The Effects of Medicaid and Medicare Reforms on the Elderly’s Savings and Medical Expenditures

We study a model in which retired single people optimally choose consumption, medical spending and saving while facing uncertainty about their health, lifespan and medical needs. This uncertainty is partially offset by insurance provided by the government and private institutions. We first show how well the model matches important features of the data and we analyze the degree of insurance provided by current programs. We then analyze the effects of some reforms, meant to capture changes in Medicaid and Medicare, on savings and medical expenditures.

Talking about a Christine Borland sculpture: effective empathy in contemporary anatomy art (and an emerging counterpart in medical training?)

This Introduction and interview discusses the poetical and empathic insights that are a key to the effectiveness of contemporary artist Christine Borland's practice and its relevance to the medical humanities, visual art research and medical students’ training. It takes place in a context of intensive interest in reciprocity and conversation as well as expert exchange between the fields of Medicine and Contemporary Arts. The interview develops an understanding of medical research and the application of its historical resources and contemporary practice-based research in contemporary art gallery exhibitions. Artists tend not to follow prescriptive programmes towards new historical knowledge, however, a desire to form productive relationships between history and contemporary art practice does reveal practical advantages. Borland's research also includes investigations in anatomy, medical practices and conservatio

The Ontological Basis of Strong Artificial Life

This article concerns the claim that it is possible to create living organisms, not merely models that represent organisms, simply by programming computers ("virtual" strong alife). I ask what sort of things these computer-generated organisms are supposed to be (where are they, and what are they made of?). I consider four possible answers to this question: (a) The organisms are abstract complexes of pure information; (b) they are material objects made of bits of computer hardware; (c) they are physical processes going on inside the computer; and (d) they are denizens of an entire artificial world, different from our own, that the programmer creates. I argue that (a) could not be right, that (c) collapses into (b), and that (d) would make strong alife either absurd or uninteresting. Thus, "virtual" strong alife amounts to the claim that, by programming a computer, one can literally bring bits of its hardware to life

The Ontological Basis of Strong Artificial Life

This article concerns the claim that it is possible to create living organisms, not merely models that represent organisms, simply by programming computers ("virtual" strong alife). I ask what sort of things these computer-generated organisms are supposed to be (where are they, and what are they made of?). I consider four possible answers to this question: (a) The organisms are abstract complexes of pure information; (b) they are material objects made of bits of computer hardware; (c) they are physical processes going on inside the computer; and (d) they are denizens of an entire artificial world, different from our own, that the programmer creates. I argue that (a) could not be right, that (c) collapses into (b), and that (d) would make strong alife either absurd or uninteresting. Thus, "virtual" strong alife amounts to the claim that, by programming a computer, one can literally bring bits of its hardware to life

Social security and Medicare policy from the perspective of generational accounting

An application of the generational accounting method of fiscal policy analysis to projected spending paths for Social Security and Medicare suggesting that, under realistic assumptions for these programs, future generations as well as current young Americans could bear a significantly larger share of the burden of government spending than previously thought.Social security ; Medicare ; Fiscal policy

Why do the elderly save? the role of medical expenses

This paper constructs a rich model of saving for retired single people. Our framework allows for bequest motives and heterogeneity in medical expenses and life expectancies. We estimate the model using AHEAD data and the method of simulated moments. The data show that out-of-pocket medical expenses rise quickly with both age and permanent income. For many elderly people the risk of living long and requiring expensive medical care is a more important driver of old age saving than the desire to leave bequests. Social insurance programs such as Medicaid rationalize the low asset holdings of the poorest. These government programs, however, also benefit the rich because they insure them against their worst nightmares about their very old age: either not being able to afford the medical care that they need, or being left destitute by huge medical bills.Retirement income ; Medical care, Cost of

Grounding the Unreal

The scientific successes of the last 400 years strongly suggest a picture on which our scientific theories exhibit a layered structure of dependence and determination. Economics is dependent on and determined by psychology; psychology in its turn is, plausibly, dependent on and determined by biology; and so it goes. It is tempting to explain this layered structure of dependence and determination among our theories by appeal to a corresponding layered structure of dependence and determination among the entities putatively treated by those theories. In this paper, I argue that we can resist this temptation: we can explain the sense in which, e.g., the biological truths are dependent on and determined by chemical truths without appealing to properly biological or chemical entities. This opens the door to a view on which, though there are more truths than just the purely physical truths, there are no entities, states, or properties other than the purely physical entities, states, and properties. I argue that some familiar strategies to explicate the idea of a layered structure of theories by appeal to reduction, ground, and truthmaking encounter difficulties. I then show how these difficulties point the way to a more satisfactory treatment which appeals to something very close to the notion of ground. Finally, I show how this treatment provides a theoretical setting in which we might fruitfully frame debates about which entities there really are

The eroticism of artificial flesh in Villiers de L'Isle Adam's L'Eve Future

Villiers de L'Isle Adam's 'L'Eve Future' published in 1886 features a fictional version of the inventor Thomas Edison who constructs a complex, custom-made android for Englishman Lord Ewald as a substitute for his unsatisfactory lover. Hadaly, the android, has a number of literary and cultural precursors and successors. Her most commonly accepted ancestor is Olympia in E. T. A. Hoffmann's 'The Sandman' (1816) and among her fascinating descendants are Oskar Kokoschka's 'Silent Woman'; Model Borghild, a sex doll designed by German technicians during World War II;‘Caracas' in Tommaso Landolfi's short story ‘Gogol's Wife' (1954); a variety of gynoids and golems from the realms of science fiction, including Ira Levin's 'Stepford Wives' (1972); and, most recently, that silicon masterpiece - the Real Doll. All, arguably, have their genesis in the classical myth of Pygmalion. This essay considers the tension between animation and stasis in relation to this myth, and explores the necrophiliac aesthetic implicit in Villiers's novel