Mental health and substance abuse insurance parity for federal employees: How did health plans respond?

A fundamental concern with competitive health insurance markets is that they will not supply efficient levels of coverage for treatment of costly, chronic, and predictable illnesses, such as mental illness. Since the inception of employer-based health insurance, coverage for mental health services has been offered on a more limited basis than coverage for general medical services. While mental health advocates view insurance limits as evidence of discrimination, adverse selection and moral hazard can also explain these differences in coverage. The intent of parity regulation is to equalize private insurance coverage for mental and physical illness (an equity concern) and to eliminate wasteful forms of competition due to adverse selection (an efficiency concern). In 2001, a presidential directive requiring comprehensive parity was implemented in the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Program. In this study, we examine how health plans responded to the parity directive. Results show that in comparison with a set of unaffected health plans, federal employee plans were significantly more likely to augment managed care through contracts with managed behavioral health "carve-out" firms after parity. This finding helps to explain the absence of an effect of the FEHB Program directive on total spending, and is relevant to the policy debate in Congress over federal parity.     

The Gendered Face of Partisan Politics: Consequences of Facial Sex Typicality for Vote Choice

Facial cues are consequential for voters’ behavior at the polls. Yet the facial cues that are associated with vote choice remain under-examined. We predicted that vote choice judgments rely, in part, on the sex typicality of facial cues (i.e., the degree of facial masculinity and femininity) that vary as a function of candidate gender and partisan identification. Stimuli included image pairs of winners and runners-up in the elections for the 111th U.S. House of Representatives. In Study 1, we found that female Republican candidates who appeared relatively more feminine and male Republican candidates who looked relatively less masculine in their appearance were more likely to win their election. Democratic candidates’ electoral success was not related to their sex typicality. In Study 2, we found that relatively masculine-appearing Democrats and feminine-appearing Republicans were more likely to be selected in a hypothetical vote choice task. Implications for U.S. partisan politics are discussed.     

The 2018 California Wildfires: Integration of Rapid DNA to Dramatically Accelerate Victim Identification

In November 2018, Butte County, California, was decimated by the Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire in state history. Over 150,000 acres were destroyed, and at its peak, the fire consumed eighty acres per minute. The speed and intensity of the oncoming flames killed scores of people, and weeks before the fire was contained, first responders began searching through the rubble of 18,804 residences and commercial buildings. As with most mass disasters, conventional identification modalities (e.g., fingerprints, odontology, hardware) were utilized to identify victims. The intensity and duration of the fire severely degraded most of the remains, and these approaches were useful in only 22 of 84 cases. In the past, the remaining cases would have been subjected to conventional DNA analysis, which may have required months to years. Instead, Rapid DNA technology was utilized (in a rented recreational vehicle outside the Sacramento morgue) in the victim identification effort. Sixty-nine sets of remains were subjected to Rapid DNA Identification and, of these, 62 (89.9%) generated short tandem repeat profiles that were subjected to familial searching; essentially all these profiles were produced within hours of sample receipt. Samples successfully utilized for DNA identification included blood, bone, liver, muscle, soft tissue of unknown origin, and brain. In tandem with processing of 255 family reference samples, 58 victims were identified. This work represents the first use of Rapid DNA Identification in a mass casualty event, and the results support the use of Rapid DNA as an integrated tool with conventional disaster victim identification modalities.     

Merit by Any Other Name—Refraining the Civil Service First Principle

Merit has traditionally served as the foundation of public human resources management (HRM) policy and practice. Today, the concept is more closely associated with compensation (merit pay) than with values that drive behavior in federal HRM. As the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense struggle to create new HRM systems that promote results‐oriented government, the question arises, how does merit inform practice in these new systems? In this article, I identify the values that are influencing federal HRM decision making now and develop a model for merit‐based HRM systems in a less regulated environment through a view from three lenses: the historical evolution of the merit concept in American government, how merit is treated in the law, and how merit has been applied in Title‐5 exempt organizations. This discussion will help to create HRM policies and practices that are grounded in values that managers and employees can embrace and that translate into behaviors that promote both good relationships and results‐oriented performance.     

Using National Incident-Based Reporting System Data for Strategic Crime Analysis

The utility of the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) forstrategic crime analysis has yet to be explored. The NIBRS represents anadvancement over existing reporting systems and possesses considerableutility to frontline law enforcement with respect to strategic crimeanalysis. This paper discusses the utility of the NIBRS for identifyinglocal and regional trends in narcotics related offenses. As an example, weselected four localities from the 1997 Virginia NIBRS data to examine trendsin the sale/distribution and possession of narcotics. Our analysis showsthat the NIBRS provides significantly more incident-related detail than hasheretofore been available for strategic crime analysis at the regional orstate level. Moreover, the NIBRS provides neighboring communities theopportunity to compare information on emerging crime patterns and criminalenterprises which extend beyond local boundaries. Finally, enhancing localreporting compliance by highlighting the strategic utility of the data tolocal law enforcement will ultimately ensure the quality of the data set,which can then be employed by larger entities as well as criminal justiceresearchers for policy development and planning.