A review of recent developments affecting COBRA rights

Due to the high cost of health care claims and COBRA's status as remedial legislation, COBRA has generated a significant amount of litigation in recent years. While the early COBRA decisions tended to broaden the law in order to provide a remedy to an otherwise uninsured qualified beneficiary, the recent trend in the case law has been to limit the expansion of COBRA rights based on a narrower construction of the statute. Even so, COBRA still represents a legal minefield for employers. As a result, a careful employer will minimize its exposure by monitoring changes in the law and its interpretation and making appropriate modifications to its COBRA documentation and administration. This article discusses some of the more significant recent changes in the law affecting qualified beneficiaries' COBRA rights--and therefore, employers' exposure.     

The MacArthur Treatment Competence Study. II

This article reports the development and psychometric properties of three standardized and objectively scored measures, the MacArthur Treatment Competence Research Instruments. They were designed to assess abilities related conceptually to four legal standards for competence to consent to treatment: understanding, appreciation, rational manipulation (reasoning), and expressing a choice. Scoring reliability, internal consistency, intertest correlations, and test-retest correlations were examined with data from samples of hospitalized patients with schizophrenia, major depression, and ischemic heart disease, as well as matched non-ill community samples. The results indicate very good interscorer reliability and provide guidance for the use of the instruments and interpretation of their results in future research on patients' decisional abilities in treatment contexts.     

Interreligious conflict in Israel: The group basis of conflicting visions

Utilizing several theories of sociocultural mobilization, this paper examines the contours of secular-religious conflict in contemporary Israel. According to a survey of adult Israelis, resistance to religious coercion among the secular population is driven primarily by symbolic, social, and cognitive forces rather than perceived discrimination or the threat posed by spatial proximity to the religious. As such, it is rooted in cultural identity. The theocratic disposition among religious Israelis is almost entirely a matter of social identification. These findings both confirm existing theories of intergroup conflict and suggest a framework for analyzing religion and state controversies in other polities.     

Reviews

The Possessed and the Dispossessed: Spirits, Identity and Power in a Madagascar Migrant Town by Lesley A. Sharp.

University of California Press, Berkeley and London. 1993. xx plus 345 pp. including maps, illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography and index.

Marketing Africa's High Value Foods edited by S. Jaffee and J. Morton. World Bank, Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, Iowa. 1995. 503 pp. including bibliography and index.

Democratisation and Demilitarisation in Lesotho: The General Election of 1993 and its Aftermath edited by Roger Southall and Tsoeu Petlane. Africa Institute of South Africa, Pretoria. 1995. xvii plus 193 pp. R60 ($30).

A Culture of Censorship: Secrecy and Intellectual Repression in South Africa by Christopher Merrett.

David Philip, Cape Town; University of Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg and Mercer University Press, Macon (Georgia). 1994. xv plus 296 pp. including notes and index. Paperback. Price R54,95.

The Eritrean Question: The Conflict Between the Right of Self‐Deter‐mination and the Interests of States by Eyassu Gayim.

Iustus Förlag AB, Uppsala (Sweden). 1993. 716 pp. including figures, tables, notes, maps, annexures bibliography and index. Paperback.

The Rwanda Crisis 1959–1994 — History of a Genocide by G. Prunier. Hurst & Co. London. 1995. xiii plus 389 pp. Paperback. Price £12.50.

Entrance into Reproductive Life: A Demographic Expression of Socio‐Economic Changes in a Senegalese Rural Area by Valérie Delaunay. Centre Français sur la Population et le Développement (CEPED), Paris. 1994. Les Etudes du CEPED No 7. xxii plus 326 pp. including figures, maps, tables, appendices and bibliography. Paperback. Price 90FF.

Verso un Nuovo Sudafrica: Dall'Apartheid allo Stato Multietnico by Chiara Robertazzi.

Milan: Francoangeli. 1995. 130 pp. Paperback.