Public Policy Priorities

In a survey conducted in 2003, it highlighted that the recurrent problem is the reimbursement rate from Medicaid to the physician (O’Shea, 2007). The Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) show that 21% of physicians that state they accept Medicaid have reported they will not accept a new Medicaid patient in 2004-2005(O’Shea, 2007). This number would only logically be assumed to have risen in 2013 A survey conducted by the U.S. National Health reported that researchers have found two standout trends among Medicaid beneficiaries: they have more difficulty getting primary care and specialty care and they visit hospital emergency departments more often than those with private insurance (Seaberg, 2012). The lack of primary and specialty care access is mostly contributed to the following barriers; unable to reach the MD by phone, not having a timely appointment with the MD and lastly unable to find a specialty MD that will accept Medicaid. In a recent report released by the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease, it stated that about 30% of Medicaid patients experience “extreme uncoordinated care”, there is a strong correlation between this situation and higher Medicaid spending and less quality of care given (Bush, 2012). After January 1st 2013, healthcare providers have experienced a 2% reduction in payments for Medicaid beneficiary, this will only create more of a problem for these patients to seek the

Concentrating on historically beneficial voting regions, the data of people workforce and economic situations can have drastic effects on the outcomes of this

In this paper I will argue that the dependent variable womleg2010, which is the percent of state legislators that are women, is affected by a variety of variables in both positive and negative ways. These variables include: state 's religiosity, gun laws, and a variable I merged into the state 's dataset which is a state population’s democratic share of the vote for president.

The documentary Street Fight directed by Marshall Curry covered a boisterous 2002 campaign in Newark, New Jersey, against a young city councilor Cory Booker verses the cities longest serving major running for a re-election James Sharpe. During the entire documentary there were multiple points regarding politics and political power. In the beginning of the movie it was noted that some citizens were afraid to support Booker because they feared being targeted and possibly losing their homes or businesses. Even though Booker attempted to beat the Sharpe, he was nowhere near as entrenched and politically connected Sharpe. With the stark difference in the demographics each runner was targeting it became apparent that Booker was viewed as an outsider to the suburban residents of Newark that believed Sharpe would be the best candidate to become mayor. With that in mind, it is clear that social class adds a dimension into consideration of civic engagement (Losco 12). In my opinion, due to Sharpe’s vast influence to achieve his desired goals would be considered a ruling elite. Paraphrasing from Losco page 5, Sharpe had access to government officials to become re-elected as a government official himself. In the AM GOV text it states, “Although citizens may not agree with specific government policies, they will support as legitimate, or lawful, policies founded upon accepted contracts and standards.” (Losco 5). This can be connected to the documentary by noting the

politics and its effect on elections and public policy. This site allows me to see the numeric value for individuals and corporations who donated to a specific presidential candidate. I will have to allow for the fact that several corporations and individuals donated to multiple candidates within the same party. My goal is to both examine donations given to parties and to specific candidates to allow for a more complete measurement. I also must keep in mind that some donations will be under the names of companies and businesses whose leaders may receive a cabinet position. I will measure my independent variable by a scale of 0-200 in dollars, thousands. Again, I am choosing this coding as it is done by Herberlig and Larson (2007). These dollar ranges encompass the majority of the donations given by individuals or cooperation’s to specific parties, thus a higher score would theoretically mean a higher chance that an individual will be chosen for a cabinet appointment. Meaning, there should be a positive correlation between the dependent, the nominees, and the independents, the nominees who did and the campaign donations. There should be a negative correlation among nominees who show low campaign donations and those that did not get

To evaluate the question as to whether minority candidates are disadvantaged in campaign funding support, a dataset constructed of the amount of monetary support for a candidate, candidate characteristics, and district characteristics, is needed. The difficulty in the data collection effort is the small number of minority candidates running in any given year in a general election cycle (Hogan and Thompson 1998). Extending the timeframe across several years would increase the number of minority candidates in the dataset, yet, one aspect to consider when evaluating the data is the number of times the same candidate is in the data set, yet accounting for incumbency and challenger status can help to indicate if certain candidates are driving the funding support levels. At the federal level, many elected officials come from safe districts where incumbents have the advantage and are reelected at a high rate.

