The most dramatic reduction in spending growth from 1999 to 2002 is an effect of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 (BBA).The BBA is expected to make a significant downpayment on Medicare’s future by achieving $116 billion in savings from 1998 to 2002 and $394 billion over the 10-year period from 1998 to 2007. It also extended the projected insolvency of the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund ...

Mutual funds’ performance rankings are widely publicized in the media and have a strong impact on fund flows (see, e.g., Sirri and Tufano, 1998). In this paper, we study risk taking incentives of mutual fund managers who have ranking objectives (as in a tournament). First, in a two-period model, we analyze the game played by two risk-neutral fund managers with ranking objectives. We show that i...

Although elderly hospitalized patients, irrespective of the cause of hospitalization, are known to be at a high risk of subsequent development of pneumonia, some studies suggest the risk to be even higher in those hospitalized for pneumonia than in those hospitalized for other diseases. The aim of this retrospective study was to determine the association of hospitalization for pneumonia and som...

In Sweden, pertussis was excluded from the national vaccination programme in 1979 until acellular vaccination was introduced in a highly endemic setting in 1996. The general incidence dropped 10-fold within a decade, less in infants. Infant pertussis reached 40-45 cases per 100,000 in 2008 to 2012; few of these cases were older than five months. We present an observational 15-year study on the ...

The objective of the present survey was to assess the Brazilian scientific production in psychiatry, psychobiology, and mental health during the 1998-2002 period. The universities' graduate programs concentrate the vast majority of the scientific production in Brazil. We assessed the annual reports from the graduate programs to the Brazilian Ministry of Education concerning master's and doctora...

Coral patch reefs around San Salvador Island, Bahamas have been monitored with the aid of Earthwatch volunteers three times a year since 1992. During that period two significant mass bleaching events occurred: autumn 1995, and late summer 1998. Elsewhere in 1995, bleaching was caused by higher-than-normal summer sea temperatures; in San Salvador, however, temperatures were normal. In 1998 a pro...

BACKGROUND Cancer registries recording all cases diagnosed in a well defined population represent the only way to assess real changes in the management of colon cancer at the population level. AIMS To determine trends over a 23 year period in treatment, stage at diagnosis, and prognosis of colon cancer in the Côte-d'Or region, France. PATIENTS A total of 3389 patients with colon cancer diag...