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Finance chiefs grappling with rising health-care costs face a new dilemma: how to avoid paying hefty taxes on generous employee health-care plans. The Affordable Care Act calls for an excise tax on high-cost health plans, starting in 2018. The tax is meant to help fund insurance for previously uncovered Americans through the new health law. The levy, often called the “Cadillac tax,” is 40% a year on the amount by which employer-sponsored plans exceed government-set thresholds. (Johnson and Murphy, 5/25)

In perhaps one of the most telltale signs that Republicans are starting to accept that Obamacare isn’t going away anytime soon, GOP lawmakers are rolling out legislation that would create a new independent agency to keep tabs on how the law is administered. (Ehley, 5/22)

An Arkansas congressman has set his sights on the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion to shore up an insolvent federal Highway Trust Fund that has required nearly 30 short-term extensions since 2009. U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Hot Springs, filed his Prioritizing American Roads and Jobs Act of 2015 on Thursday as a long-term solution to help fund a nearly $16 billion annual shortfall with the Highway Trust Fund and pay down some of the national debt. (Lovett, 5/22)

When Ilana Valinsky got her 2015 calendar, she flipped to May and circled the 18th, the day she would receive her master's degree in social work from the University of Pennsylvania. Valinsky's focus shifts this week to finding a job and health insurance. Covered by a school plan through July 31, Valinsky doesn't want to risk being uninsured for a day. And for good reason: seven years ago, her mother died from breast cancer. (Calandra, 5/24)

Government regulators are backing down from many of their toughest requirements for doctors' and hospitals' use of digital medical records, just as Congress is stepping up its oversight of issues with the costly technology. Under Obamacare, doctors and hospitals are being pushed to switch from paper to electronic records or be penalized. ... Now the Department of Health and Human Services is proposing a series of revisions to its rules that would give doctors, hospitals and tech companies more time to meet electronic record requirements and would address a variety of other complaints from health care professionals. (O'Donnell and Ungar, 5/25)

Regina Holliday was a toy store clerk and preschool art teacher when her husband died of kidney cancer in 2009. Despite her grief and background, Holliday has emerged as a colorful patient advocate with a command of electronic health record rules to rival any button-downed lobbyist. The color comes in the form of more than 330 pictures she's painted on jackets to tell the stories of patients, doctors and others involved in health care. Those who get the free paintings agree to wear them to at least two medical conferences a year, which creates a "Walking Gallery of Healthcare" that 43 other artists have joined. (O'Donnell, 5/25)