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The last major Republican stronghold in California is one of the nation’s most dependent areas on Obamacare, creating an enormous political risk for the GOP congressmen who represent the area and are eager to repeal the health care law. They represent the inland expanse from the Mojave desert through the Central Valley, an area emerging as an important flashpoint in the battle over Obamacare. The tension is so heightened that a conservative group tied to Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan is employing Spanish-language ads to build local support for replacing the health care law. (Cockerham, 2/2)

[John] Southwell is one of thousands of Southeast Texans who bought health insurance from a federal marketplace after the 2010 law was passed. He could be affected if President Donald Trump and a majority Republican Congress repeal the law, as they have promised. The president signed an executive order on Jan. 20 to "seek the prompt repeal" of ACA, also known as Obamacare. (Teitz and Krebs, 2/2)

The event, entitled “For a Time Such as This,” was put on at Bethel AME Church by the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, and drew several city councilors and top state leaders, including Senate President Stanley Rosenberg. Nearly 900 people filled the church pews, and sat in adjacent rooms, to call on leaders to embrace criminal justice reform, create affordable housing, and more urgently, save the Affordable Care Act. (Geanous, 2/3)

Gov. Eric Greitens on Thursday blamed Obamacare for helping create the state’s “broken” budget. It was at least the third time since taking office on Jan. 9 that Greitens has publicly blamed former President Barack Obama’s health reform law without explaining how it contributed to the state’s fiscal woes. Greitens unveiled his budget proposal Thursday. On Thursday in Nixa, the new governor quantified the financial burden, asserting the state is “required by Obamacare” to spend an additional $350 million on health care. After the governor’s address, in an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other media outlets, Dan Haug, Missouri’s acting budget director, attributed the higher costs to pharmaceutical spending within the Medicaid program. (Liss, 2/2)

Gov. Eric Greitens laid out his plan for the state’s $27.6 billion budget on Thursday, including an end to in-home care and nursing home services for more than 20,000 people with disabilities. Greitens, a first-term Republican, outlined his budget plan in a speech at a preschool near Springfield. He placed the blame for Missouri’s budget woes on “politicians, lobbyists and Obamacare” — a familiar theme from his 2016 campaign — and vowed to make the “difficult choices.” (Hancock and Pecorin, 2/2)

As Congress takes aim at the federal health law, some Connecticut legislators are raising questions about another aspect of Obamacare – how the state’s health insurance marketplace gets its money. Access Health CT is a quasi-public agency, funded through an assessment charged to insurance companies for each plan sold to individuals or small groups, whether the plans were purchased through the exchange or not. (Levin Becker, 2/3)