In addition to that, understanding how voter ID laws may impact election results, will in return, contribute to the efforts that aim to understand the agenda behind the recent and rapid spread of such laws. Thus, if my results are what I think they will be then voter ID laws will be known for what they really are, an attempt at voter oppression. Moreover, there certainly are limitations to this research proposal. For instance, while this research should present some insight into the impact of voter ID laws, the fact remains that there is a limited number of election results that could demonstrate the true range of impact that voter ID laws have on voter turnout rates. Therefore, future research will be able to benefit from the increased volume of data on election results, and in return perhaps be able to build on the results of this study. In addition to that, since I have a short time window for this project, certain variables that might influence and also be contributing to lower voter turnouts will be left

Welcome to Des Moines, Washington where you’ll find a mayor who says he cares about his constituent’s well-being and yet has deep ties to Alaska Airlines. A City Council Member who owns a very large construction company and said that if he was elected he would use his construction knowledge to restoring and updating Des Moines (wasn’t that nice of him). A member of the Des Moines Citizens Advisory Committee who is leasing a large crunch of Marina property for the city for a measly three hundred dollars a month. A City Manager whose frequent raises are more than some people’s paychecks, and a citizen group entitled Quiet Skies Puget Sound (QSPS)’s whose efforts to save the children on playgrounds and families in supermarket parking lots from

Cities, 340 elections occurring in 144 cities from 1996-2011. The outcome, voter turnout in mayoral elections measured by the number of votes cast divided by the city’s voting age population. Primary variables of interest, spending, is the amount of spending per capita and also look at spending gap between first and second place candidates, margin of victory, number of candidates, number of city council seats up for election, if election is a runoff election, if there is an incumbent on the ballot, and also account for institutional and socioeconomic variables. The authors use multivariate general least squares regressions first looking at mobilization, institutions, population characteristics, and turnout (Table1) followed by campaign determinants of competition (Table 2), effects of incumbent challengers spending (Table 3), and changes in campaign activities on voter turnout (Table

We've had some of the same council members in place for nearly twenty years now, the keep "winning" elections because of the hundreds of thousands of dollars from these outside influences,

The researchers analyzed city spending, using data made available by The Office of Social and Economic Data Analysis (OSEDA). They surveyed all spending on public services,

Burden and Kimball draw on the work of King and build on the ecological inference in order to gather district-level estimates while avoiding the problems of constancy because the authors are sticking to fairly small geographic areas. (Burden & Kimball, 534) The authors are also able to work between the data of an individual level data, collected from the National Election Survey, and aggregate level data collected in the form of vote totals for the various districts. (Burden & Kimball, 534) Burden and Kimball breakdown their data into 2x2 tables and then seek to fill in the blanks with estimates of the splitters after accounting for roll-off to avoid bias entering into the analysis. Those estimates are then combined with other known aggregate information to estimate the splitters. (Burden & Kimball, 536) The estimates are then examined for validity against other more accepted methodologies including an analysis of the individual data

These two elections make for an interesting case study because it analyses the voter data from two different elections for

Citizens do not quite understand how their participation affects state and local government. So many people choose not to vote, which truly affects the outcome of a state or city. In addition, these citizens, who chose not to vote, tend not participate in anything involving their community. There are two ways a citizen can effect a state or city. These ways are either

A mixed methods approach seems on the outset to be most appropriate for this future research, because it allows for interviews with local party leaders to guide the statistical analyses. Also, most people consider themselves citizens of a community more than they consider themselves citizens of a state. Thus, individuals should be better able to notice the economic change on a community level instead of a state level. The closest data that is publically available for community data is at the county or municipal level. One particular problem with doing research at the county level is that not all data one would want is available at that level. Missing data was a particularly troublesome problem for the present analysis but there are some possibilities to provide a statistical fix to that problem. Some of these issues may be solved using multilevel modeling to generate point estimates from large national polls, however, a statistical “fix” does not cure the absence of data.