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Biomedical subjects

R J Myers

Publications and source records attributed to R J Myers.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1994

The future financing of Medicare.

Regardless of the timing and the type of federal action to reform the nation's health care system, the Medicare program's financial problems must be addressed soon. Serious concerns exist about both the Hospital Insurance and the Supplementary Medical Insurance portions of the program.

Health Care Costs↗
PubMed1992

Health care for all: comparing proposals for reform. A roundtable discussion: Part 2.

Part 1 of this roundtable discussion [Geriatrics 1992; 47(Sept):34-48] examined the flaws in our current healthcare system and factors that are interfering with our nation's ability to achieve reforms. This month, the panelists discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the major healthcare reform proposals, including managed care, single-payer systems, and so-called "play or pay." The practical aspects of any redistribution of healthcare resources are considered as each panelist outlines a favored approach. The influence of special interests, such as the insurance industry, is also discussed.

Health Policy↗
PubMed1992

Health care for all: long-term care, the missing piece. A roundtable discussion: Part 3.

Long-term care has been described as the "missing piece" in many healthcare reform proposals. Yet the cost of nursing home care often exceeds that of acute care, especially for the elderly with Alzheimer's disease. In this final installment of a three-part roundtable discussion, panelists discuss the options for providing long-term care, such as social insurance, a single-payer system, play or pay, or private insurance models. Alternatives to nursing home care, such as community service centers and home care, are discussed. The panelists conclude with an examination of how these proposed reforms might affect the practices of physicians and the U.S. economy.

Community Health Services↗
PubMed1990

Evidence for the exchange of segments between genomes during the evolution of lambdoid bacteriophages.

Heteroduplexes between the DNA molecules of 12 lambdoid phages were analysed by electron microscopy. The positions of the regions of base sequence homology between the DNA molecules divide them into 35 segments, most of which have a number of alternative forms (alleles), which in general must be functionally homologous but which differ in base sequence and length. The positions of the boundaries between segments in phage lambda show that each segment is probably a gene or a group of genes, and that each phage genome is a different combination of the alleles of the segments. The frequency of the occurrence of the different alleles indicates that the total number in the natural population may be small. The different combinations of alleles of separate segments, found among the phages, indicate the exchange of segments between the phages during their evolution.

Alleles↗
PubMed1988

Accuracy of self-reports of food intake in obese and normal-weight individuals: effects of obesity on self-reports of dietary intake in adult females.

The purpose of this study was to determine the accuracy of self-reported 24-h dietary recalls of overweight and normal-weight adults. Forty female college students (21 overweight, 19 normal weight) consumed a lunch meal at the university cafeteria while being unobtrusively observed. The following day subjects returned to the lab and completed a 24-h recall of their food intake. Accuracy of recalls was assessed by comparing directly observed intake with self-reported intake. Correlated t tests comparing observed and reported intake found a significant amount of overreporting of consumption for the entire sample. When analyses were conducted on individual groups (normal weight vs overweight), no between-group differences were found. A series of one-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) (normal weight vs overweight) and a multivariate ANOVA were performed for total calories, nutrients, and the amount of over- and underreporting. No significant differences between groups were observed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1983

Financial status of the Social Security Program.

This study, originally a background paper for the National Commission on Social Security Reform and published as Appendix J in the Commission's Report, outlines the dimensions of the financing problem the Commission addressed. Prepared by Robert J. Myers, the Commission's Executive Director and a former Deputy Commissioner and Chief Actuary of the Social Security Administration, it discusses, in turn, the operational and funding procedures of the Social Security Trust Funds, the measures developed to determine the financial soundness of the program, and the financial status of each trust fund in the past, at present, and projected for the future. The author shows how program funding was gradually shifted from a modified-reserve to a pay-as-you-go basis and how the balance between income and outgo was disrupted by adverse economic conditions during 1979-81, when prices rose more rapidly than wages and unemployment was substantially higher than anticipated. Using several different economic assumptions, Myers estimates how extensive the deficits of the program could be over the short run (the remainder of the 1980's) and over the long term (the period 1982-2055).

Costs and Cost Analysis↗
PubMed1982

Actual costs of the Social Security system over the years compared with 1935 estimates.

