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The disintegration of the latest Obamacare repeal bid in the House has thrown the health law’s fate back to a divided circle of White House advisers wrestling with whether to pay out key subsidies — or cut them off and blow up the health law. The aides have limited time to figure things out; health plans must decide in June whether to stay in Obamacare insurance markets next year or pull out. (Dawsey, Kenen and Haberkorn, 4/5)

Each year since the launch of HealthCare.gov, insurance broker Craig Paulson faces a difficult question: Should he continue to sell individual market plans even though insurance companies increasingly refuse to pay commissions? If his Utah-based insurance brokerage firm, Altura Benefits, stops selling exchange plans, consumers may be left with lower quality coverage or none at all. In the past year, Aetna announced it would stop paying any commissions on the individual market in Utah. Molina Healthcare later announced that it wouldn't pay for commissions on special enrollment plans. (Dickson, 4/5)

Like many residents of the Athens area, both women have gotten advice from Harold Weber, a health care navigator at the Athens Neighborhood Health Center, a safety net clinic supported partly by a federal grant... For many of Weber’s clients, health insurance is a novelty and not a given. The reality that government action could end the coverage they have now is taken as a fact of life. (Lichtenwalter, 4/5)