Funding the rising cost of U.S health care Assignment

Funding the rising cost of U.S health care - Assignment Example The healthcare delivery system of the US has been voluntarily involved in response to the considerations regarding the accessibility, quality, along with cost of the health insurance services (Jones & Bartlett Publishers LLC, 2008). However, the continuous rising of healthcare costs has long been witnessed by the demographic groups can be regarded as a phenomenal concern of the country. Accessibility to the healthcare services has long been recognized as a key issue in the US healthcare system. Both the government and non-government insurance agencies are recognized to focus on developing their offerings in order to accomplish a significant growth for their institutions. The consolidation amidst the health insurance service providers in the nation, have been raising issues associated with accessibility due to their unabatedly increasing price and availability of quality based service facilities (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2014). The following figure details about the overall health in surance coverage of the total US population. With regard to the above statistics, it is affirmed that the healthcare sector of the US has been undergoing an unsustainable condition due to the rising cost of healthcare services provided by both public and private health insurance institutions (U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2013; Shi, 2012). Medicare services provided by the institutions are likely to involve higher pricing strategies that often raise major issues for the population with minimum or considerably less income level. The Census Bureau in the year 2011 reported that more than 36% of US households living below poverty line were not insured. With reference to the total spending on healthcare and its insurance beneficiaries, the US spends approximately USD 2 trillion every year that can be apparently identified to be higher than other countries of the world (Wilper et al., 2009). The

Balance in the Administration of Justice Security Paper Essay

Balance in the Administration of Justice Security Paper - Essay Example This usually holds true too in other nations. They have their own ways of educating and updating their citizens of the current plans and implements. This is for the purpose of ensuring that the government is functioning for the service of the people, to uphold their rights and secure their territories. There are certain sectors that are very particular with the repercussions in the legal system of the goals aimed for. In the piece, Communications Privacy in the Digital Age (1997), a number of legal issues confronted by people in general are laid out. First of these issues is the fact of making 'Wiretapping' permissible to be used in dealing with certain crimes. Formerly, 'wiretapping' was allowed only for serious crimes that threaten the national security. Today, the list included crimes such as fraudulent statements in documents and applications as well the causing of destruction in any property owned by the State. Another point highlighted in the articles is the need to make more productive results in proposed actions. There are illegal practices that contravene the purpose of justice and security. The item also mentioned the authorizations provided by courts in proceeding with 'electronic surveillance' and the reaction to such through suggesting other methods to be used to acqu ire data. Most of the time also, the parties concerned contest the method of obtaining data quite too late and they barely survive to win in the proceedings ("Communications Privacy in the Digital Age", 1997). The court of "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act" or FISA already demonstrated that in its seventeen years of existence, there was never an instance that it denied a request for a "government electronic surveillance." In 1996 alone, there were about 839 orders given out and the statistics increases by twenty percent every year since then ("Communications Privacy in the Digital Age", 1997). Basically, what this piece emphasizes are the various implications to the legal and governmental system of the rules and procedures implemented just to respond to the needs of justice and security. This has been the cause of alarm for many people because the developments and advancements in technology can be abused and taken advantage of by those who have access to such. Changes in Technology and Mass Communication due to Justice and Security Reasons At this point, it is worthy to note that the piece, Communications Privacy in the Digital Age (1997), do indicate some key points of the improvement. These areas of development include 'Communications Methods,' 'Expansion,' 'Location Information and Monitoring,' 'Modifications in Wireless Service,' 'Internet Advancements,' and 'Computer Analysis.' These shall be discussed in detail below. However, at this point, the one concept discussed in the article to keep in mind is the so-called 'double-edged sword.' At one side, there is the governmental mechanism that takes opportune of the endless possibilities offered by technology. On the other side, the public fears such possibilities because of the tendency for the power to corrupt and for authority to abuse. Thus, it is imperative to be aware and cautious of the various marks of development adopted and implemented ("Communications

