Plan to streamline health law re-enrollment

New health secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell says she wants to make it easy for the 8 million Americans signed up under the health care law to renew their insurance next year.

The Health and Human Services Department outlined a plan Thursday that allows people to automatically keep their current insurance, if it's available.

And for most consumers, the government will re-estimate the amount of subsidies that reduce their premiums. That's if they checked a box on their original application allowing HealthCare.gov to access their latest tax data.

Making it easier to re-enroll would cut the workload for the federal insurance website, making it less likely to crash again.

But premiums are also changing, and an independent market analysis firm says most consumers should shop around to get the best deals.

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