"Does public hearing testimony provide the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with the information the agency requests in its proposed rulemaking? In one EPA proposed rulemaking, the agency requests public comment on approximately 140 topics specific to the proposed rulemaking. This analysis examines the testimony from two public hearings to see if the speakers provided any of the information the agency requested. Public hearings are used frequently in our democratic system and can vary substantially. The public hearings associated with a high-risk environmental proposed rulemaking are compared to characteristics that are common to public hearings in general. The public participation characteristics examined are aspects of representation and substantive involvement. The EPA’s describes representation in the agency’s public participation policies as the “various publics” that they seek to involve in public participation. Academic literature criticizes public hearings as non-substantive with content of minimal value. The EPA public hearing testimony was analyzed for each of these—Various Publics and Substantive content—to see how well the testimony compares to the expectation of the agency’s own policies and to general academic benchmarks. Understanding what information these high-risk environmental public hearings provide, how the representation compares to the agency’s own public participation policies, and how the public hearings compare to the general understanding of public hearings provides meaningful information about the value of these public hearings. This case study of the public hearing testimony expected the public not to provide the information the agency requested, based on a common impression of public hearings being legitimizing events without substantive participation. The expectation for representativeness was that any meaningful or substantive content would be provided by a dominant regulated community, based on another study of public participation proceedings involving a federal agency. The proposed rule has multiple regulatory options that the agency has requested comment on. The speakers testified a preference for which regulatory option they support. In this case, the proposed rulemaking was the EPA’s Hazardous and Solid Waste Management System: Identification and Listing of Special Wastes; Disposal of Coal Combustion Residuals from Electric Utilities, 2009. The proposed rulemaking had three regulatory options. Each testimony includes the speakers “vote” toward their preferred final rule outcome. The speaker’s vote for a regulatory option was compared to the outcome of the final ruling on December 19, 2015."--Abstract.

Health care for the elderly American is among our nation's more pressing social issues. Our society wishes to ensure quality health care for all older people, but there is growing concern about our ability to maintain and improve quality in the face of efforts to contain health care costs. Medicare: A Strategy for Quality Assurance answers the U.S. Congress' call for the Institute of Medicine to design a strategic plan for assessing and assuring the quality of medical care for the elderly. This book presents a proposed strategic plan for improving quality assurance in the Medicare program, along with steps and timetables for implementing the plan by the year 2000 and the 10 recommendations for action by Congress. The book explores quality of careâ€"how it is defined, measured, and improvedâ€"and reviews different types of quality problems. Major issues that affect approaches to assessing and assuring quality are examined. Medicare: A Strategy for Quality Assurance will be immediately useful to a wide audience, including policymakers, health administrators, individual providers, specialists in issues of the older American, researchers, educators, and students.

The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873. Debates for sessions prior to 1873 are recorded in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789-1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873)