Methods of Analyzing Data in Data Warehouse

Methods of Analyzing Data in Data Warehouse Data Mining methods for Customer Relationaship Management Abstract-Data warehousing and data mining, applied to Customer Relationship Management (CRM), are a relatively fresh sector for organizations considering their immense advantage. Through data mining, organizations can identify key customers, predict future behaviors and take proactive and knowledge driven decisions. In this article, we discuss few data mining techniques for various CRM activities. Keywords- Customer relationship management (CRM); Data mining The crucial element of any successfull business is value creation for a customer. CRM basically tries to pull in, maintain and manage customers. Business intelligence analyses and interprets large amounts of customer data to provide organizations with practical information which can be used to devise strategies for improvement and growth. The ease of data collection in todays world coupled with the low cost of maintaining a data warehouse has increased the accessibility of huge customer data. Data mining has become a backbone for CRM activities. Few years back, data analysis was linked with expensive computing and complicated logic which only mathematicians could understand but this has changed now due to the availability of user friendly desktop tools. Data mining has become a backbone for CRM activities. Data mining and data analysis methods when used properly help to better all CRM phases. In order to retain important customers and to continue to provide the best customer satisfaction, availability of timely and actionable information is very critical. Such information plays a key role in facilitating smart organizational decisions which enables in creating better value for the customer. For maintaining a successful CRM strategy, investments in the understanding of data mining techniques is crucial.ÂÂ   This paper would try and mention some of the data mining techniques for optimization of CRM activities and also to find which technique is important. Pulling in new customers, minimizing defection by important customers and enhancing the experience of existing customers are the key aspects which an effective CRM business strategy assists with. .This article mentions some of the data mining techniques for optimizing CRM activities. A. Content analysis for identifying the right customer The method of deciding on the units of analysis based on the direction of the study is known as content analysis. The conceptÂÂ   of computable and specifiable, categories are defined which help in grouping the processed units of data, quantify and analyze the samples. Content analysis is often used on various advertisements styles, in email communications and on social media. The figure below shows information flow from data collection to useable knowledge. Figure: Knowledge discovery process. [2] First step applies pre-established rules to select data and categorize them into relevant groups. Next step is to clean up and reorder data by disposing off unnecessary information, to establish record-keeping formats and for the purpose of maintaining the integrity and consistency of data which helps in the construction a data platform. The organised data is refined further by grouping into related subjects using data transformation methods. Models and interconnections are developed after analysis which in turn help with decision support. This data when applied to a companies unstructured data is used to find the core (right) customer which in turn helps in planning efficient business strategies and providing appropriate customer service to different customers. B. Mining Customer behavioural changes In an ever changing business environment, trying to analyse customer behaviour is very helpful. Customer, transaction and product databases can be used for change mining. Below figure shows the flow of change mining. Fig. 2. Flowchart for mining changes in customer behavior. [3] Generally some usefull information is concealed in the huge amount of raw data and this needs to be extracted using data transformation. Customer and transaction databases can be used to analyse customer behaviour by using data integration and transformation. As per the figure above, customer, product and transaction databases are used to analyse the customer behavioural variables: Recency, Frequency, Monetary (RFM). Recency represents most recent transaction time, frequency is the number of purchases during a certain period and monetary isÂÂ   the standard amount of expenditure. The attributes, frequency and monetary, are used to segment the customer into different categories namely: Uncertain, Frequent, Spender, Best. The Recency variable can be combined with the above study to develop a target market. Association rules are used for mining customer behaviour by analyzing the relationship of products purchased by a customer in retail stores. A classic application of association rules is the market basket analysis where products bought by a customer during a visit to the supermarket are analysed. This can be used to identify corelations between product purchase and customer profile represented by demographic variables. Customer behavioural data are most effective for generating predictive data which optimizes the CRM. The study of investigating change in customer behaviour is called change mining. Change mining looks at changing customer behaviour to develop some pointers which can be used to mathematically quantify the change in beahviour.ÂÂ   The output of all the above is analysed data which can be used to support efficient marketing. C. Learn and Usage model for Customer retention Loosing current customers to a rival company is termed as customer churn.ÂÂ   Finding better methods for customer retention is very crucial as acquiring new customers proves to be very expensive.This is two phase model: Learning and Usage. The learning phase constructs a churn model which tests and predicts the probablity of defection for a certain customer based on historic data. A policy model is also constructed which clusters the churners by grouping them based on notable attributes. These are then used for creating proper policies for individual groups. During the usage phase the churn model predicts if a certain customer would defect and when there are strong chances of defection, the policy model comes up with relevant policies to retain them. This method not only predicts churning but also helps in reducing it. The following figure shows the learner mode architecture: Fig3: Architecture for learning mode [5] During the learning mode the churn model learner is constructed using histiorical data of individual subscriber like loyalty history, deactivation data, payment history, usage patterns, etc. The churn model can be represented as a decision tree which is used to comment on the likelihood of a specific customer defecting based on their previous data. The policy model constructor is used to build retention strategies for potential churners. The policy model builds retention strategies in two steps, first step is to consult learned churn model to recognize the attributes which have strong relation to the churning and based on these attributes the churners are classified into diferent groups and labelled as per the most significant attribute. Second step is to analyse the significance of these attributes and reccomends policies for retaining the group of churners. In the usage phase the churner model is consulted to predict the chances of customer churn based on the customer data. If the churn probablity is more than 60% then it is considered that the customer has high chances of churning and so policy model proposes a policy response based on the attribute of the group to which the customer belongs for the purpose of retention. This journal reviews the literature concerned with data mining techniques and its applications in CRM. Considering the current competition in the market all organizations suffer from a lot of customer churn which results in huge losses as the cost for acquiring new customers is ten times more than that of retaining existing customers. Hence a lot of research has been made on customer retention. This is also evident from the number of reasearch papers submitted between the years 2000 2006 [1]. The area of customer retention definetly seems to be crucial and requires further research. Data mining methodologies help in providing better understanding of raw data and hence would always be one of the major areas to be researched upon in the futire. References E.W.T Ngai, Li Xiu and D.C.K Chau, Application of data mining techniques in customer relationship management Expert Systems with Applications, vol. 36, Issue 2, part 2, March 2009, pp. 2592 2602. C.W Chang, C.T Lin, L.Q Wang, Mining the text information to optimizing the customer relationship management, Expert Systems with Applications, Vol. 36, Issue 2, Part 1, March 2009, pp. 1433-1443. Mu Chen Chen, Ai Lin Chiu, Hsu Hwa Chang, Mining changes in customer behavior in retail marketing, Expert Systems with Applications, vol. 28 (2005), pp. 773-781 W. Buckinx, D.V.D. Poel, Customer base analysis: Partial defection of behaviorally-loyal clients in a non-contractual FMCG retail setting, European Journal of Operational Research, 164 (2005), pp. 252-268. Bong-Horng Chu, Ming Shian Tsai, Cheng Seen Ho, Towards a hybrid data mining model for customer retention, Knowledge-Based systems, Volume 20, Issue 8, December 2007, pp. 703-718 Y.L. Chen, K. Tang, R.J. Shen, Y.H. Hu, Market basket analysis in a multiple store environment, Decision Support Systems, 40 (2005), pp. 339-354. YangSeog Kim, W. Nick Street, An intelligent system for customer targeting: a data mining approach, Decision Support Systems, Volume 37, Issue 2, May 2004, pp. 215-228.

