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Minnesota's Democratic governor said Wednesday that the Affordable Care Act is "no longer affordable" for many, a stinging critique from a state leader who strongly embraced the law and proudly proclaimed health reform was working in Minnesota just a few years ago. (10/12)

Gov. Mark Dayton's criticism comes as his state faces massive rate hikes and shrinking competition in its Obamacare insurance marketplace next year. Dayton's comments also come almost a week after Donald Trump and Republicans seized on former president Bill Clinton's remarks lamenting Obamacare's affordability problems. (Pradhan, 10/12)

Democrats have long acknowledged that improvements need to be made to the health law, but Dayton’s remarks go farther and are more negative than usual from members of his party. Dayton added that a "deadlocked" Congress is hurting the situation by preventing improvements from being made to the law. (Sullivan, 10/12)

A coalition of more than 50 conservative groups is calling on Congress to stop “bailouts” of insurance companies under ObamaCare. The groups, in a Wednesday letter to members of Congress, are calling for the passage of two bills that would keep funds away from insurers under two ObamaCare programs that have been the target of growing Republican outrage. The conservative groups are now further pressuring Republicans.  (Sullivan, 10/12)

A top economic adviser to President Obama on Tuesday urged against repealing the so-called “Cadillac” tax on high-cost insurance plans. “Certainly, the administration feels that the excise tax remains a sensible way of sort of addressing the distortions created by the exclusion, focusing on the least efficient plans while retaining strong incentives for employers to continue to offer coverage” Matt Fiedler, the chief economist on the Council of Economic Advisers, said at a Mercatus Center event on the effects of health care costs on economic well-being. (McIntire, 10/11)

President Barack Obama is recounting progress he says Hispanics have made over the course of his presidency and that he’s optimistic about future gains despite some of the rhetoric heard during election season. Obama is speaking to hundreds of people attending a reception for Hispanic Heritage Month at the White House. He says that during his presidency 4 million Hispanics have gained health insurance coverage. (10/12)

MNsure had several key technology vulnerabilities last summer, a federal report has concluded. The report from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General found that MNsure, the state-run health insurance exchange, did have security controls and policies to protect its website and data. But those controls didn’t always align with federal and state information security guidelines, and the inspector general’s scans of MNsure’s website and databases “identified numerous weaknesses.”... MNsure has been plagued with technology issues since its launch in 2013, including a website that consumers often found difficult to access and buggy back-end systems to manage cases on public programs. Many of those problems have been fixed since 2013, but others remain in progress. (Montgomery, 10/12)