Assessing the Financial Health of Medicaid Managed Care Plans and the Quality of Patient Care They Provide

Examines the administrative and medical expenses, quality of care, and financial stability of publicly traded health plans contracted to manage the care of Medicaid beneficiaries by plan characteristics and compared with non-publicly traded plans

How Has the Affordable Care Act Affected Health Insurers' Financial Performance?

Starting in 2014, the Affordable Care Act transformed the market for individual health insurance by changing how insurance is sold and by subsidizing coverage for millions of new purchasers. Insurers, who had no previous experience under these market conditions, competed actively but faced uncertainty in how to price their products. This issue brief uses newly available data to understand how health insurers fared financially during the ACA's first year of full reforms. Overall, health insurers' financial performance began to show some strain in 2014, but the ACA's reinsurance program substantially buffered the negative effects for most insurers. Although a quarter of insurers did substantially worse than others, experience under the new market rules could improve the accuracy of pricing decisions in subsequent years

n-Heptane hydroconversion over sulfated-zirconia-supported molybdenum carbide catalysts

Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) NigeriaPeer reviewedPublisher PD

Efficient computation of two-dimensional steady free-surface flows

We consider a family of steady free-surface flow problems in two dimensions, concentrating on the effect of nonlinearity on the train of gravity waves that appear downstream of a disturbance. By exploiting standard complex variable techniques, these problems are formulated in terms of a coupled system of Bernoulli's equation and an integral equation. When applying a numerical collocation scheme, the Jacobian for the system is dense, as the integral equation forces each of the algebraic equations to depend on each of the unknowns. We present here a strategy for overcoming this challenge, which leads to a numerical scheme that is much more efficient than what is normally employed for these types of problems, allowing for many more grid points over the free surface. In particular, we provide a simple recipe for constructing a sparse approximation to the Jacobian that is used as a preconditioner in a Jacobian-free Newton-Krylov method for solving the nonlinear system. We use this approach to compute numerical results for a variety of prototype problems including flows past pressure distributions, a surface-piercing object and bottom topographies.Comment: 20 pages, 13 figures, under revie

Spectrograms of ship wakes: identifying linear and nonlinear wave signals

A spectrogram is a useful way of using short-time discrete Fourier transforms to visualise surface height measurements taken of ship wakes in real world conditions. For a steadily moving ship that leaves behind small-amplitude waves, the spectrogram is known to have two clear linear components, a sliding-frequency mode caused by the divergent waves and a constant-frequency mode for the transverse waves. However, recent observations of high speed ferry data have identified additional components of the spectrograms that are not yet explained. We use computer simulations of linear and nonlinear ship wave patterns and apply time-frequency analysis to generate spectrograms for an idealised ship. We clarify the role of the linear dispersion relation and ship speed on the two linear components. We use a simple weakly nonlinear theory to identify higher order effects in a spectrogram and, while the high speed ferry data is very noisy, we propose that certain additional features in the experimental data are caused by nonlinearity. Finally, we provide a possible explanation for a further discrepancy between the high speed ferry spectrograms and linear theory by accounting for ship acceleration.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figures, submitte

Estimating the Impact of the Medical Loss Ratio Rule: A State-by-State Analysis

Outlines the healthcare reform law's requirement that insurers spend a minimum ratio of 80 to 85 percent of premiums on medical care expenses or rebate the difference to policy holders. Estimates rebates in each state if it had been in effect in 2010