Yongho Kim

Category: english

  • May Day 2006 and the Gulf War

    Before hitting Wilshire and Western at 4:00 pm, we are sitting in the lounge watching Fox News, which is broadcasting live rallies in Downtown and Santa Ana. That looks pretty hard to match up. Then we think of our plan for today.

    Ever heard CNN’s of live Gulf War broadcasting? Iraqui scud missile headquarters used CNN screens to fine-tune their targets.

    [Tags]immigration, immigrant, protests, rally, may day, may 1, los angeles, california[/Tags]

  • Government Sued over Failure to Implement Medicare Drug Law’s Protections for Low-Income People

    Government Sued over Failure to Implement Medicare Drug Law’s Protections for Low-Income People: Challenge Brought on Behalf of More than 6 Million Recipients

    Oakland, CA; April 26, 2006–A class action complaint was filed today in the U.S. Federal District Court, Northern District of California to force the Secretary of Health and Human Services to ensure that the 6.4 million seniors and disabled individuals across the nation who receive both Medicare and Medicaid (“dual eligibles”) have effective, timely access to prescription medication under the new Medicare Part D prescription drug program.

    (more…)

  • Too much school?

    Ana put footnotes in Mac’s April 10 Immigrant Rights March flyer. omg.

    mn saint paul april 10 march.png

    Compare with Berkeley’s flyer.

    [Tags]Immigration, Agitprop, Humor[/Tags]

  • Leavitt Lies: Medicare Part D Enrollment Numbers

    Leavitt says that Medicare Part D was a success because “Around 90 percent of Medicare beneficiaries have enrolled” (DHHS Press Release, 4/4/06) to Part D. This statement is repeated in his Three-Month Progress Report (PDF)

    “[Seniors] have enrolled” is not the exact phrasing I would use. “[Seniors] have been enrolled” is more accurate. Let’s take a quick look at the numbers.

    http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=p_DwZ2rHBsQirV7FyDb4RBQ&hl=en

    Source: CMS (web link and direct link to Total Medicare Beneficiaries with Drug Coverage Data (v04.18.06) [Excel.zip, 3KB], Kaiser has a web version of the numbers

    Leavitt includes all kinds of non-voluntary enrollment, and even non-enrollment information into his 27 million figure.

    1. First, 30 million is 69% of total Medicare beneficiaries, not 90%.
    2. Second, 10 million seniors/disabled out of these 30 million have not enrolled to Part D at all. They have had drug coverage all along (Already w/Creditable Coverage), and they should not be included in a report that measures CMS’s success in implementing Medicare Part D. They are beneficiaries to the Employer Retiree Drug Subsidy (RDS) and Federal FEHB and TRICARE programs.
    3. Third, you can’t attribute “Automatic Enrollment” numbers to CMS’s merits. There’s two subcategories, so let’s take a closer look:
      • Medicare-Medical Dual Eligibles: these are low-income seniors/disabled who were forcibly enrolled to Part D in January 1 2006, and went through all sorts of hardships while coping with the insurance companies’ neglect towards them. MediCaid sent them a NOA in late 2005 telling them that their MediCaid prescription drug benefits were being terminated, and Medicare just enrolled them to a randomly selected plan in December 31, 2005. Yes. RANDOM. Formulary and Pharmacy Network hell ensued.
      • Medicare Advantage (HMO, Part C): they were also forcibly enrolled to an HMO-subsidiary PDP from their own HMO by January 1, 2006. They can’t opt out for another plan, because then they lose their entire HMO benefit. They never filled a form requesting Medicare Part D. How can you call that “the senior enrolled”?
    4. Therefore 43 million should not be the 100% standard for counting enrollees, because 20 million out of those either do not have to enroll to Part D (and indeed they haven’t) or cannot enroll to it because they have been enrolled forcibly. The 100% goal should be 21 million
    5. And out of those, only 8 million have enrolled to this date. That’s why CBOs and CMS are scrambling to get the remaining 13 million enrolled before the May 15 2006 deadline.

    Let’s stand corrected. The real enrollment of seniors/disabled who chose to enroll to Medicare Part D because they looked at their options and made a rational choice (a capitalist economy ideal, no?) is 8 million out of 21 million, which is a whoopping 38%. Not 90%.

    [Tags]Medicare, Medicare Part D, Prescription Drug Plan, Enrollment, Numbers, Statistics, DHHS[/Tags]

  • alienated translator

    Consider this a front-line ethnographic report on translator-original text producer split of a phenomenon that also occurs in the programming front with i18n’s

    when you step down from the MTA bus, you can see at the exit a sign that reads

    Wait for green light, then step down

    and also right below it

    Espere por la luz verde antes de pisar abajo

    Which is translated wrong. It should say “antes de bajarse” (“before getting out of the bus”, not “bejore standing under” – under what?). This problem, though, is way too easy to spot, and it’s unlikely that this glitch is the translator’s fault (such as the other more common ad mistakes which employ the wrong verb conjugation or an inconsistent usted/tu word play).

    Most likely MTA had hired a single interpreter to do jobs in a batch process to save costs, and the translator was isolated from the actual material setting where the interaction betwen sign and reader was taking place – thus was completely unaware of what “stepping down” implied. (It’s fairly obvious once you see the actual stairs that lead you to the back door of the bus, but not if the translator is sitting at the office typing in a Word document at 11pm)

    Some bureaucrats will never comprehend this, however.

  • Two and half years ago our ethnographic interviewing…

    Two and half years ago, our ethnographic interviewing methods professor walked us through what was to come, towards the end of the semester:

    … What other classes your could take to complement ours? Hmm, I’d say, take statistics. No! Don’t take it here. No need to waste your tuition dollars on an introductory math course. Take a summer course at your community college. With the training you all have had this semester, you are all set up for graduate level research (or in a commercial setting), and usually they’d require you to have an M.A. to back it up, but a Masters is too expensive, not quite worth it, and you have the skills now.. so just get one or two years doing more field research, and get that stats course done. You won’t *actually* be doing any stats though, there will be experts with Ph.D. in stats doing the actual analysis. They won’t let you touch the database, they are very picky and don’t trust anyone else… If you don’t stay alert, you might forever staying behind the clipboard and asking “so did you mean ‘a lot’ or ‘lot’?”. How to get out of that cycle.. hmm (typical S smile), you figure it out.

    I think we’ve got the Ph.D. in question. I’m glad we’ve got one though.