Health Insurance Exchanges: Legal Issues

Health insurance exchanges (HIE) are entities that organize the market for health insurance by connecting small businesses and individuals into larger pools that spread the risk for insurance companies, while facilitating the availability, choice and purchase of private health insurance for the uninsured. While there are legal issues that warrant consideration under a federal, state, or private exchange framework, those issues are not insurmountable barriers to implementation

Review of \u3cem\u3eShifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State.\u3c/em\u3e Robert C. Lieberman. Reviewed by Jill Quadagno, Florida State University

Book review of Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State. Robert C. Lieberman. Reviewed by Jill Quadagno, Florida State Universit

Review of \u3cem\u3eShifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State.\u3c/em\u3e Robert C. Lieberman. Reviewed by Jill Quadagno, Florida State University

Book review of Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State. Robert C. Lieberman. Reviewed by Jill Quadagno, Florida State Universit

Managing the Socially Marginalized: Attitudes Towards Welfare, Punishment and Race

Welfare and incarceration policies have converged to form a system of governance over socially marginalized groups, particularly racial minorities. In both of these policy areas, rehabilitative and social support objectives have been replaced with a more punitive and restrictive system. The authors examine the convergence in individual-level attitudes concerning welfare and criminal punishment, using national survey data. The authors\u27 analysis indicates a statistically significant relationship between punitive attitudes toward welfare and punishment. Furthermore, accounting for the respondents\u27 racial attitudes explains the bivariate relationship between welfare and punishment. Thus, racial attitudes seemingly link support for punitive approaches to opposition to welfare expenditures. The authors discuss the implications of this study for welfare and crime control policies by way of the conclusion

Fetal testosterone and autistic traits

Studies of amniotic testosterone in humans suggest that fetal testosterone (fT) is related to specific (but not all) sexually dimorphic aspects of cognition and behaviour. It has also been suggested that autism may be an extreme manifestation of some male-typical traits, both in terms of cognition and neuroanatomy. In this paper, we examine the possibility of a link between autistic traits and fT levels measured in amniotic fluid during routine amniocentesis. Two instruments measuring number of autistic traits (the Childhood Autism Spectrum Test (CAST) and the Child Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ-Child)) were completed by these women about their children (N = 235), ages 6-10 years. Intelligence Quotient (IQ) was measured in a subset of these children (N = 74). fT levels were positively associated with higher scores on the CAST and AQ-Child. This relationship was seen within sex as well as when the sexes were combined, suggesting this is an effect of fT rather than of sex per se. No relationships were found between overall IQ and the predictor variables, or between IQ and CAST or AQ-Child. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that prenatal androgen exposure is related to children exhibiting more autistic traits. These results need to be followed up in a much larger sample to test if clinical cases of ASC have elevated fT.</p