Hardship exemptions allow some to continue to buy coverage on health law's marketplaces

Elsewhere, the San Jose Mercury News examines who can opt out of the health law's mandate to have insurance on religious grounds.

Philadelphia Inquirer: Medical-legal Alliances Help Low-income Patients
It took Sheena Sheard two hours on two buses, towing two children and a three-wheeled stroller, to get to St. Christopher's Hospital for Children. It would have been three buses but the trio legged out the final stretch to ensure Sheard could see her lawyer. That's right, her lawyer. Sheard was going to see Eileen Carroll at St. Christopher's to determine whether she qualified for a hardship exemption that would allow her to buy health insurance on the now-closed Affordable Care Act marketplace (Calandra, 7/27). 

The San Jose Mercury News: Obamacare: 'Health Care Sharing Ministries' Increase Membership In Wake Of New Law
Go to church, be faithful to your spouse and shun tobacco, booze and drugs. Promising to adhere to that "biblical lifestyle," more than 300,000 Americans are taking advantage of a little-known provision in the nation's health care law that allows them to avoid the new penalties for not having health insurance. Long before Christian groups and Obamacare opponents cheered last month's Supreme Court ruling that allows many private businesses to stop offering certain types of birth control they find immoral, the 4-year-old law gave its blessing to Americans to opt out of the insurance mandate if they object on religious grounds (Seipel, 7/26).