How vignettes of real-life situations provide good training tools. (Editor)

As life expectancy increases, more people continue working later in life. Some retirement plans offer incentives, others disincentives to retire. Health, life, and disability insurance plans often have different provisions for older workers. (SK)

Describes fundamental insurance concepts that should be taught: risk, the insurance process, government regulation, life and health coverage, automobile coverage, and insurance careers. Suggests learning activities, such as case studies, simulated car purchasing, and role-playing of insurance dilemmas. (SK)

Reviews research pertinent to mental health services under health care reform proposals. Examines redistributional impact of inclusion of outpatient mental health benefits, optimal benefit packages, and findings that mental health services lower medical utilization costs. Argues that extending minimalist model of time-limited benefits to national…

Describes how an outdoor program specializing in wilderness expeditions approaches risk management, liability, and insurance. Discusses maintaining good communications with insurance agents, managing crisis situations, participating in program audits, reading the fine print, international insurance coverage, and the basis for insurance premiums.…

Used multidisciplinary disability management model to assist Social Security Disability Insurance beneficiaries to return to work. The model, which emphasized multidisciplinary disability management, marketing and public relations, work incentives training, networking, and job-seeking skills training, facilitated 27 job placements out of the 107…

Illustrates how schools and universities can control their insurance costs in an unfavorable economic climate. Cost control strategies discussed include risk retention, loss control, procedural documentation, and pooled resources. (GR)

Purpose: Prescription medication use is essential to the health and well-being of many elderly persons. However, the cost of medications may be prohibitive and contribute to noncompliance with medical recommendations. This study identifies community-dwelling elders who reported a delay in medication use because of prescription medication cost.…

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the authors examined the health insurance coverage stability of 1,667 women in working families over a three-year period (1995-1997). Findings revealed that coverage instability is common. Nearly one-half of low-income women experienced health coverage instability over the three-year study…

The benefits of unemployment insurance (UI) by measuring its effect in match quality are assessed. The relationship between post-unemployment job tenure and measures of the state level UI generosity and the unemployment rate at the time of the job is analyzed, using NLSY data.

In insurance, the analyst is often faced with a large number of inter-related variables for which correlations need to be estimated. Clearly, all correlations lie in the interval [-1, 1], but the numbers cannot be assigned independently. Here, the choices left to the analyst are considered from both a geometric and a probabilistic viewpoint. In…

Context: The recent explosive growth of information technology in hospitals promises to improve hospital and patient outcomes. Financial barriers may cause rural hospitals to lag in adoption of information technology, however, formal studies that examine rural hospital adoption of information technology are lacking. Purpose: To determine the…

The Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) of 2009 gave states additional resources and tools aimed at improving participation in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). In 2007, five million uninsured children were eligible for Medicaid or CHIP, constituting 64 percent of all uninsured children.…

Context: All youth, especially those with serious emotional disturbances (SED), face challenges as they transition to adulthood. Little is known about rural youth at risk for transition problems. Purpose: To examine transition-age youth who use publicly funded services in rural and urban/suburban locations in Tennessee in order to describe youth…

Purpose: To identify characteristics and outcomes of patients who use physician assistants and nurse practitioners (PA/NPs) as a usual source of care. Methods: Cross sectional analysis using the telephone and mail surveys of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), a prospective cohort study of Wisconsin high school graduates and selected siblings…