Beyond the health law enrollment numbers, state-by-state disparities, penalties draw headlines

The Wall Street Journal reports that federal officials have sent a "nudging" email to consumers who haven't picked a plan yet. And the New York Times examines how the push to expand health coverage has taken the shape of a number of very different and uneven individual efforts instead of "a sweeping federal overhaul." Meanwhile, NPR notes that the state specific figures may turn out to be more important than the national sign up total.    

The Wall Street Journal: Talk Turns To Penalties As Obamacare Deadline Nears
The agency in charge of the health-law enrollment effort has learned to love the individual mandate as a way of getting consumers to sign up for health insurance. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service (CMS) sent a nudging email Wednesday to users of HealthCare.gov who have applied for coverage but haven't yet picked a plan. The message: Hurry up (Radnofsky, 3/27).

The New York Times: Deadline Near, Health Signups Show Disparity
The disparities reveal a stark truth about the Affordable Care Act: With the first open enrollment period set to end Monday, six months after its troubled online exchanges opened for business, the program widely known as Obamacare looks less like a sweeping federal overhaul than a collection of individual ventures playing out unevenly, state to state, in the laboratories of democracy (Stolberg and Pear, 3/27).

Marketplace: Latinos Still Reluctant To Sign Up For Obamacare
Visits to healthcare.gov are surging in these last days before the Affordable Care Act enrollment deadline. But government officials are worried that they aren't getting enough of the right people to sign up. Latinos in particular are sorely needed to balance insurance pools. They tend to be younger and healthier than the general population. But states with the largest concentration of Latinos -- like California -- have been struggling to win them over. "The news gives a lot of information, [but] it confuses people. They don't know what is the truth," says Larissa Bobadilla, a health outreach worker in Los Angeles. Many Latinos are afraid that if they sign up for health insurance, their undocumented family members will get discovered, and deported. Others aren't convinced it's worth the money (Dembosky, 3/27).

NPR: Obamacare's National Enrollment Looks OK, But States Matter More
With this year's deadline to register for individual health insurance just a weekend away, much attention is being lavished on two numbers -; the 6 million Americans who have signed up so far, and the percentage of those folks who are (or aren't) young. But experts say the national numbers actually don't mean very much (Rovner, 3/28).

St. Louis Post Dispatch: Insurance Deadline Extension Brings Relief, Frustration
For months, the Obama administration insisted the final deadline for individuals to sign up for insurance on the health exchanges wouldn't be extended. Well, they went back on that vow -; at least somewhat (Kulash, 3/27).