The IndieWeb is a growing people-focused alternative to the ‘corporate web’.

This BoF session is encouraged for all levels of Drupal users: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Developers, and particularly those working for larger corporations, should be interested in the benefits that some of the IndieWeb principles can convey to the marketing/communications departments of their clients' companies.

Haven't you (or your clients) always wanted to be the "hub" of your own online presence with ancillary social services helping to serve your purposes rather than the services' own interests? Isn't this why we all want to build and have our own online spaces in the first place?

With the rise of areas like social media, it's often the case that much of our content and material lives in corporate silos like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and a variety of other sites. Sadly, as netizens, we do not have direct control over these sites, often can't export our data from them, and they can be (and often are) bought out or shut down at almost a moments notice. Worse, comments and interaction with our content is typically also stuck in these silos and it lives or dies with them. Wouldn't you love to have the network effect and value that these sites bring without the extra work or hindrances they bring?

There is a growing and very viable alternative to this model which is being built by the IndieWebCamp community as a multi-platform and opensource project which dovetails well with the ideals of the Drupal community.

Those who are interested in learning about and discussing some of the basic principles and philosophies of the movement are encouraged to attend. We'll chat about some of the current projects and capabilities as well as open standards that help enable the functionality you've always wanted (or maybe didn't know you wanted until now) in your websites.

Moving forward, we can all build IndieWeb principles into the Drupal platform to help it remain relevant as the web continues to grow and evolve.

A wealth of information about the IndieWeb community can be found at their website, but as a brief overview some of their basic principles appear below:

Your content is yours

When you post something on the web, it should belong to you, not a corporation. Too many companies have gone out of business and lost all of their users’ data. By joining the IndieWeb, your content stays yours and in your control.

You are better connected

Your articles and status messages can go to all services, not just one, allowing you to engage with everyone. Even replies and likes on other services can come back to your site so they’re all in one place.

You are in control

You can post anything you want, in any format you want, with no one monitoring you. In addition, you share simple readable links such as example.com/ideas. These links are permanent and will always work.

Category: BoF

Skill: Beginner

Duration: One hour

Session Tags: IndieWeb, social media, Open Source, web architecture, open standards

Register for the session at 2015 Drupal Camp LA at http://2015.drupalcampla.com/sessions/indieweb-movement-and-drupal

I don't often (read: never) cut and paste press releases, but I've got an itching feeling that this is going to be BIG news over the next week or so, and thought I'd forward it along so you don't have to wait for the 5 second sound bite that this story is going to be diminished to. You'll be able to get it directly from the horse's mouth. It'll also give you time to write to your senators and congressmen as well as the growing list of presidential candidates entering the ring.  

The original research can be found in the current issue of the journal "Health Affairs"

“Extreme Markup: The 50 U.S. Hospitals with the Highest Charge-to-Cost Ratios” was written by Ge Bai and Gerard F. Anderson.

A brief synopsis from my friends at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health follows:

The 50 hospitals in the United States with the highest markup of prices over their actual costs are charging out-of-network patients and the uninsured, as well as auto and workers’ compensation insurers, more than 10 times the costs allowed by Medicare, new research suggests. It’s a markup of more than 1,000 percent for the same medical services.

'What other industry can you think of that marks up their prices by 1,000 percent and remains in business?’

The findings, from Gerard F. Anderson of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Ge Bai of Washington and Lee University, show that the combination of a lack of regulation of hospital charges in the United States and no market competition is leading to price-gouging that trickles down to nearly all consumers, whether they have health insurance or not, and plays a role in the rise of overall health spending. The report is published in the June issue of Health Affairs.

“There is no justification for these outrageous rates, but no one tells hospitals they can’t charge them,” says Anderson, a professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health Policy and Management. “For the most part, there is no regulation of hospital rates and there are no market forces that force hospitals to lower their rates. They charge these prices simply because they can.”

For their study, Anderson and Bai analyzed the 2012 Medicare cost reports from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to determine a charge-to-cost ratio, an indicator of how much hospitals are marking up charges beyond what Medicare agrees to pay for those with its government-subsidized health insurance.

The 50 hospitals, they found, charged an average of more than 10 times the Medicare-allowed costs. They also found that the typical United States hospital charges were on average 3.4 times the Medicare-allowable cost in 2012. In other words, when the hospital incurs $100 of Medicare-allowable costs, the hospital charges $340. In one of the top 50 hospitals, that means a $1,000 charge.