Lord of the Flies :: essays papers

Lord of the Flies Artificial Restraints in Lord of the Flies "GOLDING PUTS SO MANY ARTIFICIAL RESTRAINTS ON HIS STORY IN ORDER TO EMPHASISE HIS POINT, THAT THE WHOLE THING COMES OUT TOO NEATLY AND, IN FACT, REDUCES THE POWER OF HIS MESSAGE." I think that, while the boys experience immense bad luck due to the author, the story still proves its point. It is still possible though, that the bad luck of the boys could have been experienced in real life. I think that without this bad luck, the point of the story wouldn’t be as great, because without the restraint’s Golding placed on the boys, life on the island would have been too easy for the boys. The major constraint that Golding puts on the boys is the personality clash between Jack and Ralph. From the beginning, when Ralph is elected leader, Jack hates Ralph, and towards the end of the book, the feeling becomes mutual. Without Jack and Ralph’s problems, life would have been easy, and the ‘darkness of man’s heart’ would not have been conveyed to the reader. Jack shows ‘the darkness’ and if he and Ralph had just been friends, there would never have been an opportunity for Jack to show this darkness which lurked beneath the surface. Golding also uses the dead pilot conveniently against the boys - the way in which he is caught in the trees just in the right position to be caught by the wind and look like the beast and the way the wind picks up after Simon has let him down from the trees and carries him out to sea, so that the other boys cannot see that it wasn’t a beast. The author uses the boy’s fear against them, and although this could possibly happen in the situation, Golding uses it as a weapon against them, their morale and their companionship. I think that the boys split up and go to Jack because of the fear - he can kill the beast, he can get them meat, and if they ever get upset, he can start a dance and all will be fine.

