Bloomberg News

With Obamacare bearing down on them, a doctors’ group said emergency rooms are less able to provide quality care, and more resources will be needed to handle an expected surge of patients from the new law.

Magic Johnson, who is living proof of the value of early medical detection with health insurance, is broadcasting that message on behalf of Obamacare.

The U.S. government has awarded Accenture’s Federal Services unit a one-year contract, with an initial payment of $45 million, the Dublin-based company said in a statement Accenture will succeed Montreal-based CGI Group, which drew criticism for the website’s early stumbles.

Humana said it expects new Obamacare customers to be sicker and costlier than anticipated, after the U.S. government’s decision to let healthier people keep their existing plans.

Two of the largest U.S. health insurers are giving Obamacare customers more time to pay their initial premiums as the industry tries to coax millions of people to take the final step in cementing coverage for 2014.

More than 975,000 Americans signed up this month for health insurance under Obamacare, pushing total enrollment above 1.1 million in 36 states covered by the U.S. healthcare.gov website.

President Barack Obama said the thousands of people now signing up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act overshadow the hit he’s been taking in the polls for the defect-riddled roll-out of the Affordable Care Act.

The health care website’s improved performance has both U.S. political parties shifting strategies, with President Barack Obama’s team preparing a January advertising blitz and a wave of celebrity promotions to boost enrollment, allies said.

After struggling for two months to fix the federal online insurance exchange at the core of the law, Obama Tuesday began what aides say will be a three-week campaign to use his bully pulpit to regain momentum for his signature domestic initiative.

The move comes in response to Republican lawmakers’ criticism of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act over the healthcare.gov website troubles and the cancellation notices sent to hundreds of thousands of current policy holders as a result of the law.

President Barack Obama plans to highlight the 2010 health care law’s benefits at a White House event Tuesday that kicks off a three-week campaign to regain support for a program marred by a troubled implementation.

Expenditures in the $2.7 trillion U.S. health care system have doubled since 1980, growing to 18% of gross domestic product and leading to financial success for drugmakers, hospitals and insurers.

President Barack Obama pressed top U.S. insurers to help consumers cope with the rocky start of his health care law as the Republican-led House passed a bill that would let Americans keep their current policies through 2014.

If enrollment in the online marketplaces repeats the pattern set in the Massachusetts exchange that was the model for Obamacare, the young people vital to the plan’s financial stability are paying little attention to the federal website’s mishaps.

Statins will be recommended for almost 33 million Americans, about twice the number under previous guidelines. Heart disease is the No. 1 killer worldwide, accounting for 1 in 4 U.S. deaths.

As the president directs aides to look for solutions to the health plan cancellations, the White House’s chief technology officer will appear before Congress this week after being subpoenaed to do so.

Despite taking Healthcare.gov offline for hours a day to make technological fixes, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Wednesday the site continued to experience multiple slowdowns and displayed error messages to numerous visitors throughout the day.

The race to construct an online insurance exchange by Oct. 1 spurred the Obama administration to use an expedited bidding system that limited its choice of a builder to just four companies, including CGI Group.

A day after her deputy apologized for the failures with the Affordable Care Act insurance exchange, U.S. Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius followed suit and told Congress that she shoulders the blame for the botched rollout.

Health insurers stand to gain millions of customers in an expansion of private insurance options and the Medicaid program under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. The industry, though, has raised alarms about faulty data they’ve received from the federal exchange since it opened on Oct. 1.