Prepaid System Research Articles

Research on Application of Big Data Technology in Cost Control of Medical Insurance For China

With the increasing aging of the population, medical insurance cost control has become a worldwide problem. In order to control the medical insurance fee, since 2009, China's medical insurance payment system has changed from the post payment system mainly based on projects to the prepayment system based on total amount control, but not only failed to control the growth of medical insurance expenditure, but also resulted in the phenomenon that the insured's right to medical treatment has been damaged. Using big data technology and other information-based means to fine manage medical insurance expenditure has become an urgent matter. The paper is divided into four parts. The first part introduces the characteristics of big data and the concept of big data technology; the second part, under the background of the reform of China's medical insurance payment system, analyzes the necessity and possibility of using big data technology to control medical insurance expenses; the third part, puts forward some measures of using big data technology to control medical insurance expenses; finally, the conclusion is drawn that the use of big data technology can realize the fine management of medical insurance control fee.

Mobile telephone delivered contingency management for encouraging adherence to supervised methadone consumption: feasibility study for an RCT of clinical and cost-effectiveness (TIES)

BackgroundPrescription methadone or buprenorphine enables people with opioid use disorder to stop heroin use safely while avoiding withdrawal. To ensure methadone is taken as prescribed and to prevent diversion onto the illicit market, people starting methadone take their daily dose under a pharmacist’s supervision. Many patients miss their daily methadone dose risking withdrawal, craving for heroin and overdose due to loss of heroin tolerance. Contingency management (CM) can improve medication adherence, but remote delivery using technology may be resource-light and cost-effective. We developed an innovative way to deliver CM by mobile telephone. Software monitors patients’ attendance and supervised methadone consumption through an internet self-login at the pharmacy and sends reinforcing text messages to patients’ mobile telephones. A linked system sends medication adherence reports to prescribers and provides early warning alerts of missed doses. A pre-paid debit card system provides financial incentives.MethodsA cluster randomised controlled trial design was used to test the feasibility of conducting a future trial of mobile telephone CM to encourage adherence to supervised methadone in community pharmacies. Each cluster (drug service/3 allied pharmacies) was randomly allocated to provide patient’s presenting for a new episode of opiate agonist treatment (OAT) with either (a) mobile telephone text message CM, (b) mobile telephone text message reminders, or (c) no text messages. We assessed acceptability of the interventions, recruitment, and follow-up procedures.ResultsFour drug clinics were approached and three recruited. Thirty-three pharmacists were approached and 9 recruited. Over 3 months, 173 individuals were screened and 10 enrolled. Few patients presented for OAT and high numbers were excluded due to receiving buprenorphine or not attending participating pharmacies. There was 96% consistency in recording medication adherence by self-login vs. pharmacy records. In focus groups, CM participants were positive about using self-login, the text messages, and debit card. Prescribers found weekly reporting, time saving, and allowed closer monitoring of patients. Pharmacists reported that the tablet device was easy to host.ConclusionMobile telephone CM worked well, but a planned future trial will use modified eligibility criteria (existing OAT patients who regularly miss their methadone/buprenorphine doses) and increase the number of participating pharmacies.Trial registrationThe trial is retrospectively registered, ISRCTN 58958179.

DETERMINATION OF CONSUMER SWITCHING BARRIERS TO USE PREPAID ELECTRICITY SYSTEMS IN THE HOUSEHOLD SECTOR IN MAKASSAR, INDONESIA

A new alternative of electricity bill payment exists in Indonesia at present, namely prepaid systems. The system is intended to facilitate customers in electricity saving where the electricity utilization could be adjusted. In reality, however, post-paid electricity system utilization still receives great demand. As a consequence, it could not suppress electricity consumption. This research aims to learn factors inhibiting consumers to switch to prepaid electricity systems for their electricity consumption. A descriptive research carries out to answer the research problems. Sample consists of 100 people determined via a snowball sampling technique. Data collection is conducted using questionnaires and measured using Likert Scale of 1-5. Factory analysis is used as an analysis tool. The research results indicate that the main factor that becomes a barrier for electricity customers to switch to prepaid systems is habitual using factor. Switching cost factor, lack of prepaid system information, and relationship and reputation of post-paid products are the second, third, and fourth factors, respectively. Keywords: Switching barrier, electricity, prepaid, and household sector JEL Classifications: C42, D10, M00, O30 DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.10237

