Still Searching: How People Use Health Care Price Information in the United States, New York State, Florida, Texas and New Hampshire

Americans bear a large and growing share of their health care costs in the form of high deductibles and insurance premiums, as well as copayments and, sometimes, coinsurance for physician office visits and hospitalizations. Historically, the health care system has not made it easy for people to find out how much their care will cost them out of pocket. But, in recent years, insurers, state governments, employers and other entities have been trying to make price information more easily available to individuals and families. Are Americans trying to find out about health care prices today? Do they want more information? What sources would they trust to deliver it?This nationally representative research finds 50 percent of Americans have tried to find health care price information before getting care, including 20 percent who have tried to compare prices across multiple providers. Representative surveys in four states— New York, Texas, Florida and New Hampshire—show higher percentages of residents in Texas, Florida and New Hampshire have tried to find price information and have compared prices than New York residents and Americans overall. This variation suggests factors at the state level might be influencing how many people try to find out about health care costs. Nationally and in those four states, more than half of people who compared prices report saving money. Most Americans overall think it is important for their state governments to provide comparative price information. But we found limited awareness that doctors' prices vary and limited awareness that hospitals' prices vary.Public Agenda conducted this research with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the New York State Health Foundation. The findings are based on a nationally representative survey of 2,062 adults, ages 18 and older, and a set of representative surveys in four states: one survey of 802 adults in New York, one of 808 adults in Texas, one of 819 adults in Florida and one of 826 adults in New Hampshire. The surveys were conducted from July through September 2016 by telephone, including cell phones, and online

An-other look at assessment: Assessment in learning

This article seeks to review understandings of educational assessment as revealed in the phrases teachers use (assessment of learning, assessment for learning and assessment as learning). We propose a reconsideration of what teachers might have taken for granted in these phrases and assessment practice. We suggest that along with assessment knowledge and skills, teachers need a way of ‘being in’ assessment. We share some experiential stories to illustrate our understanding of ‘assessment in learning’ and ask readers to consider what this might mean for their own teaching practice

Why Let the People Decide? Elected Officials on Participatory Budgeting

This report documents findings from interviews with U.S. elected officials regarding their experience with participatory budgeting (PB). It also includes recommendations for policymakers, PB advocates and funders looking to improve and expand PB

Public Spending, By The People: Participatory Budgeting in the United States and Canada in 2014-15

From 2014 to 2015, more than 70,000 residents across the United States and Canada directly decided how their cities and districts should spend nearly $50 million in public funds through a process known as participatory budgeting (PB). PB is among the fastest growing forms of public engagement in local governance, having expanded to 46 communities in the U.S. and Canada in just 6 years.PB is a young practice in the U.S. and Canada. Until now, there's been no way for people to get a general understanding of how communities across the U.S. implement PB, who participates, and what sorts of projects get funded. Our report, "Public Spending, By the People" offers the first-ever comprehensive analysis of PB in the U.S. and Canada.Here's a summary of what we found:Overall, communities using PB have invested substantially in the process and have seen diverse participation. But cities and districts vary widely in how they implemented their processes, who participated and what projects voters decided to fund. Officials vary in how much money they allocate to PB and some communities lag far behind in their representation of lower-income and less educated residents.The data in this report came from 46 different PB processes across the U.S. and Canada. The report is a collaboration with local PB evaluators and practitioners. The work was funded by the Democracy Fund and the Rita Allen Foundation, and completed through a research partnership with the Kettering Foundation

Fighting Cybercrime After \u3cem\u3eUnited States v. Jones\u3c/em\u3e

In a landmark non-decision last term, five Justices of the United States Supreme Court would have held that citizens possess a Fourth Amendment right to expect that certain quantities of information about them will remain private, even if they have no such expectations with respect to any of the information or data constituting that whole. This quantitative approach to evaluating and protecting Fourth Amendment rights is certainly novel and raises serious conceptual, doctrinal, and practical challenges. In other works, we have met these challenges by engaging in a careful analysis of this “mosaic theory” and by proposing that courts focus on the technologies that make collecting and aggregating large quantities of information possible. In those efforts, we focused on reasonable expectations held by “the people” that they will not be subjected to broad and indiscriminate surveillance. These expectations are anchored in Founding-era concerns about the capacity for unfettered search powers to promote an authoritarian surveillance state. Although we also readily acknowledged that there are legitimate and competing governmental and law enforcement interests at stake in the deployment and use of surveillance technologies that implicate reasonable interests in quantitative privacy, we did little more. In this Article, we begin to address that omission by focusing on the legitimate governmental and law enforcement interests at stake in preventing, detecting, and prosecuting cyber-harassment and healthcare fraud

