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On October 15, the Obama administration significantly downgraded its estimate of how many people will enroll in exchange plans next year. The administration now expects only 10 million exchange enrollees at the end of 2016. Charles Gaba, a statistical expert who closely tracks Affordable Care Act (ACA) enrollment and who made fairly accurate projections for 2014 and 2015, is somewhat more optimistic. He projects enrollment at 12.2 million people by the end of next year.

A year before they will go to the polls to elect a new president, a strong majority of Americans say that President Barack Obama’s health-care reform law will play an important role in how they select his successor.

With the Affordable Care Act’s third open enrollment period to begin in less than two weeks, federal officials are racing to fix new features of HealthCare.gov that are supposed to make it easy for consumers to find insurance plans that cover their doctors and prescription drugs.

A school district in Tennessee is shutting classroom doors because of the added costs of Obamacare. Jerry Strong, the Clay County Director of Schools, told the Associated Press, “the Affordable Care Act… has made it very difficult for us to have our employees properly covered and meet the mandates of the law.” The school district was already struggling with their budget, “struggling with budget concerns for three years.”

Among many other changes to the health care system, the ACA created an expansion of Medicaid – made optional by the Supreme Court in 2012 – funded largely by federal dollars. Thus far, 30 states and the District of Columbia have accepted the Medicaid expansion. And as should be expected, states that expanded the program have seen spending grow much faster than those that didn’t. In a recent report, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that total Medicaid spending grew nearly 18 percent in expansion states, though the state share of growth was relatively low (less than 4 percent). And while health care has remained relatively quiet as a campaign issue, Governors Kasich and Christie – both Republican presidential hopefuls – expanded Medicaid (and both have defended this expansion) in their respective states.

In a significant win for House Speaker John Boehner and congressional Republicans, a federal judge Monday denied a request by the Obama administration to immediately appeal whether the House of Representatives has the legal right to challenge a provision of the Affordable Care Act.

U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled last month that one part of the challenge could go forward because the House had shown it had the standing necessary to bring the case. Lawyers for the Obama administration — concerned by what they called an unprecedented ruling on the threshold issue of standing — sought to appeal Collyer’s ruling before her court heard arguments on the underlying merits of the case.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush released his 2016 health plan on Tuesday, including a 10-page background paper that fleshed out a shorter summary outline. The good news is that it’s more serious and detailed than the handful of plans offered by his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. The better news is that it tries to suggest several steps beyond the standard “repeal and replace” orthodoxy regarding Obamacare.

The math is harsh: The federal penalty for having no health insurance is set to jump to $695, and the Obama administration is being urged to highlight that cold fact in its new pitch for health law sign-ups.

That means the 2016 sign-up season starting Nov. 1 could see penalties become a bigger focus for millions of people who have remained eligible for coverage, but uninsured. They’re said to be squeezed for money, and skeptical about spending what they have on health insurance.

Just about every presidential campaign’s policy plans leave a lot of blanks and rhetorical placeholders, to be filled in later. They also straddle conflicting pressure points and dodge inevitable tradeoffs. The preference is to point in a general, and seemingly more popular, direction, without offering too many instructions for how to traverse the complicated path from here to there. On top of that, the limited attention spans of most voters, let alone candidates, cannot be taxed too much (unlike their incomes).

No good deeds go unpunished in national politics, so let’s look a little closer under the hood of the Jeb Bush health plan unveiled earlier this week.

Attracting the most rubbernecking attention is the former Florida governor’s endorsement of a cap on the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance, as an alternative to Obamacare’s Cadillac tax on high-cost employer plans.