PERBANDINGAN KONSUMSI ENERGI LISTRIK TERHADAP BIAYA LISTRIK MENGGUNAKAN SISTEM PRA BAYAR, PASCA BAYAR DAN TENAGA SURYA PADA SKALA RUMAH TANGGA

In general, people in Indonesia use the electricity purchasing system from the state electricity company in two ways, namely Postpaid and Prepaid. In postpaid electricity subscription mode, the customer uses electrical energy first and then pays the bill the following month. PLN officers must record the meter, calculate and issue accounts to be paid by customers, bill customers who are late or do not pay, and cut off electricity if consumers are late or do not pay their electricity bills after a certain time. This is a weakness in the postpaid system because of the gradual process before the customer finally makes a bill payment. Prepaid electricity is introduced to customers by providing several conveniences, namely being able to control their own use of electrical energy, customers only need to buy vouchers or tokens according to the desired nominal. This is also a form of sales control carried out by PLN because it can reduce the amount of customer receivables, so there is no need for late fees and can also maintain customer privacy by not calculating kWh meters every month. The solar electric system provides a new breakthrough by utilizing solar energy which is then converted into electrical energy. The use of solar energy for electricity generation has actually been carried out for a long time, namely since the early 1980s, but its application is still limited to small power systems or better known as the Solar Home System (SHS). This research has successfully implemented a comparison of postpaid, prepaid and solar energy use. From the test results, it is found that the most economical prepaid system among other systems applied is the postpaid system and the solar power system. The results of tests carried out at the household scale show that during the 10 years of life, the results of using prepaid electricity are 16.6% more efficient than solar panel systems and 17.7% more efficient than postpaid electricity and prepaid electricity is 1.34% more efficient than postpaid electricity

Design of enhanced energy meter using GSM prepaid system and protective relays

Nowadays, technology has developed to an advanced level so customer demand for systems with automation and high security. The prepaid meter is important in making the consumer having sense about his or her energy consumption as well as in resolving the issues facing by the utility labor in getting the reading of conventional meter and eliminating the error incurred in bills issuing. This research aims to enhance an existing conventional energy meter integrate with prepaid system and protection system. The designed prepaid meter consists of an Arduino, conventional energy meter, GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) module, current sensor and relay. The proposed prototype comprises into two parts: GSM technology and overcurrent protection, whereas GSM technology is used for communication and reloads purpose; overcurrent protection is done with a current sensor and relay working together.

Distribution of Services Within the Call Center and Covid 19 – a Case Study

The considerations presented in the paper concern the impact of Covid-19 on sales possibilities in the pre-paid system and development perspectives of the researched business entity. As part of its operations, this entity is responsible for the supply of fuel to nearly 4,500 customers conducting business operations throughout Poland. The study was carried out by means of the method of quantitative analysis of economic data. The acquired data constituted a closed set of 518 479 contacts collected as a result of reporting the work of the call center department. The purpose of the paper is to analyze the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the possibilities of acquiring new customers by the entity that sells pre-paid fuels and the prospects for its future development. The analyzes allowed showing the relationship, before and after the introduction of socioeconomic restrictions, between the number of sales contacts made and their effectiveness. It was proved that lockdown caused changes in the scope of managing executive operations within the call center of the entity. This, in turn, affected operational and management decisions at both ownership and management levels.

Why prepaid technologies are not a panacea for inclusive and sustainable rural water services in Tanzania?

Abstract Poor sustainability of rural water schemes is a major problem in service delivery in sub-Saharan Africa. About half of the schemes fail one year after commissioning, mostly due to poor operation and maintenance. Many communities fail to collect and manage water revenue. Prepaid technologies are argued to remedy the poor water revenue management. However, it is not clear to what extent prepaid systems can contribute to the sustainability of rural water schemes. This paper assessed the performance of three different cases where prepaid technologies were used in Tanzania. Although the technologies used can simplify water revenue collection, they are not a panacea to deliver sustainable and equitable water services. The capital cost of the prepaid system is often paid for by donors, which is not being recovered, hence the notion of cost recovery is biased here. Also, a strong institutional capacity and knowledge is required alongside the technology. Therefore, the technology which is being promoted as better for improving cost recovery is, instead, causing a burden on water users.

