West Virginia\u27s Reimbursement Statute: The Hidden Costs of Institutionalization

Fate makes our relatives... , The treatment, care and maintenance received by the mentally ill and the mentally retarded in state hospitals do not fall into the traditional category of public welfare. Unlike other programs which assist the disadvantaged, most mental health laws impose a statutory duty on the recipient or his family to reimburse the state for all or part of the maintenance and treatment costs. West Virginia is among the jurisdictions which have adopted such laws. This state has statutory provisions5 which require reimbursement from the patient and designated family members. The amount the patient, or his family, is required to pay depends on the per patient cost at the individual institution. During the first six months of 1982, patients at the various West Virginia hospitals were billed anywhere between $10.94 and$56.00 per day for their care and maintenance. The majority of patients billed made partial or no payments. The money collected for reimbursement, in this state, is placed in a new fund which gives health administrators an incentive for strictly enforcing the reimbursement statute. Recent legislation allows the Department of Health to develop a long range plan for mental health facilities financed by collections from patients. In addition to new emphasis on collection, state institutions are under judicial pressure to provide more adequate and professional custody and treatment as mandated by the legislature. Improvements in physical conditions and professional treatment will indirectly increase the cost of patient care which is ultimately placed on the patient or his family. This note focuses on the rights and responsibilities of the patient and his family under the West Virginia cost reimbursement statute. The analysis includes a brief comparison between the West Virginia scheme and the more detailed Virginia provisions. The note also provides estate and family financial planning suggestions to help the patient and his family cover the institutional costs. While the patient\u27s financial responsibilities will be discussed, the key emphasis of this note is on the family, especially the parents and spouse

Measurement of the total cross section from elastic scattering in <i>pp</i> collisions at √<i>s</i>=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A measurement of the total $pp$ cross section at the LHC at $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV is presented. An integrated luminosity of $500$ $\mu$b$^{-1}$ was accumulated in a special run with high-$\beta^{\star}$ beam optics to measure the differential elastic cross section as a function of the Mandelstam momentum transfer variable $t$. The measurement is performed with the ALFA sub-detector of ATLAS. Using a fit to the differential elastic cross section in the $-t$ range from $0.014$ GeV$^2$ to $0.1$ GeV$^2$ to extrapolate $t\rightarrow 0$, the total cross section, $\sigma_{\mathrm{tot}}(pp\rightarrow X)$, is measured via the optical theorem to be: $\sigma_{\mathrm{tot}}(pp\rightarrow X) = {96.07} \; \pm 0.18 \; ({{stat.}}) \pm 0.85 \; ({{exp.}}) \pm 0.31 \; ({extr.}) \; {mb} \;,$ where the first error is statistical, the second accounts for all experimental systematic uncertainties and the last is related to uncertainties in the extrapolation $t\rightarrow 0$. In addition, the slope of the exponential function describing the elastic cross section at small $t$ is determined to be $B = 19.74 \pm 0.05 \; ({{stat.}}) \pm 0.23 \; ({{syst.}}) \; {GeV}^{-2}$

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A measurement of the production of three isolated photons in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}$ = 8 TeV is reported. The results are based on an integrated luminosity of 20.2 fb$^{-1}$ collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The differential cross sections are measured as functions of the transverse energy of each photon, the difference in azimuthal angle and in pseudorapidity between pairs of photons, the invariant mass of pairs of photons, and the invariant mass of the triphoton system. A measurement of the inclusive fiducial cross section is also reported. Next-to-leading-order perturbative QCD predictions are compared to the cross-section measurements. The predictions underestimate themeasurement of the inclusive fiducial cross section and the differential measurements at low photon transverse energies and invariant masses. They provide adequate descriptions of the measurements at high values of the photon transverse energies, invariant mass of pairs of photons, and invariant mass of the triphoton system