In case you missed it: potential Mass. penalty, health care choices, fear, swine flu, records dispute, CeltiCare delay, HIV ban, John O'Quinn

In the Sunday Globe:

Massachusetts’ landmark 2006 health care overhaul law provided the model for the national legislation now under construction in Congress. Now state officials are working to make sure the federal proposals don’t undermine the state’s pioneering system - and that Massachusetts isn’t penalized financially for being first.

"Advocates of a public option may find it tactically expedient to paint insurers as insatiable predators, swollen with ill-gotten profits," columnist Jeff Jacoby writes on the opinion page. "The reality is otherwise."

It’s open enrollment season for many employer-sponsored health plans. And with some businesses asking workers to pick up more of the growing health cost burden, this is no time to sit on the sidelines.

In the Saturday Globe:

Getting spooked at a haunted house is, on the surface, nothing like the actual danger of being chased by a tiger, or the terrors soldiers encounter in war and are often haunted by long afterward. But scientists say that fear - whether for survival or for entertainment - starts with the same basic brain circuit.

Massachusetts patients stricken with the chills, coughs, and fever that are the calling card of influenza are streaming into physician offices at a higher rate than at any time during the past two flu seasons, state disease trackers reported yesterday.

First came the voicemail reminiscent of Tony Soprano. Then, plans by two popular primary care doctors to leave Caritas Christi Health Care for Mount Auburn Hospital led to a dispute over who keeps their patients’ medical records that landed in court.

Massachusetts health officials are prohibiting CeltiCare Health Plan of Massachusetts from offering coverage to the general public under the state’s landmark universal health law because it does not yet have enough medical providers in its network.

President Obama said yesterday that the United States will overturn a 22-year-old travel and immigration ban against people with HIV early next year.

Flamboyant lawyer John O’Quinn, who won billions in verdicts against makers of breast implants, pharmaceuticals, and tobacco products, died Thursday in a traffic wreck. He was 68.