Obamacare — as the Affordable Care Act is commonly known — won't be on the ballot next month. But the fate of the eight-year old health care law could be decided by which party wins control of Congress in November. "Medicare for All" — the progressive alternative to Obamacare — also stands to gain or lose ground. And the Trump administration will be looking for a green light to keep making health care changes of its own. (Scott Horsley, WBUR Radio)

Republican lawmakers and candidates across the country are suddenly telling voters they’ll protect preexisting conditions rules, brushing aside the fact that many voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act dozens of times and that GOP leaders pledge to resume that fight in 2019. The shift reflects the growing popularity of Obamacare and Democrats’ success in using the issue to make a compelling closing argument in the midterm races. (Jennifer Haberkorn, LA Times)

For the upscale urban audience at a campaign town hall here, it would have been enough for Stacey Abrams to pitch Medicaid expansion as a moral issue — the health-care-as-human-right argument that appeals to progressives everywhere. (Abby Goodnough, New York Times)

A government computer system that interacts with HealthCare.gov was hacked earlier this month, compromising the sensitive personal data of some 75,000 people, officials said Friday. (Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Associated Press)

More than 4,100 Medicaid expansion enrollees in Arkansas will lose coverage for the rest of 2018 because they did not comply with the state's work requirement policy, state officials announced Monday. That's on top of the 4,353 people who were dropped from Medicaid rolls last month. In all, 76,200 Arkansans ages 30 to 49 were subject to the requirement and must spend 80 hours per month working, volunteering, going to school, or receiving job training. (Harris Meyer, Modern Healthcare)

President Donald Trump has tapped a Maine official who battled Medicaid expansion for a position that puts her in charge of the national program, the federal agency confirmed Monday. Mary Mayhew’s role of deputy administrator and director of the U.S. Center for Medicaid and the CHIP Services will place her in charge of the federal health care program for low-income people. She served as commissioner of Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services for seven years, and during that time, pressed for welfare reform under LePage. (Patrick Whittle, Associated Press)

The whole point of health insurance is protection from financial ruin in case of catastrophic, costly health problems. But a recent survey of people facing such problems shows that it often fails in that basic function. The New York Times, the Commonwealth Fund and the Harvard  T.H. Chan School of Public Health used the survey to examine the sliver of the American population who use the health care system the most. (Margo Sanger-Katz, New York Times)

When you’re sick, the health care system can be scary and confusing. But in a recent survey, seriously ill Americans shared some hard-won wisdom. (Margo Sanger-Katz,  New York Times)

Before the midterm elections heated up, dozens of drugmakers had already poured about $12 million into the war chests of hundreds of members of Congress. Since the beginning of last year, 34 lawmakers have each received more than $100,000 from pharmaceutical companies. Two of those — Reps. Greg Walden of Oregon, a key Republican committee chairman, and Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican majority leader — each received more than $200,000, a new Kaiser Health News database shows. (Emmarie Huetteman and Sydney Lupkin, Kaiser Health News)