Of the 50 hospitals with the highest price markups, 49 are for-profit hospitals and 46 are owned by for-profit health systems. One for-profit health system, Community Health Systems Inc., operates 25 of the 50 hospitals. Hospital Corp. of America operates more than one-quarter of them. While they are located in many states, 20 of the hospitals are in Florida.

“For-profit hospitals appear to be better players in this price-gouging game,” says Bai, an assistant professor of accounting at Washington & Lee University. “They represent only 30 percent of hospitals in the U.S., but account for 98 percent of the 50 hospitals with highest markups."

Many hospital patients don’t actually pay the “charge master” or full price. Along with government insurers, most private health insurers negotiate lower rates for their patients.

But 30 million uninsured Americans are likely to be charged the full rate, as are patients receiving out-of-network care and those receiving workers’ compensation or auto insurance benefits. As a result, uninsured patients, who are often the most vulnerable, face exceptionally high medical bills, often leading to personal bankruptcy, damaged credit scores or the avoidance of needed medical services.

The impact of overcharging extends beyond hospital patients. Notes Anderson: “The cost of workers’ compensation and auto insurance policies are higher in the states where hospital charges are unregulated because companies must pay those higher rates.”

In addition, privately insured in-network patients may also end up paying greater premiums due to hospitals' high markups, which are often used by hospitals as leverage to negotiate higher prices with private insurance companies. “Except for patients with government insurance, few consumers are immune from negative financial impacts caused by hospitals' high markups,” Bai says.

In Maryland and West Virginia, the state sets the rates that hospitals can charge for services. No federal law regulates them for all Americans.

“We as consumers are paying for this when hospitals charge 10 times what they should,” Anderson says. “What other industry can you think of that marks up the price of their product by 1,000 percent and remains in business?”

For the most part, the hospitals with the highest markups are not situated in pricey neighborhoods or big cities, where the market might explain the higher prices. The most expensive hospital is North Okaloosa Medical Center, located in the Florida Panhandle about an hour outside Pensacola. There, patients are charged 12.6 times more than Medicare allowable costs.

Anderson says changes are unlikely to drop to levels closer to costs allowed by Medicare unless state or federal officials decide to legislate a maximum markup that a hospital could charge a patient. He says states could choose to have their hospital rates set by a state agency as is done in Maryland and West Virginia, which guarantees that hospitals can’t gauge their patients.

He says that price transparency could also help only to a limited extent because people cannot bargain or comparative shop when they are sick. Most hospitals aren’t required to – and don’t – publicly share how much they charge for different procedures

“This system has the effect of charging the highest prices to the most vulnerable patients and those with the least market power,” Anderson says. “The result is a market failure.”

List of 50 Hospitals with Highest Charge-to-Cost Ratios, 2012:

1.         North Okaloosa Medical Center (FL)

2.         Carepoint Health-Bayonne Hospital (NJ)

3.         Bayfront Health Brooksville (FL)

4.         Paul B Hall Regional Medical Center (KY)

5.         Chestnut Hill Hospital (PA)

6.         Gadsden Regional Medical Center (AL)

7.         Heart of Florida Regional Medical Center (FL)

8.         Orange Park Medical Center (FL)

9.         Western Arizona Regional Medical Center (AZ)

10.       Oak Hill Hospital (FL)

11.       Texas General Hospital (TX)

12.       Fort Walton Beach Medical Center (FL)

13.       Easton Hospital (PA)

14.       Brookwood Medical Center (AL)

15.       National Park Medical Center (AR)

16.       St. Petersburg General Hospital (FL)

17.       Crozer Chester Medical Center (PA)

18.       Riverview Regional Medical Center (AL)

19.       Regional Hospital of Jackson (TN)

20.       Sebastian River Medical Center (FL)

21.       Brandywine Hospital (PA)

22.       Osceola Regional Medical Center (FL)

23.       Decatur Morgan Hospital - Parkway Campus (AL)

24.       Medical Center of Southeastern Oklahoma (OK)

25.       Gulf Coast Medical Center (FL)

26.       South Bay Hospital (FL)

27.       Fawcett Memorial Hospital (FL)

28.       North Florida Regional Medical Center (FL)

29.       Doctors Hospital of Manteca (CA)

30.       Doctors Medical Center (CA)

31.       Lawnwood Regional Medical Center & Heart Institute (FL)

32.       Lakeway Regional Hospital (TN)

33.       Brandon Regional Hospital (FL)

34.       Hahnemann University Hospital (PA)

35.       Phoenixville Hospital (PA)

36.       Stringfellow Memorial Hospital (AL)

37.       Lehigh Regional Medical Center (FL)

38.       Southside Regional Medical Center (VA)

39.       Twin Cities Hospital (FL)

40.       Olympia Medical Center (CA)

41.       Springs Memorial Hospital (SC)

42.       Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point (FL)

43.       Dallas Regional Medical Center (TX)

44.       Laredo Medical Center (TX)

45.       Bayfront Health Dade City (FL)

46.       Pottstown Memorial Medical Center (PA)

47.       Dyersburg Regional Medical Center (TN)

48.       South Texas Health System (TX)

49.       Kendall Regional Medical Center (FL)

50.       Lake Granbury Medical Center (TX)

SOURCE: Authors' analysis of Healthcare Cost Report Information System (HCRIS) computer files obtained from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for 2012, published in the appendix of the June 2015 issue of Health Affairs.

