Medicare Prescription Drugs: Medical Necessity Meets Fiscal Insanity

Medicare is facing severe financial strains that threaten its future viability. On a per capita basis, Medicare spending is increasing at twice the rate of the gross domestic product, and, according to Medicare's chief actuary, the program is facing a breathtaking funding shortfall of $62 trillion -- nearly six times larger than the much -- discussed shortfall in Social Security. The newly enacted Medicare prescription drug benefit could cost more than$700 billion over the next 10 years and will only add to the program's financial woes. That new drug law would provide a sizable net benefit to retirees and older workers without existing coverage, even if Congress immediately funded it through higher Medicare payroll taxes.Workers born before 1965 -- baby boomers and current retirees -- would receive a net gain of about $20,000 per capita. Younger workers and all future generations, however, would suffer net losses of between$2,500 and $4,000 per capita. Furthermore, failure to include meaningful Medicare reforms in the drug program may cause steeper cost escalations, diluting its benefits. Congress should revisit the Medicare prescription drug program and insist on significant market-based reforms, not merely an ever-expanding array of benefits

Financing the U.S. Health System: Issues and Options for Change

Explores key issues of health reform and options for financing health care -- redirecting funds to more effective uses, rolling back tax cuts, modifying tax exclusions for health benefits, an employer play-or-pay model, and a value-added tax

"Imperfektibles" sprachliches Wissen. Theoretische Vorüberlegungen zu "sprachlichen Zweifelsfällen"

In linguistic cases of doubt a differentiation has to be made between the pragmatic reflections of language by laypersons (SZ 1) and the common 'extra-communicatice' reflections by linguists (SZ 2). These structural inhomogeneities of languages are based upon (e.g. ortho-graphic) variants, 'openings', so called 'language fluctuations' or some other irregular forms that have developed historically (SZ 2 = 'objective imperfectibility' of the linguistic system). On the other hand, the competence theoretical notion of 'linguistic doubt' (of the type SZ 1) requires that speakers become aware or are aware of their lacking, constricted, or insecure knowledge in their language usage (= SZ 1: 'subjective imperfectibility'). From a point of linguistic development, both linguistic cases of doubt can be seen as indicators for potential 'mutants' in the inheritance of linguistic forms, structures and functions. Hence, 'imperfectibility' (both as a quality of a system and as a cognitive substrate of it) is an important condition for future linguistic change

Some effects of temporal coherence of the Fourier transform holographic system

The objective of this investigation was to evaluate experimentally the effects of slight changes in the temporal coherence of a quasi-monochromatic source on the real images of Fourier transform holograms. The method of investigation included: (1) A review of some of the theoretical aspects of Fourier transform holography, (2) some approximations for experimental system limitations due to the coherence length and size of the quasi -monochromatic source, (3) sensitometric experimentation to obtain an adequate photographic reversal process, (4) temporal coherence measurements using a Michel son interferometer, (5) formation and reconstruction of Fourier transform holograms, and (6) analysis of experimental data. The results have shown that decreases in the coherence length of the source are accompanied by increases in the spectral width and can cause progressive blurring of edges and geometrical shape distortion for a rectangular-shaped object