Squeezed: Why Rising Exposure to Health Care Costs Threatens the Health and Financial Well-Being of American Families

Examines U.S. healthcare costs compared with other industrialized countries, individual health insurance coverage, individual market regulations, and the impact of high deductible plans on the health of individuals with chronic disease

Failure to Protect: Why the Individual Insurance Market Is Not a Viable Option for Most U.S. Families

Based on the Commonwealth Fund 2007 Biennial Health Insurance Survey, examines access to and affordability of individual insurance. Reviews obstacles to obtaining coverage, such as health issues and costs, and out-of-pocket costs of those who obtain it

Gaps in Health Insurance: An All-American Problem

Presents findings from a survey that examines health insurance coverage, rising healthcare costs, and the health and financial consequences to families that experience breaks in insurance

Losing Ground: How the Loss of Adequate Health Insurance Is Burdening Working Families: Findings From the Commonwealth Fund Biennial Health Insurance Surveys, 2001-2007

Highlights declining health coverage and rising deductibles for American adults and the implications for medical costs, debt burdens, and access to health care. Examines socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the uninsured and underinsured

Out of Options: Why So Many Workers in Small Businesses Lack Affordable Health Insurance, and How Health Care Reform Can Help

Based on the 2007 Commonwealth Fund Biennial Health Insurance Survey, examines small business employees' limited access to health insurance and contributing factors. Explores how small businesses and employees could benefit from proposed reforms

Rite of Passage? Why Young Adults Become Uninsured and How New Policies Can Help

Assesses the scope of the health insurance problem facing young adults, its causes and implications, and offers policy changes that could help them stay insured as they make the transition to independent living

Health Coverage for Aging Baby Boomers: Findings From The Commonwealth Fund Survey of Older Adults

Examines healthcare quality and access by baby boomers in working families. Offers recommendations for expanding coverage, including options for savings accounts and early participation in Medicare

Applying a new version of the Brazilian-Portuguese UPSIT smell test in Brazil

Standardized olfactory tests are now available to quantitatively assess disorders of olfaction. A Brazilian-Portuguese version of the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT) is currently being developed specifically for the Brazilian population. The most recent Brazilian-Portuguese version of the UPSIT (UPSIT-Br2) was administered to 88 Brazilian subjects who had no history of neurological or otorhinolaryngological disease. UPSIT-Br2 scores decreased with age, were lower in men than in women, and were lower in subjects with lower income. The degree to which the poorer performance of subjects with lower socio-economic status reflects lack of familiarity with test items is not known. Although this version of the UPSIT provides a sensitive and useful test of smell function for the Brazilian population, a revision of some test items is needed to achieve comparable norms to those found using the North American UPSIT in the United States

Constructive Dimension and Turing Degrees

This paper examines the constructive Hausdorff and packing dimensions of Turing degrees. The main result is that every infinite sequence S with constructive Hausdorff dimension dim_H(S) and constructive packing dimension dim_P(S) is Turing equivalent to a sequence R with dim_H(R) <= (dim_H(S) / dim_P(S)) - epsilon, for arbitrary epsilon > 0. Furthermore, if dim_P(S) > 0, then dim_P(R) >= 1 - epsilon. The reduction thus serves as a *randomness extractor* that increases the algorithmic randomness of S, as measured by constructive dimension. A number of applications of this result shed new light on the constructive dimensions of Turing degrees. A lower bound of dim_H(S) / dim_P(S) is shown to hold for the Turing degree of any sequence S. A new proof is given of a previously-known zero-one law for the constructive packing dimension of Turing degrees. It is also shown that, for any regular sequence S (that is, dim_H(S) = dim_P(S)) such that dim_H(S) > 0, the Turing degree of S has constructive Hausdorff and packing dimension equal to 1. Finally, it is shown that no single Turing reduction can be a universal constructive Hausdorff dimension extractor, and that bounded Turing reductions cannot extract constructive Hausdorff dimension. We also exhibit sequences on which weak truth-table and bounded Turing reductions differ in their ability to extract dimension.Comment: The version of this paper appearing in Theory of Computing Systems, 45(4):740-755, 2009, had an error in the proof of Theorem 2.4, due to insufficient care with the choice of delta. This version modifies that proof to fix the error

Front and Center: Ensuring That Health Reform Puts People First

Outlines the failures of the healthcare system and the benefits of the Commonwealth Fund's comprehensive reform plan for the uninsured, the underinsured, those who cannot afford out-of-pocket costs or premiums, and others without adequate access to care