Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Why Some People Consume Counterfeit Drugs In Benin, Maxime A. Ahouansou

English Language Institute

Despite the threat counterfeit drugs represent to health and the government’s endeavor to discourage their consumption, some people in Benin still prefer buying medicine in the underground economy. This research purported to understand the causes of the phenomenon. The research method used a survey of a sample of sixty-eight people randomly selected at Cotonou, a city with a population representative of Benin general population status regarding socio-economic conditions. The data about people's habits regarding drug consumption, monthly income, insurance coverage, and reasons why people chose to buy counterfeit medicines were collected and analyzed using Excel Spreadsheet. The analysis of those …

Microchips: Technology That Can Change Medical Services, Dale H. Shao, Ralph E. Mckinney, Lawrence P. Shao

Management Information Systems Faculty Research

Healthcare costs have increased greatly over the last few years. The result is a tremendous burden for businesses and private individuals. Experts say there is no end in sight to this increase. This situation has forced the federal government, state governments, and private industry, to investigate methods to slow down and reduce this constant increase in healthcare costs. Microchip technologies have been presented as a means to ensure better patient care while a/so reducing costs and errors resulting from the current system of healthcare. This paper presents an overview of microchip technology programs, issues with implementation, and future considerations for …

Health Insurance Co-Ops: Product Availability And Premiums In Rural Counties, Erika C. Ziller Phd, Zachariah T. Croll Ba, Andrew F. Coburn Phd

Access / Insurance

Created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans (CO-OPs) are private, non-profit health insurers that were designed to increase insurance plan choice and lower premiums in the Health Insurance Marketplaces. Early analyses of the ACA suggested that CO-OPs may be particularly beneficial for rural communities, where fewer individual and small group health insurance options have traditionally been available.

This Research and Policy Brief, authored by research staff at the Maine Rural Health Research Center, explores the early availability and role of CO-OPs in rural and urban counties. We describe the regional distribution and market prevalence of …

Why Not Fix It?, William H. Lane

English Faculty Publications

Have you felt the pinch of rising health care costs this year? If not, maybe you haven't actually needed to see a doctor or pay for a prescription. Even those of us who are lucky enough to be "covered" at work have noticed rapidly rising deductibles and copays - and shrinking networks of providers. Employers, facing a big, one-year increase in insurance costs, naturally enough go shopping for a new plan. But the big savings with a new plan often mean a big effective pay cut for everyone who's covered under it when employee contributions, deductibles and copays all rise …

Medicare Secondary Payer And Settlement Delay, Eric Helland, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

The Medicare Secondary Payer Act of 1980 and its subsequent amendments require that insurers and self-insured companies report settlements, awards, and judgments that involve a Medicare beneficiary to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The parties then may be required to compensate CMS for its conditional payments. In a simple settlement model, this makes settlement less likely. Also, the reporting delays and uncertainty regarding the size of these conditional payments are likely to further frustrate the settlement process. We provide results, using data from a large insurer, showing that, on average, implementation of the MSP reporting amendments led to …

Disparities In Hospital Services Utilization Among Patients With Mental Health Issues: A Statewide Example Examining Insurance Status And Race Factors From 1999-2010, Viann N. Nguyen-Feng, Hind A. Beydoun, Michael K. Mcshane, James D. Blando

Community & Environmental Health Faculty Publications

There exist many disconnects between the mental and general health care sectors. However, a goal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 is to change this by improving insurance access and the intersection of mental and general health care. As insurance status intersects with race, the present study examines how race, insurance status, and hospital mental health services utilization differ across groups within the state of New Jersey. The present study aims to determine trends in hospital mental health care utilization by insurance status and race from 1999 to 2010. The rate of self-pay for mental health disorders in …

Health Insurance, Risk, And Responsibility After The Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act, Tom Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay explores the new social contract of healthcare solidarity through private ownership, markets, choice, and individual responsibility embodied in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This essay first explains the four main health care risk distribution institutions affected by the Act – Medicare, Medicaid, the individual and small employer market, and the large group market – with an emphasis on how the Act changes those institutions and how they are financed. The essay then describes the “fair share” approach to health care financing embodied in the Act. This approach largely rejects the actuarial fairness vision of what constitutes …

Ua25/2 Connections, Wku Human Resources

WKU Archives Records

Newsletter created by WKU Human Resources for the faculty and staff of WKU regarding personnel issues and benefits.