We're probably in for a second straight year of declining enrollment through HealthCare.gov. The pace of sign-ups this year continues to lag noticeably behind last year's, and last year marked a modest decline from the year before that.
By the numbers: Just shy of 3.2 million people have picked plans through the federally run exchanges so far. That's about 12% lower than the 3.6 million who had signed up at the same time last year.
Public health officials have the tools to fight the deadly Ebola outbreak that continues to rampage through the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Health workers are tracking down contacts, implementing vaccination and quarantine regimes, educating the community, treating patients, and watching for new signs of infection. But the fight's not going well.
The problem: A "perfect storm" of deadly disease combined with civil unrest, violence against health care workers, other diseases like malaria, and cultural norms that encourage the use of local clinics and traditional funeral practices, have led this to become the world's second-worst Ebola outbreak on record, according to World Health Organization spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic. It will take dogged persistence to contain this one, he said.