The more I read of the introductory chapter of Category Theory for the Sciences by David Spivak, the more I'm sure there is a firm and solid foundation for potentially making mathematics a major pillar of Big History.  

The structural scheme for category theory within mathematics sounds almost like that of the structure of Big History as a whole. If nothing else it screams convergence while making very complex structures much simpler. (Big History in reverse perhaps?)

I can't wait to delve further in. Spivak's text, though very mathematical in nature seems to have all the basic set theory (at a high school level), and the introduction indicates that he expects readers to have some facility with linear algebra, but there are no other highly daunting prerequisites.

A few excerpts:

This book extols the virtues of a new branch of mathematics, category theory, which was invented for powerful communication of ideas between different fields and subfields within mathematics. By powerful communication of ideas I mean something precise. Different branches of mathematics can be formalized into categories. These categories can then be connected by functors. And the sense in which these functors provide powerful communication of ideas is that facts and theorems proven in one category can be transferred through a connecting functor to yield proofs of analogous theorems in another category. A functor is like a conductor of mathematical truth.

We build scientific understanding by developing models, and category theory is the study of basic conceptual building blocks and how they cleanly fit together to make such models. Certain structures and conceptual frameworks show up again and again in our understanding of reality. No one would dispute that vector spaces are ubiquitous throughout the sciences. But so are hierarchies, symmetries, actions of agents on objects, data models, global behavior emerging as the aggregate of local behavior, self-similarity, and the effect of methodological context.

Hierarchies are partial orders, symmetries are group elements, data models are categories, agent actions are monoid actions, local-to-global principles are sheaves, self-similarity is modeled by operads, context can be modeled by monads.

The paradigm shift brought on by Einstein’s theory of relativity led to a widespread realization that there is no single perspective from which to view the world. There is no background framework that we need to find; there are infinitely many different frameworks and perspectives, and the real power lies in being able to translate between them. It is in this historical context that category theory got its start.

However, in 1957 Alexander Grothendieck used category theory to build new mathematical machinery (new cohomology theories) that granted unprecedented insight into the behavior of algebraic equations. Since that time, categories have been built specifically to zoom in on particular features of mathematical subjects and study them with a level of acuity that is unavailable elsewhere.

Bill Lawvere saw category theory as a new foundation for all mathematical thought. Mathematicians had been searching for foundations in the nineteenth century and were reasonably satisfied with set theory as the foundation. But Lawvere showed that the category of sets is simply one category with certain nice properties, not necessarily the center of the mathematical universe. He explained how whole algebraic theories can be viewed as examples of a single system. He and others went on to show that higherorder logic was beautifully captured in the setting of category theory... 

In 1980, Joachim Lambek showed that the types and programs used in computer science form a specific kind of category. This provided a new semantics for talking about programs, allowing people to investigate how programs combine and compose to create other programs, without caring about the specifics of implementation. Eugenio Moggi brought the category-theoretic notion of monads into computer science to encapsulate ideas that up to that point were considered outside the realm of such theory.

It is difficult to explain the clarity and beauty brought to category theory by people like Daniel Kan and Andr´e Joyal. They have each repeatedly extracted the essence of a whole mathematical subject to reveal and formalize a stunningly simple yet extremely powerful pattern of thinking, revolutionizing how mathematics is done.

All this time, however, category theory was consistently seen by much of the mathematical community as ridiculously abstract. But in the twenty-first century it has finally come to find healthy respect within the larger community of pure mathematics. It is the language of choice for graduate-level algebra and topology courses, and in my opinion will continue to establish itself as the basic framework in which to think about and express mathematical ideas.

As mentioned, category theory has branched out into certain areas of science as well. Baez and Dolan [6] have shown its value in making sense of quantum physics, it is well established in computer science, and it has found proponents in several other fields as well. 

But to my mind, we are at the very beginning of its venture into scientific methodology. Category theory was invented as a bridge, and it will continue to serve in that role.