Tax Prepayment System，Financial Constraints and Tax Compliance

The tax prepayment system is intended to smooth tax revenues for the entire fiscal year and is widely used in national tax systems, such as personal income tax, corporate income tax, and even value added tax. In the standard expected utility theory, the prepayment system has no effect on taxpayers’ tax compliance（Allingham and Sandmo, 1972）. However, since the application of the prospect theory to tax compliance analysis, the prepayment system has been pushed to a very high position, with a “double dividend” that not only smoothes tax revenue, but also promotes tax compliance（Yaniv, 1999; Elffers and Hessing, 1997）. At this conclusion, it seems that the prepayment system provides tax authorities with a simple, convenient, and low-cost option to increase tax compliance-allowing more taxpayers to be in the tax refund.But as King and Sheffrin（2002）stated, when the expected utility theory is criticized for its effectiveness, other alternative theories（such as the prospect theory）do not perform better, and sometimes even worse. The prepayment system and the prospect theory that seem to have received a lot of support are not perfect. These tiny doubts may just become a key point and even lead to the opposite conclusion. One of the important questions is Morita（2014）, which believes that the existing prospect theory does not take into account the role of cash flow and financial constraints. The current theory assumes that the prepayment system will not affect the company’s cash flow and aggravate corporate financial constraints. However, financial constraints often lead companies to adopt more aggressive taxation strategies and reduce corporate tax compliance（Kelvin, et al., 2015）. Therefore, if financial constraints are taken into account, the overall impact of the prepayment system on tax compliance may be completely the opposite. The reason why these questions have not attracted attention may be that there is no significant empirical counter-example to provide an opportunity for reflection on the theory, and a small number of questions are difficult to attract attention.This paper is to answer the following two questions:（1）Does prepaid tax refund promote tax compliance? （2）If the prepaid tax refund does not promote tax compliance, is the reason that the prepayment system aggravates the financial constraints of enterprises?This paper studies the above two issues based on the sample of corporate income tax refund in the 2013 National Tax Survey data. After using the instrumental variable method to alleviate the potential endogeneity problems, the main conclusions are as follows: the more the corporate income tax refund, the lower the tax compliance of enterprises; the mechanism test can find that the prepayment system aggravates the financial constraints of enterprises in the prepayment period; the more prepaid taxes are used in the prepayment period, the more financial constraints are added. The conclusions confirm the question of Morita（2014）.The contributions of this paper mainly include two aspects: First, in terms of theory, starting from small but crucial questions, this paper uses real evidence to re-answer the basic issues of the relationship between the prepayment system and tax compliance, and puts forward different conclusions from previous studies, which supports the validity of doubts, and provides an opportunity for tax compliance studies, especially for the application of the prospect theory in tax compliance. Second, it provides certain ideas and theoretical foundations for the improvement of the prepayment system. Allowing more people to be in the tax refund area is not a good solution to promote tax compliance. The design of the prepayment system should still be based on the principle of accurately assessing taxable income, that is, to minimize the difference between the prepaid tax and the actual tax, which can promote tax compliance.

Automatic Consumption Management for Prepaid Electricity Meter with NILM

Recently, the Brazilian Electricity Regulatory Agency (ANEEL) regularized the electricity prepayment system and opened a general discussion about the technologies, resources, and implementations for the prepayment metering system. In several countries, the consumer charges the value equivalent to the kilowatt-hours that he wishes to buy for use. However, some consumers purchase credit with the expectation that the charge remains for a specific time, but they may be surprised with the credit end before the expected time. For this reason, this paper proposes automatic consumption management for prepaid meters that analyzes the consumer appliance behavior, performs the temporal analysis of consumption by appliances, defines the cost management per load with high energy consumption and sends sound signals to the consumer ends the appliance usage. The objective of this management system is to ensure that the credit will be used for the consumer expected time.

Prepaid Electricity Billing System using Arduino

The World is changing very fast. With the advancement in technology, the needs and demands for various resources is increasing too. Earlier, when the technology was not that advanced. We, Humans, never thought about saving resources and never thought about efficiency, as everything was abundant. However, with this fast growing world and increasing demands, Scientists have started worrying about the Sustainable Development. The pace at which all these resources are being used, soon they will be fully depleted. Already the need for saving the resources like Petroleum and Natural gas has been understood and alternate resources are like electricity are used to power the devices dependent on Petroleum and Natural Gas. The main thing is that we are not realizing the fact that shifting to some other resource like Electricity and ultimately getting dependent on it will endanger that resource too. Today, Electricity is used as a major resource in our day-to-day lives. Electricity is powering every machine used by us daily. From Powering Fan, Ac, TV, Refrigerator to powering microwave, electric chimney, Induction Plate, and even Vehicles. We are overusing Electricity so much that there is a need to reduce its overuse. Otherwise, the day is not far when Scientists will have to start looking for some other alternate resource also. Being renewable resource, it is cheaper and easily available at this moment but soon the situations might change. In today’s Electricity Distribution System, there are many flaws. There is no measure for reducing the overuse, no measure for people not paying their bill, no measure for people who secretly steal the electricity. All this can be solved by using a Prepaid System that will enforce customers to pay before use, so no defaulters

