The IRS is plowing ahead with controversial plans to use its files to try to prod more people to sign up for Obamacare — but the tax agency has promised Congress it won’t break any privacy laws.

If President-elect Donald J. Trump wanted a cabinet secretary who could help him dismantle and replace President Obama’s health care law, he could not have found anyone more prepared than Representative Tom Price, who has been studying how to accomplish that goal for more than six years.

California grabbed the first opportunity to expand Medicaid and ran with it, helping cut the number of uninsured people in half in a few short years.

Steven Lopez has gone without health insurance for 15 years, and the Affordable Care Act hasn’t changed his mind. Once again this year he will forgo coverage, he said, even though it means another tax penalty.

The trial starts Monday in the Justice Department’s challenge to health insurer Anthem Inc.’s $48 billion acquisition of reluctant partner Cigna Corp., a case that could produce unusual courtroom drama and be a last hurrah for President Barack Obama’s antitrust enforcers.

The chief executive of Blue Shield of California, the largest insurer on the state-run marketplace, says he’s committed to selling coverage there even as Republicans pursue a repeal of the federal health law.