The Affordable Care Act has altered payment policy for private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans, with the goal of lowering costs closer to the level in traditional Medicare. Using newly available information on 2009 MA plan costs, this analysis com­pares plans' estimates of per capita costs for providing Parts A and B benefits to their enrollees, on a risk-adjusted basis, against what government d...

In a reversal of recent trends, private fee-for-service (PFFS) enrollment fell dramatically in rural areas in early 2010. As a result, Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollment in rural areas (excluding other prepaid plans) fell slightly in early 2010 for the first time in years. The dramatic drop in PFFS enrollment was offset by increases in enrollment in preferred provider organization (PPO) and hea...

The costs of providing benefits to enrollees in private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans are slightly less, on average, than what traditional Medicare spends per beneficiary in the same county. However, MA plans that are able to keep their costs comparatively low are concen­trated in a fairly small number of U.S. counties. In the 25 counties where the cost differences between MA plans and traditio...

The Medicare Advantage (MA) program offers beneficiaries a choice of private health plans as alternatives to the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program. MA plans potentially provide additional value, but as plan choices have proliferated, consumers contemplating their options have had difficulty understanding how they differ. Through "standardization" more consistent types of information ...

so far, moral features have been divided into absolute and relative, individual and social, temporary and permanent and so on. the least advantage of these divisions and separations is a help to moral studies and a better and systematic understanding of moral values and anti-values for moral doers. in this essay according to a cause and effect, and necessary relationship which might be among so...

information technology (it) in the present era has affectedall aspects of organizations as a new strategy; therefore imagine anorganization without it and keeping abreast with new technologies seemsimpossible. the current research seeks to identify factors affecting theadoption of it innovation in governmental organizations. to this end theindices affecting it innovation adoption have been extr...

We show that each of Thompson’s groups F , T , and V has infinitely many ends relative to the groups F[0,1/2], T[0,1/2], and V[0,1/2) (respectively). As an application, we simplify the proof, due to Napier and Ramachandran, that F , T , and V are not Kähler groups. We go on to show that Thompson’s groups T and V have Serre’s property FA. The main theorems together answer a question on Bestvina’...