When Work Supports Don't Support Work: A Case for Parental Health Coverage in Mississippi

One of the biggest challenges facing Mississippians is the limited public health care provisions for parents. Medicaid is restrictively low with eligibility levels at 46 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. Outside of Medicaid, Mississippi has no state health insurance program for parents. Moreover, the continual decline of employer-sponsored health insurance and the prohibitive costs of private health insurance have led many Mississippians to forego health coverage altogether. This situation has negative consequences not only for the health of parents, but for their family's economic security and well-being. This brief uses results from the Family Resource Simulator to analyze Mississippi's work support policies. It also identifies gaps in parental health insurance coverage and recommends policy reforms that could expand coverage among Mississippi's working parents

Hierarchical tapered bar elements undergoing axial deformation

A method is described to model the dynamics of tapered axial bars of various cross sections based on the well-known Craig/Bampton component mode synthesis technique. This element is formed in terms of the static constraint modes and interface restrained normal modes. This is in contrast with the finite elements as implemented in NASTRAN where the interface restrained normal modes are neglected. These normal modes are in terms of Bessel functions. Restoration of a few of these modes leads to higher accuracy with fewer generalized coordinates. The proposed models are hierarchical so that all lower order element matrices are embedded in higher order element matrices. The advantages of this formulation compared to standard NASTRAN truss element formulation are demonstrated through simple numerical examples