When Daniel Poston, a second-year medical student in Manhattan, opened the App Store on his iPhone a couple of weeks ago, he was astonished to see an app for a new heart study prominently featured. People often learn about new research studies through in-person conversations with their doctors. But not only did this study, run by Stanford University, use a smartphone to recruit consumers, it was financed by Apple. And it involved using an app on the Apple Watch to try to identify irregular heart rhythms.

More than 8.7 million people signed up for coverage next year under the Obama-era health care law, the government reported Thursday, as the program that President Donald Trump has repeatedly pronounced "a disaster" exceeded expectations.

Medicaid could face crucial tests in 2018 at both the federal and state levels. Republicans in Congress failed in their attempts earlier this year to impose drastic cuts to the program as part of ObamaCare repeal, but GOP lawmakers could try again next year.

Republicans didn’t get their wish to repeal former President Barack Obama’s health care law, but the tax bill barreling toward a final vote in Congress guts its most unpopular provision, the requirement that virtually all Americans carry health insurance.

The expected repeal of the ObamaCare mandate to buy health insurance means that states will soon have to step in and decide whether to create their own mandates. 

Congressional Republicans appear to be moving full speed ahead in repealing the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, prompting debate among California health care experts on how the state could continue encouraging residents to buy health insurance — including imposing a state-level requirement to purchase coverage.