Comprehensive Health Care Reform: An Essential Prescription for Women

[Excerpt] The status-quo health insurance system is serving women poorly. An estimated 64 million women lack adequate health insurance. Over half of all medical bankruptcies impact a woman. For too many women and their families today, quality, affordable health care is out of reach. Women are more vulnerable to high health care costs than men. Several factors explain why. First, women’s health needs differ from men’s, so women are obliged to interact more regularly with the health care system – regardless of whether they have adequate insurance coverage or not. Second, women are more likely to be economically vulnerable and therefore face devastating consequences when faced with a mounting pile of medical bills. The inability of the current system to adequately serve women’s health care needs has come at great expense. One recent study estimates that women’s chronic disease conditions cost hundreds of billions of dollars every year. The following brief provides an overview of the basic facts regarding women’s insurance cov-erage, and the consequences of our broken health insurance system on women’s health – both physical and financial. Specifically: &#; Over one million women have lost their health insurance due to a spouse’s job loss during the current economic downturn. &#; As a consequence of single mothers’ job loss, the Joint Economic Committee estimates that at least 276,000 children have lost health insurance coverage. &#; Women between the ages of 55 and 64 are particularly vulnerable to losing their health insurance benefits because of their husbands’ transition from employer-sponsored coverage to Medicare. &#; Younger women are particularly vulnerable to lacking adequate health insur-ance coverage. &#; 39 percent of all low-income women lack health insurance coverage &#; The health consequences of inadequate coverage are more severe for women than for men. &#; While the financial burden of inadequate health insurance coverage weighs heavily on all Americans, uninsured and under-insured women suffer more se-vere economic consequences than do men. The comprehensive health care reform proposals offered by the Obama Administration and currently taking shape under the leadership of Democrats in the House and Senate include numerous provisions that are critical to providing quality, affordable health care for all Americans, both women and men. Many of these solutions are a key part of the prescription for easing the burden on America’s women, for whom the status quo health care system is a failure

The importance of the express delivery industry for the East Midlands economy

This report assesses the importance of the express delivery industry for the economy of the East Midlands. It complements a similar report looking at the economic importance of the express industry for the UK as a whole. As well as quantifying the direct economic contribution made by companies in the express industry to employment and Gross Value Added (GVA) in the East Midlands, it also considers the importance of express services to businesses in other sectors in the region based on a detailed survey of 75 companies (a sample that we consider is appropriate to a study of this type and robust enough to help highlight key trends). This survey illustrates the contribution that the express industry makes to the capabilities and competitiveness of other sectors of the East Midlands economy

Economic Growth and Scientific activities. Interrelations

This study aims to investigate the relation between GDP of countries and patent applications issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the World Intellectual property Organisation (WIPO), and European Patent Office (EPO) through 2002-2005. The main trend of U.S. patenting applications and granted patents is presented over 40 years (1965-2005). The changes over time in the rate of patenting and the number of granted patents are exhibited. The Analyses of data showed that The USA is the leading country filing and granting patents followed by Japan and Germany respectively. The relationship between patent applications and gross domestic product (GDP) of the countries, with applications greater than 500 patents annually, is a linear relationship with a strong correlation coefficient ( R > 0.96), in contrast to the relation of patent applications to the population size R = 0.42 (power law)