Rachel made the comic strip 'Dustin' this am. :-) http://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/dustin/

As with most reforms, there are easy parts and hard parts. The easy ones are usually popular and cheap - the hard ones are often essential but also cost more.

I read this statement by UnitedHealthcare as being willing to do just the easy parts.

(Something is better than nothing?)

So UnitedHealthcare will voluntarily:

• provide customers preventive health-care services without co-payments or other out-of-pocket charges
• allow parents to keep adult children up to age 26 on their plans
• maintain the more streamlined appeals process required by the law
• prohibitions on putting lifetime limits on insurance payouts and rescinding coverage after a member becomes ill, except in cases where a member intentionally lied on an insurance application.

“These provisions are compatible with our mission and continue our operating practices.” {If this were true, why did it take the ACA to get them to adopt these policies}

Not included:

• the elimination of annual limits on insurance payouts, which are being phased out under the law
• ban on denying coverage to children with preexisting conditions.

The latter would be impossible to do unilaterally, said UnitedHealthcare officials, because the company’s risk pool could be quickly skewed toward sick children. But in a statement they said the company is “committed to working with all other participants in the health care system to sustain that coverage.”

"...impossible to do unilaterally" - absolutely correct. "Government" in the purest sense of the word is us doing together what we can't do by ourselves (military, roads, sewer system...)

The ACA provides the mechanism to do this - insurance companies will all take on this additional risk so the risk pools are not skewed. To offset this additional risk - covering more sick people - the ACA provides the mechanism for the companies to cover more relatively well people - the individual mandate (or as the Republicans called it when it was their idea - personal responsibility).

My conclusion - Keep the ACA and fix what needs to be fixed.

Seriously, Rachel should check in on the MIchigan/Emergency Financial Manager situation in Detroit. The City Attorney as filed suit against the state over it's imposed consent agreement (as is her job) and the governor is threatening to withhold $80 million if she does not drop the suit. Since when can a governor say "drop your legal action against me or I'll withhold taxpayer's money?" This is Al Capone governance.

Just FYI, the voter purge in Florida is still being carried out by a few of the county supervisors. The local ones here in SWFL are still doing it, mostly due to pressure by Rick Scott and the local news agencies, who are heralding their success as the true starters of the purge:

NBC-2 (http://www.nbc-2.com), the local NBC broadcaster for Southwest Florida, is making the claim that it's their "investigative journalism" that started the boulder rolling of Gov. Rick Scott to go all "WE MUST STOP THE FRAUD!" campaign.

They started this whole shebang back in February with their initial two-part ( [Part 1: http://www.nbc-2.com/story/16662854/2012/05/07/nbc2-investigates-voter-fraud][Part 2: http://www.nbc-2.com/story/16666098/2012/02/02/nbc2-investigates-voter-fraud-part-2] ) story about shoddy record keeping by local elections officials.

NBC-2 expanded their efforts to a whole series of tracking their progress...

- Feb 8th, 2012: Collier Co. turns over evidence to FDLE (http://www.nbc-2.com/story/16772858/voter-fraud-investigation-update-law-enforcement-sec-of-state-taking-action)

- Feb 17th, 2012: FDLE launches investigation (http://www.nbc-2.com/story/16961885/nbc2-investigation-sparks-criminal-investigation)

- May 1st, 2012: NBC-2 digs into felon records and compares them to voter rolls, finds problems (http://www.nbc-2.com/story/18167342/2012/05/07/felons-still-on-florida-voter-rolls)

- May 7th, 2012: State gets serious about 'fraud' issue (http://www.nbc-2.com/story/18165667/state-sweep-finds-1251-ineligible-voters)

- May 11th, 2012 State gets even more names tacked onto purge list (http://www.nbc-2.com/story/18315032/nbc2-investigators)

- May 18th, 2012: [NBC-2 finds a lot of background info on the fraudulent voters (http://www.nbc-2.com/story/18554920/voter-backgrounds-revealed-involved-in-probe)

- June 6th, 2012: Gov. Scott tells the fed to go pound sand (http://www.nbc-2.com/video?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=7370164#.T9D0JhRv1-Q.reddit)

- June 8th, 2012: Gov. Scott talks with NBC-2 about the purge (http://www.nbc-2.com/story/18740779/2012/06/08/gov-scott-discusses-voter-purge)