Since 1983 the US Central Intelligence Agency has defined terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.” Compared to the many dangers facing the US today, the threat of terrorism is relatively small. Nonetheless, at nearly all levels of US society the res...

This paper presents a model of electoral competition focusing on the formation of the public agenda. An incumbent government and a challenger party in opposition compete in elections by choosing the issues that will key out their campaigns. Giving salience to an issue implies proposing an innovative policy proposal alternative to the status-quo. Parties trade off the issues with high salience i...

,QMENDMENTS TO THE Social Security -4ct, passed in 1965 {Public Law S9-97) not only made major changes in the exisbing old-age, surviwrs: and disabi1it.y insurance (OASDI) syst.em but also established t,wo new insurance programs : the hospital insurance program a.nd the supplementary medical insurance pr0gram.l The three syste.ms are to be financed separately and are therefore discussed separat...

We are writing to notify you, per the requirements of section 709 of the Social Security Act, that the Federal Disability Insurance (DI) Trust Fund is now projected to become inadequate within the next 10 years. As shown in the 2010 OASDI Trustees Report, which we are issuing today and a copy of which is attached, the assets of the DI Trust Fund are projected to fall below 20 percent of annual ...

According to the justification hypothesis, non-employed individuals may over-report their level of work limitation, leading to biased census/survey estimates of the prevalence of severe disabilities and the associated labor force participation rate. For researchers studying policies which impact the disabled or elderly (e.g., Supplemental Security Income, Disability Insurance, and Early Retirem...

STUDY DESIGN Structured key informant interviews with follow-up. OBJECTIVE The aim of the study was to describe innovative reimbursement models in spine care and gather perspectives on the future of spine care reimbursement. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA The United States spends $90 billion annually on medical expenses for low back pain. One approach to promoting high-quality, cost-effective c...

BACKGROUND A large managed care organization (MCO) in western Pennsylvania initiated a Medical Injectable Drug (MID) program in 2002 that transferred a specific subset of specialty drugs from physician reimbursement under the traditional "buy-and-bill" model in the medical benefit to MCO purchase from a specialty pharmacy provider (SPP) that supplied physician offices with the MIDs. The MID pro...

Since the introduction of benefit assessment to support reimbursement decisions in Germany there seems to be the impression that totally distinct methodology and strategies for decision making would apply in the field of drug licensing and reimbursement. In this article, the position is held that, while decisions may differ due to differing mandates of drug licensing and reimbursement bodies, t...