The Uninsured at the Starting Line: Findings from the 2013 Kaiser Survey of Low-Income Americans and the ACA

In January 2014, the major coverage provisions of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) went into full effect. These provisions include the creation of new Health Insurance Marketplaces where low and moderate income families can receive premium tax credits to purchase coverage and, in states that opted to expand their Medicaid programs, the expansion of Medicaid eligibility to almost all adults with incomes at or below 138% of the federal poverty level (FPL). The ACA has the potential to reach many of the 47 million Americans who lack insurance coverage, as well as millions of insured people who face financial strain or coverage limits related to health insurance. Though implementation is underway and people are already enrolling in coverage, policymakers continue to need information to inform coverage expansions. Data on the population targeted for coverage expansions can help policymakers target early efforts, provide insight into some of the challenges that are arising in the first months of new coverage, and evaluate the ACA's longer-term effects. The Kaiser Family Foundation has launched a new series of comprehensive surveys of the low and moderate income population to provide data on these groups' experience with health coverage, current patterns of care, and family situation. This report, based on the baseline 2013 Kaiser Survey of Low-Income Americans and the ACA, provides a snapshot of health insurance coverage, health care use and barriers to care, and financial security among insured and uninsured adults across the income spectrum at the starting line of ACA implementation. The report also examines how findings from the baseline survey can help policymakers understand and address early challenges in implementing health reform

God and the Machine: A Correlational Study on Mobile Phone Dependence, Religious Coping, and Mental Health

Research on the various effects of mobile phones did not begin to be published until after they had already been integrated into society. To date, the results of various studies looking into the relationship between mobile phone use and mental health demonstrate that phones, if used in problematic ways, have negative effects on mental health. Even so, there are no studies looking into problematic mobile phone use and how it correlates with spirituality and positive religious coping as well as mental health. Due to this gap in the research, this anonymous online study was designed to look into correlations between problematic cell phone use, positive religious coping, and mental health. The Adapted Cell Phone Addiction Test (ACPAT) was used to assess problematic cell phone use, the Religious Coping Activities Scales (RCOPE) were used to assess positive religious coping, and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-42) were used to assess mental health

Resolutions for principal series representations of p-adic GL(n)

Let F be a nonarchimedean locally compact field with residue characteristic p and G(F) the group of F-rational points of a connected reductive group. Following Schneider and Stuhler, one can realize, in a functorial way, any smooth complex finitely generated representation of G(F) as the 0-homology of a certain coefficient system on the semi-simple building of G(F). It is known that this method does not apply in general for smooth mod p representations of G(F), even when G= GL(2). However, we prove that a principal series representation of GL(n,F) over a field with arbitrary characteristic can be realized as the 0-homology of the corresponding coefficient system

Twice-Two: Hegel’s Comic Redoubling of Being and Nothing

Following Freud’s analysis of the fragile line between the uncanny double and its comic redoubling, I identify the doubling of the double found in critical moments of Hegelian dialectic as producing a kind of comic effect. It almost goes without saying that two provides greater pleasure than one, the loneliest number. Many also find two to be preferable to three, the tired trope of dialectic as a teleological waltz. Two seems to offer lightness, relieving one from her loneliness and lacking the complications of a third who comes in between. And yet, we learn through Marx and Freud that the double (even the double of tragedy and farce) borders on something closer to horror than comedy. In the following, I would like to explore why four is funnier than two in my staging of dialectic as the doubling of the double or, to borrow a movie title from Laurel and Hardy, “Twice Two” (Roach et al. 1933a). I will begin by exploring the formulations of the double in the form of a pair of opposites and in the form of a pair of twins. The literary tropes of the double as the odd couple, on one side, and the twins, on the other, appear to serve very different narrative functions, which incite different kinds of affective responses from the audience. However, the form of the opposed double sometimes conceals the realization that the empty or fragmented content of the first is only reduplicated in the second. The “straight man” of the odd couple cannot see himself in his counterpart “the comic.” The redoubling of the double, however, forces not only the audience, but the original double on stage to confront what was already present, but unrealized, from the beginning. To illustrate this redoubling of the double within the opening of Hegel’s Science of Logic, I consider two short films by Laurel and Hardy in which the comic duo redoubles itself. The formula (2 x 2) produces a comic excess through the dialectical redoubling of there uncanny double

Young people not in education, employment or training

"This paper highlights policies and provision that exist for young people not in education, employment or training in Wales. Strategies can cut across many different policy areas and are developed at UK, Welsh and local level. The picture of provision is complex. The paper looks at some of the challenges that exist for policy makers and agencies working in this policy field, and examines stakeholder views on what types of support work best for young people not in education, employment or training or at risk of becoming so. It also highlights some of the particular challenges facing these young people" -- front cover

The Harmful Traditional Practice of Breast Ironing in Cameroon, Africa.

This article will examine the harmful traditional practice of breast ironing, a common occurrence in Cameroon. Breast ironing affects approximately one in every four adolescent girls in Cameroon and is typically performed by the mother of the child who will heat common household items such as pestles or grinding stones and massage the breast tissue, hoping to flatten the breast or reverse the growth. This practice causes irreversible physical and psychological trauma to young girls and is performed in hopes to deter men from making sexual advances onto young girls. This article also examines legislation around the practice, both locally and internationally, as well as taking a look into some of the organizations working towards educating people about the practice in order to find a way to end it