In This Issue

On Saturday, HealthCare.gov, the federal government's online health-insurance marketplace, opened for business. Whether you are shopping for health insurance for the first time, renewing your policy or changing you plan, you can sign up for 2015 health insurance plans by using HealthCare.gov, the national call center (1-800-318-2596), or by seeking in-person assistance. HealthCare.gov allows you to find and compare options, see if you qualify for a lower cost plan, and select the health insurance policy that best meets your needs and budget. I have been on the website; it works well and the experience is easier and more streamlined, and more plans are available last year.

Importantly, if you want your health insurance to begin on January 1, you only have 27 days left to shop. Although you have until February 15 to purchase a policy, if you want to be covered on January 1, 2015, you must sign up by December 15, 2014.

As the population of PLWHA ages 50 and older, as I am, grows larger and older, new concerns rise about our care and treatment, the services we need and ways to keep other chronic conditions at bay. Candace Y. A. Montague provides us an update.

Recently the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case challenging the federal government's right to provide subsidies in the roughly 36 states where it operates health insurance online marketplaces, or exchanges. Our friends at Kaiser Health News tell us what we need to know about this puzzling and disturbing turn of events.

New research shows that in one Los Angeles clinic, using illegal drugs, like meth, and having gonorrhea predicted the likelihood that a person will request post-exposure prophylaxis, or PEP, far better than a person's race did.

Finally, as we near the end of the year, some low-income people who just barely qualified for subsidies on the 2014 health insurance marketplace are starting to worry: What if my income for the year ends up below the poverty level? Will I have to pay back the premium tax credits I received? Kaiser Health News reports.

Yours in the struggle,

Phill