Regular Polyhedra of Index Two, II

A polyhedron in Euclidean 3-space is called a regular polyhedron of index 2 if it is combinatorially regular and its geometric symmetry group has index 2 in its combinatorial automorphism group; thus its automorphism group is flag-transitive but its symmetry group has two flag orbits. The present paper completes the classification of finite regular polyhedra of index 2 in 3-space. In particular, this paper enumerates the regular polyhedra of index 2 with vertices on one orbit under the symmetry group. There are ten such polyhedra.Comment: 33 pages; 5 figures; to appear in "Contributions to Algebra and Geometry

What is good care, and what is bad?

National health care goals generally include providing broad access to appropriate amounts of high-quality health care at appropriate cost to the ultimate payers. Yet all countries, regardless of how they deliver and finance health care, struggle to achieve a sustainable balance among the implicit tradeoffs. Does this struggle stem from the limited scope for competition in health care or from information asymmetries? Or does it simply reflect the inherent difficulty of measuring health care output and quality? Alternatively, does it result from deep-seated human behavior - a tendency for individuals to postpone saving, say, or for the utility of health care to shift over time? What are the implications for reform?Health care reform

Employee Costs and the Decline in Health Insurance Coverage

This paper examines why health insurance coverage fell despite the lengthy economic boom of the 1990s. I show that insurance coverage declined primarily because fewer workers took up coverage when offered it, not because fewer workers were offered insurance or were eligible for it. The reduction in take-up is associated with the increase in employee costs for health insurance. Estimates suggest that increased costs to employees can explain the entire decline in take-up rates in the 1990s.

Are the Benefits of Medicine Worth What We Pay for It? 15th Annual Herbert Lourie Memorial Lecture on Health Policy

Is medical care worth it? Conventional wisdom says no, but my answer is emphatically yes. The benefits that we have received from medical advance are enormously greater than the costs. I suggest that public policy far outweighs the importance of cost containment relative to coverage expansion; we could in fact spend more and get a lot more for our health care dollars. In what follows, I talk about the costs and benefits of medical advance, focusing on two areas where I have done the most work: improvements in cardiovascular disease care and care for low birth weight infants. In each case, I present evidence that the benefits justify the costs, and discuss what that implies for public policy. I note at the outside that I shall be summarizing a large volume of research that I and others have done. I have compiled my views into a book, YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE (2004, Oxford University Press), that the interested reader should consult.