Advance Energy Meter with Tariff Indication, Theft Dedection and Prepaid System using GSM

Advance Energy Meter with Tariff Indication, Theft Dedection and Prepaid System using GSM

Design Tools of Electric Applications Kwh Printing by Short Message Service

The prepaid electric meter is an electrical measuring and recording device used by customers with a prepaid system or so-called prepaid. A system that is able to recharge electric vouchers automatically using SMS and notification to the customer that the balance of electricity will be exhausted. This system is built using SMS gateway method by using GSM sim900 modem. When the power balance is below 10 KWH then the alarm will sound, at the same time the microcontroller will send SMS and miscall to customer’s mobile number

Iot Enabled Prepaid Electricity Meter

Internet of Things is guiding a lot of development in virtual reality, embedded systems etc. Energy meter system based on IOT applications can offer you a number of immediate benefits. A flawed system can lead to tremendous budgetary loss of a consumer as well as theft of electricity. Errors in traditional billing system occur at every stage, be it a faulty meter, calculation cost of electricity use, human errors for noticing the units consumed and other blunders. The solution for this stumbling block is “Smart Electric Meter” based on prepaid system. Our proposed system is implemented using system design embedded with NodeMCU 8266 Wifi-module which allows consumer to effectively manage their prepaid accounts and apparently set various alerts and receive various notifications through email. A prepaid system beyond the shadow of doubt will get rid of issues with traditional meters like unpaid bills, theft and monetary savings.

Inventory optimisation in a three-parameter Weibull model under a prepayment system

Negotiated conditions for payment of goods and services may involve one or a combination of three things: buyers pay for inventory when it is delivered, before it is delivered or after it is delivered. The payment options have significant impact on inventory-system total cost, and should be accounted for when analysing an inventory system. The inventory literature is mostly devoted to analysis of problems with payment at the time of delivery and credit payment. Following the latest development of a class of economic order-quantity models with prepayment included, we propose a generalised prepayment inventory model that subsumes a wide range of inventory problems. Optimisation results are presented for the cycle time and the unit selling price of an item. The results indicate that optimal strategies can exist for such problems. Numerical analyses of businesses with prepayment inventory systems are presented. A sensitivity analysis was conducted and the results show that buyers can strategically adjust those input parameters to which the optimal solution is insensitive in order to increase profit. Furthermore, the analysis indicates that buyers should focus on reducing the proportion of the purchase cost to the total prepayments.

Ensuring America's Health: The Public Creation of the Corporate Health Care SystemRemaking the American Patient: How Madison Avenue and Modern Medicine Turned Patients into Consumers

Ensuring America's Health: The Public Creation of the Corporate Health Care SystemRemaking the American Patient: How Madison Avenue and Modern Medicine Turned Patients into Consumers

Extending coverage to informal sector populations in Kenya: design preferences and implications for financing policy

