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Saturday is the day the Obama administration promised it would have HealthCare.gov working smoothly for the majority of people who need to sign up for health insurance.

As the Obama administration scrambles to fix the glitch-plagued site, experts are beginning to worry about another problem that may further impair the rollout of the Affordable Care Act.

Health insurance companies say they're seeing numerous errors in a form that plays a vital part in the enrollment process. The problems are manageable so far, but many worry about what will happen if enrollment surges in the weeks to come.

The 834

It's safe to say that the vast majority of consumers have never heard of an 834 EDI transmission form, despite its crucial role in the process of signing up for health insurance. It's a kind of digital resume that tells an insurance company's computer everything it needs to know about an applicant, explains Bob Laszewski, a health policy consultant.

"It contains all of the person's enrollment information, all the information that [an] insurance company needs to get this person entered as a policy holder," Laszewski says.

The 834 has been around for a long time. The architects of the Affordable Care Act intended for it to play a central role in the sign-up process, says Tim Jost, a professor of law at Washington and Lee University.

"The 834 information is information the insurers have to have to get people enrolled in coverage, which of course is the point of going through the marketplace," Jost says.

Multiple Mistakes Make Insurers' Jobs Harder

But health insurance companies say the 834s they are receiving from applicants on the federal and state exchanges have sometimes been riddled with errors, Laszewski says.

"Duplicate enrollments, people enrolling and unenrolling, inaccurate data about who's a child and who's a spouse, files just not being readable," he says.

Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield of West Virginia has been steadily processing new customers ever since the launch of Obamacare this fall. But Highmark President Fred Earley says mistakes in the 834s are making the job harder.

"We've had some situations where the records don't track, or we've seen duplicates," Earley says. "We've had situations where we'll get a record to show that someone cancelled coverage, when we've never had a record to show they enrolled in the first place."

Earley says his firm has been dealing with the problems by calling up state and federal officials and correcting the mistakes. The exact cause of the problems is unclear. The Obama administration has been slowly making fixes and officials say they're making progress, but Laszewski says the fixes are not fast enough.

"The error rates have been falling," he says. "HealthCare.gov has been making progress, but we're not to the point yet where people can trust that high-volume enrollment can occur and we won't have serious customer service problems."

Laszewski says the test will come over the next few weeks. People who want coverage to begin on Jan. 1 have until just before Christmas to sign up, and there's likely to be a surge of new applicants in the weeks to come.

"What happens if we start getting hundreds of thousands or millions of people signing up by the December 23rd deadline, and the insurance industry is receiving hundreds or thousands of these a day?" he says. "That's what everyone's worried about."

The editors offer endless avenues of interpretation; the typed transcriptions of Dickinson's handwriting are superimposed atop the outlines of their corresponding envelopes, so the multidirectional layout of the text isn't lost. A series of esoteric indexes — by shape of the envelopes, by what direction they are turned, by whether or not they have "penciled divisions," for example — encourage the reader to speculate about the various relationships Dickinson may have conceived between paper and words.

It's a good season to chase after the ever-elusive Emily Dickinson. In addition to this book, there's a corresponding exhibit in Chicago, and all of the poet's online archives were recently organized into one accessible hub. This book is a rare gift for all poetry lovers. We are lucky to have more of Dickinson's ongoing "letter to the World / That never wrote to Me," an endlessly fascinating correspondence, addressed to any of us who find it — so long as we're willing to answer it with concentration and curiosity.

An invention to help with obstructed labor has turned some heads — and not just because the idea came from a party trick on YouTube.

The Odon Device, created by Argentine car mechanic Jorge Odon, guides a folded plastic sleeve around the baby's head. A little bit of air is then pumped between the two plastic layers, cushioning the baby's head and allowing it to be sucked out. This trick for removing a cork from an empty wine bottle works the same way.

The device has been embraced by the World Health Organization and is being developed by the global medical technology company BD. Once clinical trials are done, the WHO and individual countries will have to approve it before it's sold. BD hasn't said how much it will charge, but each one is expected to cost less than $50 to make.

A Curious Dilemma

Hominin brains have gotten bigger and female pelvises have narrowed since the advent of walking on two feet. This unfortunate geometric problem, termed the "obstetric dilemma," means that over time it has become harder for babies to fit through where they're supposed to come out. The cause is still under debate.

Many Chinese are pleased with the recent announcement that their government will further loosen the country's one-child policy. Some couples there are already allowed to have two children, while others say that even if they are permitted to have another kid, they can't afford it.

A young, professional couple surnamed Gao and Deng went to a government office in Shanghai earlier this month to apply for a marriage license.

Waiting on a metal bench, Gao, the 30-year-old groom-to-be, said he was glad more couples will be able to have a second child.

"I think for people like us who were born after 1980s, this is a very good policy change," Gao said. "Now, if families are financially capable and conditions allow, they should totally have two children."

Deng, the bride-to-be, who wore a long pink dress, said the couple hopes to have two children.

"They can help each other and grow up together," she said. "When we get older, they can take care of each other."

In fact, Deng and Gao are already permitted to have two children.

A Steady Policy Evolution

More than a decade ago, the government began allowing couples to have two kids if both parents were only-children. It's a reminder that China has been easing its one-child policy over the years.

Officials took a further step in that direction this month, announcing that if just one parent is an only child, a couple can have a second child as well.

That's an incremental change, but many see it as progress after years of lobbying.

Wang Feng, a leading demographer in China and a sociologist at the University of California, Irvine, has spent more than a decade urging Chinese officials to change the one-child policy. Until relatively recently, he said, the topic was too sensitive for public discussion.

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