Enrollment in Medicare Advantage (MA) plans in rural areas grew more than 50% in the first three quarters of 2007 and has more than tripled since the inception of the MA program at the beginning of 2006. However, rural enrollment remains well below urban enrollment as a percentage of the eligible population. This brief updates early findings from analysis of the Medicare+Choice/MA program prese...

This is a case study of industrial systems development. In the project studied, an advanced computer application was developed with the intention of supporting complex, cooperative work. The project participants all viewed the emerging computer application in context. However, different contexts were used by each group of actors. Since the application was placed in contexts well known by the pa...

The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 explicitly increased Medicare payments to private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. As a result, every MA plan in the nation is paid more for its enrollees than they would have been expected to cost in traditional fee-for-service Medicare. The authors calculate that payments to MA plans in 2008 will be 12.4 percent greater than the corresponding costs in trad...

We asked respondents about their attitudes toward restriction of imports, their understanding of the principle of comparative advantage and their attitudes toward globalization and business. Respondents who favored import restrictions scored lower on the test of understanding of comparative advantage, and they had less favorable attitudes toward globalization and toward business. Import restric...

We asked respondents about their attitudes toward restriction of imports, their understanding of the principle of comparative advantage and their attitudes toward globalization and business. Respondents who favored import restrictions scored lower on the test of understanding of comparative advantage, and they had less favorable attitudes toward globalization and toward business. Import restric...

This study uses annual data from 1985 to 2019 analyze the export and import trade patterns of mechanical electrical products China. We employ H-index, or difference between net capability symmetric revealed comparative advantage, assess policies in exports imports. The results reveal that China has advantage imports, had disadvantage before 1999. In recent years, policy protectionism been adopt...

Unravelling the structural organization of membrane protein machines in their active state and native lipid environment is a major challenge in modern cell biology research. Here we develop the STAMP (Specifically TArgeted Membrane nanoParticle) technique as a strategy to localize protein complexes in situ by electron cryotomography (cryo-ET). STAMP selects active membrane protein complexes and...

When faced with a variable environment, organisms may switch between different strategies according to some probabilistic rule. In an infinite population, evolution is expected to favor the rule that maximizes geometric mean fitness. If some environments are encountered only rarely, selection may not be strong enough for optimal switching probabilities to evolve. Here we calculate the evolution...

With higher payments and expanded private-plan authority, Medicare Advantage (MA) has caused the market to grow. One in three Medicare beneficiaries with Part D now gets this coverage through MA. Analysis of the sources of and reasons for enrollment growth suggest a troubling report card. Clearly, the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) has expanded choice and the private-sector role. But it also ...