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia, they've seized on the arguments made by one of Scalia's most beloved former clerks and their allies in legal circles have talked up how a decision upholding the Affordable Care Act would play into John Roberts's legacy as chief justice (Haberkorn, 2/28).

HealthyCal: Language Will Be Barrier To Health Coverage, Study Says
More than 100,000 Californians could miss out on the benefits of federal health reform because language barriers would keep them from buying insurance in a new online health insurance exchange, according to a new study by the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, and the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education (2/29). 

The Lund Report: Tribal Concerns In Health Exchange Spotlight
Even though the financial future of the Oregon Health Insurance Exchange suffered a setback by going back to committee during this short legislative session, both tribal and exchange leaders expect nothing will change in terms of the guaranteed insurance funding and basic administrative structure. ... [Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board] will be looking into ways that the exchange could permit tribes, tribal organizations and urban Indian organizations to pay premiums on federally-certified health (Rendleman, 2/28). 

Georgia Health News: Plan Covering Pre-Existing Conditions Not A Perfect Remedy
After Joe Sellers was diagnosed with leukemia, he was able to get decent health insurance for his wife and children, but not for himself. Joe Sellers sees himself as a square peg fitting into a round hole of health insurance. ... he looked into the government's Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, designed for people, like himself, with health problems. But Sellers had insurance -; albeit threadbare –- and thus did not qualify (Miller, 2/28).