Â鶹ŮÓÅ

The White House has launched a bid to preserve a tax on generous, employer-sponsored insurance plans that underpins President Obama’s health care law, trying to stem a political tide after Hillary Clinton broke with Obama and called for its repeal. Targeting the unpopular “Cadillac tax,’’ which begins in 2018, Clinton says consumers and their employers should not be saddled with new costs to achieve reductions in medical spending. But many health care economists contend generous insurance plans lead to wasteful, unnecessary care. (Jan, 10/21)

From Oregon to New York, health insurance co-ops, which were designed to compete against the major insurers, are closing as fast as flop houses in a gentrifying neighborhood. Harvard’s Katherine Swartz said too many of the 23 co-ops lack deep pockets to sustain multi-year losses, and sophisticated software that makes enrolling consumers easy. But the third challenge may be the toughest problem to solve. (Gorenstein, 10/20)

Just two companies in South Dakota will offer individual health care policies on the federal exchange in 2016. DakotaCare offered about 7,000 individual health care policies this year on the federal health care exchange set up by the Affordable Care Act, but it won't offer the policies next year because the company can't afford them, DakotaCare CEO Kirk Zimmer said. "It's not sustainable to a point that we wouldn't want to endanger other policies," Zimmer said. (Ferguson, 10/20)