The midterm exam is scheduled for in class on Monday, October 14. The exam will be closed book. This page will include a set of topics and questions that will help you in preparing for the exam. You should also study the homework and quizes. Here is be our review quiz from October 9

Exam topics and questions

What is the average annual expenditure on health in the United States (in 2018 to the nearest $1000)?
What is an OOP? In a relative sense, how important is OOP in Personal Health Care Expenditures in the US?
What is a DALY?
What is Dual eligible?
Roughly how important are private insurance plans in financing US healthcare?
What is a CMS? What is a HHS?
Why is Otto van Bismark important in the history of insurance?
What four social risks were seen as the key problems social insurance was meant to help alleviate?
What form of publicly provided social insurance was adopted most quickly throughout the world?
When did US states first begin enacting state accident insurance programs?
How was what we now call behavioral economics or nudging important in accident insurance programs of the early 20th-century?
Who were the key stakeholders involved in the expansion of public insurance in the 20th century? What was their main role (pro or con)?
What characterized communist social insurance programs in comparison with those based on the German model?
Winston Churchill believed social welfare programs were a key ideology which motivated the allied efforts in WWII and were embodied by the Beveridge Plan in 1941.
Privatizing social insurance programs is associated with the University of Chicago Department of Economics, particularly Milton Friedman, and is part of neo-liberal economic ideology which grew in popularity in the 1970s and 1980s. That period was also known for the oil shocks, the Latin American debt crises, US stagflation, and decreases in social security benefits in the US.
When was the great depression? When was FDR’s Social Security Act passed?
What is a FICA? A FUTA? Who is responsible for them? How big is FICA today? What are FITA and FUCA used for?
What is a OASDI? A TANF? A SSI?
What are other key social security and social insurance programs in the US?
What was the retirement age set by OASDI in 1935? What is the normal retirement age set by OASDI starting in 2022?
Other than retired individuals, who else can receive direct benefits from OASDI?
How many workers are paying payroll taxes per OASDI beneficiary?
What is Means Testing? How could it be used to change social insurance programs?
Why is Social Security called a Ponzi Scheme?
What is the key change in the composition of SSI beneficiaries between its establishment and today?
What was the stabilization act of 1942 and why is it important for history of insurance?
When were Medicare and Medicaid created? Who was the president at that time?

Extra Credit

If you are interested in 10 points extra credit on your midterm, let me know (email, after class, or at office hours). Send me your paper topic and, if you have one, your bibliography so far. Based on your topic I will pick two articles for you to review (we can discuss this choice if you have a preference).
For 5 points extra credit each, answer the following questions about the papers; your responses should total one to two pages (600-1200 words) in length each. This will be due November 1.
a) What is the point of the paper? Is there a question the paper is trying to answer?
b) What is the paper’s methodology? Is the paper theoretical, empirical, a meta-analysis, a case study, or something else?
c) What is the data of the paper? What set of information is the paper using to draw its conclusions? How generalizable is this information?
d) What is the paper’s conclusion? Are any robustness checks or sensitivity analyses used? Does this conclusion overlook anything; how would you criticize this conclusion?
e) What effect might this paper have on other papers, the field, or society? What additional questions might future researchers ask to build upon this paper? How can this paper inform health and/or social insurance policy or business?