Browsing by Author "Ralston, August"

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    The Efficacy of Mandated Insurance Coverage for AIDS
    (National Association of Insurance Commissioners, 1989-06) Nielson, Norma; Powers, Mark; Ralston, August
    At least 16,000 Americans have AIDS, and the Centers for Disease Control of the United States Public Health Service estimate that as many as 1.5 million Americans may be infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus ("HIV"). As public awareness of AIDS and its associated costs grows, the likelihood increases that insurance regulators and state legislatures will face calls to prohibit insurers from denying or restricting insurance coverage for AIDS victims. This article explores the various forms such a mandate might take, the practicality of mandated AIDS coverage, and the specific provisions of medical expense plans which play the most significant role in determining coverage for AIDS patients. The analysis concludes that, for a variety of reasons, legislation amending state insurance statutes to require coverage for AIDS would probably prove an ineffective mechanism to achieve laudable social objectives.
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    Optimum Retirement Age
    (Palgrave Macmillian, 1982) Larsen (Nielson), Norma; Ralston, August
    This paper models optimum retirement age by considering both the demand for a human resource (expressed here as the demand for a particular employee A) and the supply of that human resource. Optimal retirement age is obviously a combination of the employer’s offer to employ A and A’s willingness to be employed. These demand and supply sides of the retirement age question will be considered in this paper. However, the emphasis will be on the demand side. The supply side has previously received more attention by researchers [1,6]. The paper uses a classical economic marginal analysis of the retirement age question and begins by assuming a competitive labor market. This assumption is soon relaxed to allow consideration of more realistic possibilities, including imperfect infor¬mation, which may result in exploitation of employees, implicit labor contracts, and the like. Special attention is given to the impact of pension plans on the optimum retirement age.