State insurance commissioners who want to help health insurance agents and brokers cope with the new medical loss ratio (MLR) rules apparently have decided that a behind-the-scenes strategy has the best chance of succeeding.

Think back four months to that disappointing day in March when the NFL lockout began. The general opinion was the owners and players would reach a new labor agreement long before training camps opened.

Hope dimming for a broad debt-limit deal, Congress and the White House scrambled Wednesday to salvage deficit-reduction talks while top congressional Republicans said the nation cannot afford to default on its obligations — for economic reasons and their party's own good.

In office just six months, Gov. Rick Scott has kept his campaign promises and then some: cutting corporate taxes, reducing the size of government, drug testing welfare recipients, making government workers pay into their pensions, and privatizing Medicaid.