Development of CO2 capture method via polyurethane-amine sorbent in VSA

With increases in extreme weather and global temperatures, research is delving into CO2 capture to help reverse climate change. This project explored utilizing vacuum swing adsorption (VSA) for CO2 capture and release. VSA uses a sorbent, in this case amine sorbents, to capture CO­­2 from air and subsequently removes it via vacuum. Polyurethane (PU) foam was investigated as a potential matrix for amine sorbents to increase exposure of CO2 capturing amines to air by utilizing its porous structure. PU mixing studies were conducted to determine the feasibility of mixing PU foam with amines and coating foams with amine solutions by studying the effects they might have on the foam matrix structure. The amines tested include polyethylenimine (PEI), tetraethylenepentamine (TEPA), and diethylenetriamine (DETA). The impact of modifying the amines via methods such as saturation with CO2 and poisoning with acids were explored with regard to their effect on PU foam structure and expansion. Many interactions between amines and PU caused the resulting foam to collapse, having little to no porous structure. However, a 6.5 wt% of 1:1 H2O and TEPA mixture added to PU was determined to provide better internal structure and solvent uptake than commercial closed cell foam. A CO2 capture vacuum unit was designed and constructed for VSA. FTIR analysis was conducted in-situ with the unit to observe CO2 adsorption and desorption. Observations verified the method of CO2 capture and measurement as an effective method. It also showed that some amine was pulled from the PU matrix in the vacuum, so future work will continue to improve amine retention. This project developed sorbent samples with analysis of amine-PU interaction effects, a CO2 unit for VSA, and a method for in-situ analysis of CO2 adsorption and desorption

The Path to Far-IR Interferometry in Space: Recent Developments, Plans, and Prospects

The far-IR astrophysics community is eager to follow up Spitzer and Herschel observations with sensitive, highresolution imaging and spectroscopy, for such measurements are needed to understand merger-driven star formation and chemical enrichment in galaxies, star and planetary system formation, and the development and prevalence of waterbearing planets. The community is united in its support for a space-based interferometry mission. Through concerted efforts worldwide, the key enabling technologies are maturing. Two balloon-borne far-IR interferometers are presently under development. This paper reviews recent technological and programmatic developments, summarizes plans, and offers a vision for space-based far-IR interferometry involving international collaboration

Developing a world view through a diversity of voices: A Reflection

The poems in this book give us the unique opportunity to explore the thoughts and imagination of people from a diversity of backgrounds and experiences. Some were born and raised in Ireland; some have come to live in Ireland from different countries including Nigeria, America, and Cyprus, while others currently live in other countries around the world. Many of the poets share a common sentiment of how tired, distressed and enraged they are by the vast array of social problems smattered across our globe. These voices resonated with me, reminding me of stories I heard in the United States, my home country. The global North and the global South share an unjust and lopsided history, yet we, those of us reading this book, those of us who are activists, those of us who are poets and writers and academics, we are coming together to demand justice, equality, and to save our planet

System Engineering the Space Infrared Interferometric Telescope (SPIRIT)

The Space Infrared Interferometric Telescope (SPIRIT) was designed to accomplish three scientific objectives: (1) learn how planetary systems form from protostellar disks and how they acquire their inhomogeneous chemical composition; (2) characterize the family of extrasolar planetary systems by imaging the structure in debris disks to understand how and where planets of different types form; and (3) learn how high-redshift galaxies formed and merged to form the present-day population of galaxies. SPIRIT will accomplish these objectives through infrared observations with a two aperture interferometric instrument. This paper gives an overview of SPIRIT design and operation, and how the three design cycle concept study was completed. The error budget for several key performance values allocates tolerances to all contributing factors, and a performance model of the spacecraft plus instrument system demonstrates meeting those allocations with margin