Congress advances on health care reform: one step at a time

In adopting the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), Congress made a series of small but significant steps toward improving access to health care benefits. The Act's centerpiece is its new requirements for group health plans and for the health insurance industry for assuring portability, access, and renewability of health insurance coverage. Of nearly equal importance is the pilot program established for testing the viability of medical savings accounts. Other health-related changes include adjustments in the rules governing duplication and coordinating of Medicare-related plans, recommendations with respect to privacy of health information of employees, an increase in the deduction for health insurance costs for self-employed individuals, and permission for unemployed persons to make withdrawals from IRAs and other qualified plans for certain medical services' costs. This article summarizes these and other key provisions of HIPAA.     

Post-9/11 wartime intelligence analysis

A few years into the Iraq War, those engaged in that fight realized that the methods of intelligence analysis, refined in Cold War, were not sufficient for wartime. To manage the massive increase in intelligence data new analytic tools were adopted for unearthing and connecting key developments and individuals hidden from view within it. Only then could the secret networks of Iraqi insurgents be uncovered. Several of these changes were put into practice by the US counterterrorism force that deployed to Iraq as Task Force 714. The study describes what these changes encompassed, and how they were employed to support those given the mission of attacking and dismantling Al-Qaeda in Iraq’s networked underground.     

Iranian covert aggression: Support for radical political Islamists conducting internal subversion against states in the Middle East/Southwest Asia region

The extent to which the Islamic Republic of Iran provides covert assistance to radical Islamist groups employing terrorism and violence against states in the Middle East/Southwest Asia region is a controversial issue. This study takes an analytic approach to the topic to determine the degree to which linkages exist. The evidence examined was drawn exclusively from open sources. The author provides an analytic framework for both current and future analysis of the issue. Five specific conclusions about past, present, and impending Iranian sponsorship of radical Islamists conducting internal subversion activities in the region are deduced from the assessment of the evidence. Given the consistency in Tehran's use of covert aggression as an instrument of foreign policy since the establishment of the Islamic Republic, there is little to indicate a change in this policy in the near term.