Viewpoints: Health law foes wage battle to keep young adults from coverage; Sen. Rubio: Website's snags could open the door to con artists

The New York Times: No Health Insurance? Just Drink.
This is the strangest P.R. campaign yet against the Affordable Care Act. Generation Opportunity, the Koch-funded group behind the Creepy Uncle Sam ads, is throwing tailgate parties to "educate" young people about the exchanges. Read: To convince young people to forgo health insurance (Juliet Lapidos, 11/11). 

Los Angeles Times: Did Obama Lie About Healthcare Reform Or Just Omit A Crucial Detail?
President Obama apologized last week to people whose health insurance was canceled despite his repeated assurances that if you like your policy, it won't change. The charitable way of putting it is that Obama oversold details of the healthcare-reform law in his speeches. His critics say he flat-out lied (David Lazarus, 11/11). 

The Washington Post: Obama's Non-Apology
There is nothing to focus the presidential mind like finding out that your Gallup approval rating has dropped below George W. Bush's in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. So little wonder that after spending weeks denying he had promised Americans they could keep their health plans, President Obama finally said the words "I'm sorry." But let's be clear: He didn't really apologize (Marc A. Thiessen, 11/11).

Miami Herald: Protect Americans From Obamacare Con Artists
As Obamacare's website failures push more people toward non-web enrollment options, the same kind of con artists who have been defrauding Medicare, Medicaid and immigrants will be inclined to do the same through Obamacare's navigator network. And as time goes on, we will inevitably see more cases of people fraudulently posing as navigators, collecting personal information and then exploiting innocent victims. And while some states like Florida have taken proactive steps to raise standards for aspiring navigators and toughen consumer protection safeguards, many states have not. This is a recipe for people falling prey to fraud, identity theft or gross incompetence by those operating as Obamacare navigators (Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., 11/11).

The Wall Street Journal: Despite A Botched Rollout, The Health-Care Law Is Worth It
The botched rollout of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly called the ACA or "Obamacare") has been an unmitigated disaster. Choose your favorite adjective: horrible, embarrassing, inexcusable. They all fit. But a badly designed website doesn't signify a badly designed policy. The goals, principles and major design features of the ACA are barely affected by the government's health-exchange website catastrophe. If you liked the basic ideas before, you still should. If you didn't, you still shouldn't (Alan S. Blinder, 11/11). 

Philadelphia Inquirer: Obamacare's Unspoken Intentions Likely To Bring Host Of Unfavorable Results
We are one month into the official roll out of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  It is quickly becoming clear that the ACA has explicit policies, and the Obama Administration has unspoken intentions that will produce unforeseen consequences for our healthcare system and could have broad societal implications (Howard J. Peterson, 11/11).

Bloomberg: Hope Is All Obamacare Has Left
Just how bad could this get? Well, here's one scenario, maybe not the most likely, but possible: The exchanges aren't ready by Dec. 1. In fact, they continue to experience problems in January and February. The administration's poll numbers continue to plummet, and the reputation of the exchanges is such that come spring, young people don't bother to sign up -- or are afraid to hand over their personal data to such a buggy system. The insurance pool is much smaller, older and sicker than expected, which is to say, much more expensive than expected (Megan McArdle, 11/11).

USA Today: Medicaid's Awful Results
As the Obamacare debacle rolls on -- looking even worse than it did a week ago, if that's possible -- there's a separate but related issue involving Medicaid expansion. ... Insurance programs, whether Obamacare or Medicaid, only provide coverage. It's doctors who provide care. But because government insurance programs -- even money-sucking ones like Medicaid, which costs $450 billion a year -- can't pay doctors enough and smother them with paperwork, doctors are hard to find. Without doctors, coverage doesn't mean much (Glenn Harlan Reynolds, 11/11).

The Star Tribune: Reaching Out To Sell Health Care To Somalis
The Friday afternoon call to prayer echoed through the cavernous Somali Mall 24, sending scores of men, and a few women, up the stairs to worship. Others shopped for clothes or jewelry, and a warren of small, dark cafes was filled with men drinking super sweet Somali tea and watching international news on flat-screen televisions. Lucky Ahmed stood at a small table a few feet away from piles of colorful carpets, selling something else that drew the curious. Health care. Ahmed was handing out brochures and answering questions about MNsure, the state's health care marketplace answer to the Affordable Care Act (Jon Tevlin, 11/11).

The Richmond Times-Dispatch: Obamacare Ends The Doctor-Patient Relationship
It was this relationship between doctor and patient, a basic human bond, that became my own calling. As a result of Obamacare, this relationship is now in danger of becoming a distant memory. Forget about the recent website debacle and the accusations of who in the White House knew what and when; the real problem with Obamacare will be the destruction of this most sacred bond where a doctor and a patient come together to overcome illness and suffering, together (Dr. Travis Shaw, 11/12).

The San Francisco Chronicle: Yes, Health Coverage Costs Less In L.A.
Covered California divided the state into 19 regions. The price in each region mainly reflects the cost of providing health care in that area. Prices are higher in Northern than Southern California "because the provider networks in Northern California are larger, so there is less competition," says Nate Purpura, director of communications with Ehealthinsurance.com. This was true before Covered California and the Affordable Health Care Act came along (Kathleen Pender, 11/11).

Medpage Today: Patient Engagement: Is It Us Or Is It Them?
Much is being made of the Meaningful Use requirement to use secure online messaging to communicate with patients about relevant health information. The new Stage 2 measure requires that more than 5 percent of unique patients seen by the eligible professional during the reporting period were sent a secure message using the electronic messaging function of Certified EHR Technology. But to meet that goal, we have to get our patient population engaged and using our patient portal. Worries about that very thing abound in medical practices of all specialties across all communities (Rosemarie Nelson, 11/11).