Daily Rounds: Keeping Obamacare Benefits; 'GOPCare' Needed; Plague Inc. Epidemic; Murky Sunscreen

Insurers to stay with key benefits of US health law (The Boston Globe) - "The largest insurers in Massachusetts have pledged to extend two popular provisions of the Affordable Care Act even if the US Supreme Court decides to overturn the federal health law in a ruling expected before the end of the month. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and Tufts Health Plan said in statements to the Globe that they would continue to allow young adults to remain on their parents’ insurance plans up to age 26...The insurers also said they would cover a broad array of preventive services with no copayments, as outlined by the federal law."

GOPCare: The Republican vacuum as the Supreme Court prepares to rule (The Wall Street Journal) "No one knows how the Supreme Court will come down in its decision on ObamaCare, expected in a little over a week... No one knows how President Obama will respond if the court overturns some or all of the law, though we have a pretty good idea. And no one knows how the Republicans will respond either, including the Republicans. In short, the GOP may be positioning itself to become the dog that caught the car... Political and policy uncertainty is perhaps inevitable given the range of what the Court could do. But the Republicans need a more coherent strategy, and more credible alternatives, to avoid reprising the payroll tax holiday debacle of last Christmas, except with generational consequences."

Viral game sparking iPhone-edemic: Plague Inc spreads from germ of an idea to ragin' contagion (The Boston Herald) - "A new iPhone game that turns players into pathogens keen on destroying humanity has gone viral and its creator and locals say the app does a better job of teaching users about disease than terrifying them. In the two weeks since its release, Plague Inc. has become the top paid app for iPhones. A whopping 750,000 people have already downloaded the 99-cent app that lets users manipulate and evolve one of 10 disease types — “bacteria,” “fungus” and “parasite” among them — into an epidemic that turns regions red when infection hits and black when deaths start piling up."

Consumers stuck with murky sunscreen labels another summer (NPR) - "Anyone who's gone to the drug store knows that the labels on sunscreens can be confusing. The sun protection factor, or SPF, numbers are all over the place. Some say "sunblock" others says "sunscreen." What's the difference between "water-proof" versus "water-resistant?" Well, after years of delays, the federal government finally announced a plan to do something about it last year...But just as the summer was about to start, the FDA announced it was delaying the new requirements until December."