Harry Potter Essay

Harry Potter is a series of seven novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books is the chronicle adventures of awizard, Harry Potter, and his friends Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School. The main story concerns Harry’s quest to overcome the Dark wizard Lord Voldemort, whose aims are to become immortal, conquer the wizarding world and destroy all those who stand in his way, especially Harry Potter. Since the release of the first novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on 30 June 1997 and the last on July 2007, the books have gained immense popularity, commercial success worldwide As of June 2011, the book series has sold about 450 million copies, making it the best-selling book series in history, and has been translated into 67 languages. The last four books consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history. Question 1: To what extent was the Harry Potter series simply a loss leader for the hypermarkets? Harry Potter simply a loss leader for the hypermarkets because it’s just a marketing strategy which was used to gain enormous market share of the Harry Potter books with the acceptance of millions dollars loss. Question 2: Should such price cutting be outlawed or regulated to protect smaller retailers? Price cutting should be regulated to not only protect smaller retailer but also prevent market from many consequences such as leading to loss profit and price war, cheapen a brand, etc when price cutting is not controlled. Question 3: Bookstores in Kuala Lumpur withdrew the book in protest. Was their reaction justified? The action of bookstore in Kuala Lumpur withdrawing seventh Harry Potter in protest is justified because it protects their own benefit from being loss and claiming their objection attitude toward the loss leader strategy of other giant retailer.

Coastal management involves developing strategies Essay

Coastal management involves developing strategies that are designed to protect and preserve the coastal environment. The actions of humans have altered the operation of the natural coastal processes. During our fieldwork we have learned the key issues of coastal management and their strategies and the way they address them at Cronulla Beach. The three key geographical processes that shape the coastal environment are erosion, transportation and deposition. The key issues relating to coastal management at Cronulla beach are Pollution, Tourism, Introduced Plants and Population Growth. Pollution is one main key issue at Cronulla beach because people are littering they are eating on the beach. There are factories near the beach which is very bad for the environment as the smoke from the factories is going into the water is not safe as all the toxic will be in the water and it would not be safe for people to swim. Tourist come to the beach as it is a very popular destination for the residents and tourist. During holiday times the population of these areas can double, placing pressure on the infrastructure and environment of the area. Recreational activities like four-wheel driving places pressure on the coastal environment if it is not carefully managed, large dune areas and beaches where vehicles are given access can be highly susceptible to erosion. Population growth is the overdevelopment and rapid growth of coastal areas occur due to the current Australian trend for people to move from large cities to smaller coastal towns and villages where the lifestyle is more relaxed. Introduced plants have areas along east coast which have become invaded by introduced plants. The bitou brush or Chrysanthemoides Monilifera introduced in Australia in 1908. This plant can overtake native vegetation and this would not offer sand dunes have same protection against wind erosion as it is covered by native vegetation. The management strategies used to address the issues at Cronulla Beach is Seabee wall, fencing and signage/ rubbish bins. Seabee walls are used to minimize the impact of erosion behind the wall and protect road, paths and residential area. The slope encourages the wave to move back out to sea. Where it is reducing the speed of the wave and the lip redirects the wave back out to sea. The holes are to trap the water so the wave slows down and  depthposion bought the sand. There are no sand dunes at Elouera or Wanda in Cronulla because they have sand dunes there and the sand dune would protect what is behind it. Fences are a useful management technique used to ensure adequate access to beach for people while protecting the vegetation that stabilizes the sand dunes. The advantage of fence is that they secure the beach, it shows where people are allowed to walk. Signage is very important when it come to beaches as it tells people what you can and cannot do on the beach basically tells you what you are allowed to do on any beach but the signage stops bad things from happening to the beaches and what you are meant to do on the beach. Rubbish bins are just as important it keeps all the litter away from the beach and makes sure that it does not harm the coastal environment and keeps the beach looking neat and tidy and that it is not going into the water and harm the sea creatures that are in the water. People should not have to go and tidy up after other people who dump their rubbish on the beach. In conclusion, there are many things that we can do for the coastal environment and the issues that relate to beaches and how you can management them through strategies and it is also for the future generations it is to preserve and conserve for them so there is still a beach by the time it is the future.