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The Internal Revenue Service is ramping up to figure out who has health insurance and who doesn’t under Obamacare — but for now it is giving people the benefit of the doubt. For the first time, come January, people will have to indicate on their 2014 tax forms whether they have health coverage. The IRS will have to figure out who is covered and who is fibbing to avoid the Affordable Care Act’s penalty for not holding insurance. (Dixon, 12/2)

Health insurance giants are eating up a bigger slice of the marketplace in most states, despite intense efforts under ObamaCare to increase competition. The three largest insurance companies held an average of 86 percent of customers in the individual market last year, up from 83 percent in 2010, when the healthcare reform act was passed, according to a Monday report from the Government Accountability Office. The biggest companies held at least 95 percent of all customers in nearly a dozen states, including Alabama, Iowa, Kentucky and New Jersey. (Ferris, 12/1)

Such atypical approaches to selling health insurance policies are playing out across the country since the second round of enrollment under the federal Affordable Care Act opened in mid-November. Insurance companies and some states are focusing heavily on signing up eligible Hispanics, a group that accounts for a large share of the nation’s uninsured but largely avoided applying for coverage during the first full year the health care reform law was in effect. Hispanics accounted for just 11 percent of those who enrolled in the private policies sold during the initial sign-up period, which ended in March. (Dalesio, 12/1)

For Martha Gruberman, a 63-year-old resident of south suburban Steger, obtaining health insurance through the Affordable Care Act hasn't made it any easier to pay for routine medical care. ... Gruberman and others who picked plans with the lowest monthly costs have found that medical care is still out of reach because of the plans' high deductibles. As a result, many consumers with high-deductible plans are following old habits: delaying care or taking their needs to community health centers that have traditionally served the uninsured, local health administrators said. (Venteicher, 12/1)

The Affordable Care Act is expected to provide around $10 billion in subsidies this year to make health insurance affordable for low- and middle-income people. But a quirk in the law is denying subsidies to a significant number of low income people, especially those with families. Benfield has run up against this quirk. To cover only himself, Benfield would have to pay a little more than $2,200 a year. He says he can't afford that, but that's an affordable amount, according to Obamacare regulations, and that means Benfield could not get subsidies if he tried to get coverage on the Obamacare exchange. (Ydstie, 12/2)

Exactly what would happen to the Affordable Care Act if the Supreme Court invalidates tax credits in the three dozen states where the federal government runs the program? Legal scholars say a decision like that would deal a potentially lethal blow to the law because it would undermine the government-run insurance marketplaces that are its backbone, as well as the mandate requiring most Americans to carry coverage. (Rovner, 12/2)