This paper describes briefly the work on DoD’s Kuwait Oil Fire Health Risk Assessment to date, including the results of a pilot study of health risks, and then answers the questions addressed to OTA in PL 102-585.

This background paper is one of four documents resulting from OTA’s study of policy issues in the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis.

This paper examines what is known about administrative costs in the health care systems of the United States and several other countries. In addition to exploring the types of activities that constitute health care administration, it reviews studies that measure and compare these activities in different countries, and it explores the potential usefulness of such comparisons.

This paper reviews how the United States compares with other developed countries on available health status measures, evaluates the validity of the data used to make such comparisons, and describes how international comparisons might be interpreted in the context of health care reform.

The report reviews data concerning the contribution of genetic factors to several severe mental disorders; described methodologies used in the studies, and broached several policy issues relevant to this area of research.

This report examines a set of environmental cost studies, compares and contrasts their methods and assumptions, and discusses how they could be made more useful to federal policy makers.

This paper describes applications of synthetic-environment technologies in simulating combat. This background paper is the first of several publications of the OTA’S assessment of combat modeling and simulation.

This paper describes and evaluates the sources of variation in analysts’ estimates of the federal budget impacts of key reform provisions. The paper also discusses potential variations in the estimates of federal budget effects of the American Health Security Act and the Managed Competition Act, and of health reform proposals in general.

This paper seeks to place the issue of climate change within an international context. Specifically, it addresses the feasibility of forging treaty agreements among countries to achieve significant worldwide reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases.

This paper discusses the history and status of the ALMR research program. It presents applications of this technology to the plutonium disposition problem and the possible advantages and disadvantages of its future development and deployment. It also discusses related issues such as waste management and concerns about proliferation of plutonium material.

This background paper responds to section 408 of the 1990 amendments to the Perkins Act, which asks OTA to review activities to be undertaken by the National Occupational Information Coordinating Committee (NOICC) to encourage the use of wage records from state unemployment insurance systems for purposes of conducting policy studies or monitoring the outcomes of vocational education.

The report focuses on mental disabilities, a broad rubric. In this background paper, OTA examines current knowledge about psychiatric disabilities and employment in the context of the ADA’s requirements and reviews Federal activities directly or indirectly aimed at supporting the ADA’s employment provisions.

The paper has six major purposes, in order to analyze the uses of tests used in vocational programs, particularly those designed to measure broad technical skills, identify trends in vocational assessment, and identify policy issues relevant to improving test development and quality.