Money and Computing
Seth Frotman: *Broken Promises: How Debt-Financed Higher Education Rewrote America's Social Contract and Fueled a Quiet Crisis
"However, by limiting the definition of the student debt problem to those borrowers who are behind or in default, the literature assumes that the remaining thirty-three million borrowers are doing just fine. This perspective is deeply flawed. First, it is certainly not acceptable to write off the financial futures of eleven million people. Second, by defining down what it means to “struggle” to include only those in immediate, documented financial distress, these commentators are ignoring the broader reality of debt-financed higher education. For every borrower who misses a student loan payment or defaults on a debt, there is another borrower who is struggling to buy a home, start a business, or save for retirement due to the burden of their student loans." Seth Frotman, the man who has resigned from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. more »
The Donut Hole and Closing the Medicare Part D Coverage Gap: Trends, Recent Changes, and What’s Ahead
As of 2019, Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in Part D prescription drug plans will no longer be exposed to a coverage gap, sometimes called the “donut hole”, when they fill their brand-name medications. The coverage gap was included in the initial design of the Part D drug benefit in the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 in order to reduce the total 10-year cost of the benefit. Subsequent legislative changes are phasing out the coverage gap by modifying the share of total costs paid in the gap by Part D enrollees and plans and requiring drug manufacturers to provide a discount on the price of brand-name drugs in the gap. more »
The Good Old Days ... Not! (Memoirs of a Former Secretary)
Rose Madeline Mula writes: The mimeograph machine was another diabolic duplicating device. If we didn't want to get purple ink all over ourselves, instead of using a ditto master, we typed a mimeograph stencil. This was a blue sheet over a stiff backing on which we typed without a typewriter ribbon so that the keys cut through the stencil. If we made a mistake, we coated it with a special white glop, waited for it to dry, and then tried to cut the correct symbols through the glop. Good luck. When the typing and glopping were finished, we wrapped the stencil around the black-ink coated drum of the mimeograph machine and cranked out the required copies. The big advantage of this method was no purple-stained clothes and body parts. We did, however, wind up with black-stained clothes and body parts. more »
Elaine Soloway's Rookie Transplant: Therapy, Best of Both Worlds and ... Packing
Elaine Soloway writes: I have turned to therapy a handful of times. My slim record is not because I disdain the practice or am reluctant to reveal my secrets. Fifty-five minutes focused on me, a sympathetic witness to my angst, a collaborator in my version of the story; who wouldn't relish the experience. Because I had not lived in the same city as my daughters for 25 years, and since I was unfettered in Chicago (no husband, house, dog, car, debt), I thought the time was right to jump into their world. But, instead of considering this decision an abandonment of Los Angeles, I'll add Bi-Coastal to my labels and have the best of both worlds. more »