It is believed by many that the cost of the Social Security program currently is considerably higher than it had been estimated that it would be when the program was enacted in 1935. The analysis in this article indicates that the cost of the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance program in 1980, when expressed as a percentage of taxable payroll, was almost exactly the same as it was estimated initially to be then. Such cost, however, does not include the Disability Insurance and Hospital Insurance programs and, moreover, is estimated to increase by about 50 percent over the next 50 years, whereas the initial estimates showed no cost increases after 1980.

Costs and Cost Analysis↗
PubMed1982

Investment policies and procedures of the social security trust funds.

In this article, the Deputy Commissioner of Social Security for Programs describes the policies and procedures that have been followed in investing the assets of the Social Security trust funds, explores possible alternative investment areas, and counters criticisms of investment results and maturity durations. The author's analysis shows that a departure from the current practice of investing most of the assets in long-term special issues of Federal debt would have adverse consequences for the private industrial economy, the Treasury Department, or the economy in general. He notes that, although the interest income of the trust funds in 1980 amounted to only 2.46 percent of the Social Security program's total income, the amount involved--$3.85 billion--was 1.5 times as large as total administrative expenses.

Economics↗
PubMed1982

Why do people retire from work early?

This article examines the validity of a mortality study of early retirees by Dr. Eric Kingson. The Kingson study supports the hypothesis that men who retired early were very prone to have work-limiting conditions even though they were not awarded Disability Insurance benefits. This article maintains that Kingson's study is analytically faulty because of the procedure used to categorize the sample. In comparing groups of early retirees, Kingson combined two groups--(1) severely disabled persons who died before becoming eligible to receive Disability Insurance benefits and (2) early retirees who alleged work-limiting disability. He found that their combined mortality was higher than that of those who received Disability Insurance benefits. He then concluded that, for this reason, early retirees who alleged work-limiting disability really had such disabilities. However, this article contends that the mortality effects of the first group are so great as to mask any conclusions relevant to the two groups combined. The analysis here does not conclude that persons generally do not retire early because of poor health, but rather that the findings of Kingson's study, being based on faulty mortality analysis, are not conclusive.

Adult↗
PubMed1981

113Cd NMR in binary and ternary complexes of cadmium-substituted horse liver alcohol dehydrogenase.

The 113Cd NMR has been observed for Cd(II)-substituted horse liver alcohol dehydrogenase (LADH) and its complexes with coenzymes and several substrate analogs. Compared to free enzyme, the catalytic Cd(II) resonance is shielded by 41--41 ppm in both LADH-NADH and LADH-NAD+. In ternary complexes of LADH-NAD+ with either trifluoroethanol or pyrazole, this resonance narrows and is deshielded by 75 ppm. The LADH-NADH-butyramide complex gives only 3 ppm of deshielding relative to the LADH-NADH resonance. At pH = 10.3, the catalytic resonance of unbound LADH is broadened and slightly deshielded. No other resonances are dependent upon pH in the range 8--10. These data are the most consistent with a second sphere coordination of the substrate analogs to the catalytic metal ion. The observed difference between complexes of the alcohol analogs and the aldehyde analog would then be explained as the presence of a hydroxide versus a water molecule, respectively, in the first coordination sphere. The data also show that the pKa of the coordinated water on the Zn(II) in the native LADH is close to 9.2 as previously assumed, whereas the pKa of the Zn(II)-bound water in the LADH-NAD+ complex is most likely greater than 9 and not 7.6 as previously assumed.

Alcohol Dehydrogenase↗
PubMed1978

An investigation of the age of an alleged centenarian.

At times, persons have been reported as living to extremely advanced ages such as 130, or even higher (McWhirter and McWhirter, 1977, p. 26; Medvedev, 1974; Merrill, 1976). However, controlled studies of closed groups like Civil War veterans (Myers and Shudde, 1955) have not shown any persons surviving beyond age 110, when age has been reasonably verified. It seems, therefore, highly plausible that reports of extremely advanced ages at death reflect exaggerations of age rather than reality. This note reports a case history which supports this view and illustrates how ages can be verified using available census data.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1976

An instance of reverse heaping of ages.

This note reports on an interesting example of reverse heaping of ages for data from the Saudi Arabian social insurance system. Peaks occur for the number of workers at ages corresponding to years of birth ending in zeros and fives, while there are troughs at such ages for the average monthly wages. Such troughs almost certainly are the result of workers with less education using a rounded year of birth, and, correspondingly, such workers would tend to have lower earnings.

Age Factors↗