Research Paper
Undergraduate
How Waste Management, Inc. Has Succeeded Where Others Have Failed
This project consists three papers. The first paper analysis the environment in which the nation's largest provider, Waste Management, Inc. operates. The second paper evaluates the company's internal operations, including a Porter's five forces analysis. Finally, the third paper provides a summary of the findings of the first two papers.
Health Insurance and How it Effects the Elderly
The vast majority of American seniors are receiving federal health insurance assistance through the Medicare program, and some are even fortunate enough to afford a commercial health insurance supplement to offset the costs of procedures and treatments Medicare will not cover. Although most seniors in this country are covered under Medicare, one disturbing fact has emerged from decades of government managed health insurance for the nation’s elderly: it is not enough to purchase health insurance, you must understand its provisions in order to derive maximum benefit. Unfortunately, the process of deciphering a government-operated health insurance subsidy plan – or its commercial counterparts offered by private insurance companies – is increasingly defined by dense technical jargon, inaccessible contracts filled with fine print, and collusion between medical suppliers and hospitals to fix the price of basic care components. Just as the tax preparation industry has emerged to help young adults navigate the often inexplicable maze of the modern tax code to file their income tax forms properly, a system of advocacy for the elderly must be instituted which assists them in understanding their health insurance policies during this extremely vulnerable time in their lives. A comprehensive study conducted in 2013 study to assess the ways in which consumers misunderstand their health insurance coverage revealed that “in a question asked of a larger, representative, sample of senior citizens that included about one-third who were actually facing the choice of whether to enroll in Medicare part D, only 30% endorsed the statement that ‘the Medicare Part D program is well designed” (Loewenstein, et al.)