BackgroundUniversal health coverage (UHC) is important in terms of improving access to quality health care while protecting households from the risk of catastrophic health spending and impoverishment. However, progress to UHC has been hampered by the measures to increase mandatory prepaid funds especially in low- and middle-income countries where there are large populations in the informal sector. Important considerations in expanding coverage to the informal sector should include an exploration of the type of prepayment system that is acceptable to the informal sector and the features of such a design that would encourage prepayment for health care among this population group. The objective of the study was to document the views of informal sector workers regarding different prepayment mechanisms, and critically analyze key design features of a future health system and the policy implications of financing UHC in Kenya.MethodsThis was part of larger study which involved a mixed-methods approach. The following tools were used to collect data from informal sector workers: focus group discussions [N = 16 (rural = 7; urban = 9)], individual in-depth interviews [N = 26 (rural = 14; urban = 12)] and a questionnaire survey [N = 455(rural = 129; urban = 326)]. Thematic approach was used to analyze qualitative data while Stata v.11 involving mainly descriptive analysis was used in quantitative data. The tools mentioned were used to collect data to meet various objectives of a larger study and what is presented here constitutes a small section of the data generated by these tools.ResultsThe findings show that informal sector workers in rural and urban areas prefer different prepayment systems for financing UHC. Preference for a non-contributory system of financing UHC was particularly strong in the urban study site (58%). Over 70% in the rural area preferred a contributory mechanism in financing UHC. The main concern for informal sector workers regardless of the overall design of the financing approach to UHC included a poor governance culture especially one that does not punish corruption. Other reasons especially with regard to the contributory financing approach included high premium costs and inability to enforce contributions from informal sector.ConclusionOn average 47% of all study participants, the largest single majority, are in favor of a non-contributory financing mechanism. Strong evidence from existing literature indicates difficulties in implementing social contributions as the primary financing mechanism for UHC in contexts with large informal sector populations. Non-contributory financing should be strongly recommended to policymakers to be the primary financing mechanism and supplemented by social contributions.

Universal Health Coverage: Public Health's Safe Haven or Beautiful Illusion?

In 2005, World Health Organization proposed Universal Health Coverage (UHC) as a powerful tool to achieve “the right to health”. UHC is a prepaid healthcare financing system aiming to provide accessible quality healthcare for all and protect population from economic consequences of illness. Ever since, UHC is a priority for many countries, which lowmiddle income ones are on the run to achieve, big players like America or UK still debate over many unresolved problems. So what can UHC achieve and is it truly the flawless pathway to global health?

Detection and Solutions for Non-Technical Losses in Cameroon Electricity Network

The purpose of this study was to provide a tool to detect NTLs and subsequently, discuss the establishment of a prepaid system in Cameroon. The conception of a prepayment system for electric power or other utility commodity distribution using Wi-Fi and GSM to store and transfer value (money or KWh, meters reading indexes) from the client module to cut-off module then to platform of the system and deliver power to the customer from the power distribution system. This system is also used as fraud detection model for the Cameroon National Electricity Company.

Give Me Back My Money: A Proposed Amendment to Delaware's Prepayment System in Statutory Appraisal Cases

In 2016, the Delaware General Assembly amended Section 262 of the Delaware General Corporation Law to provide surviving corporations with the option to prepay stockholders in appraisal cases. Specifically, the amendment gives a surviving corporation the option to pay, in advance of a trial to determine the stock’s fair value, whatever amount per share that it chooses. Doing so cuts off the statutory interest on the prepaid amount, which theoretically should disincentivize investors from filing appraisal petitions solely to turn a profit from the statutory interest rate—a strategy known as “interest-rate arbitrage.” But in amending the statute, the General Assembly did not specify whether the petitioning stockholders must return to the corporation any amount by which the prepayment exceeds the Court’s determination of fair value. The resulting unknown has not only caused uncertainty among litigants and costly motion practice in the Delaware Court of Chancery—a consequence, ironically, that the legislative amendment was aimed at avoiding—but has also diminished the amendment’s effect on curbing interest-rate arbitrage and, more generally, appraisal arbitrage. This article explores the history behind the prepayment amendment, including the evolution of Delaware’s appraisal statute and two Court of Chancery cases in which the Court foresaw the need for an effective prepayment system. This paper also examines the legislative history of the 2016 amendment and other scholars’ suggestions for dealing with the statutory ambiguity. Finally, the article offers a new model for legislative reform, one that retains Section 262’s core and advances the policy objectives that underlie Delaware’s appraisal system.

The Effect of Prepaid Electricity System on Household Energy Consumption – The Case of Bogor, Indonesia

Governments are increasingly seeking low-cost ways to curb residential energy use. This article examines the effect of one such innovative approach to energy savings in Bogor, Indonesia: a prepaid electricity meter system. The Bogor prepaid system requires households pay up front for their electricity as the meter tracks consumption and credit. By enabling users to see the relationship between energy use and costs, the metering system is intended to promote energy savings behaviour. However, the system in Bogor is introduced on a voluntarily opt-in basis. Further, it is still uncertain whether those joining the program will actually save energy. Identifying which kinds of households are most likely to join the program and then save energy are important considerations as policymakers contemplate further reforms to Bogor's prepaid system. A survey was conducted of 600 Bogor households to determine whether certain kinds of households were more inclined to join the voluntary program and self-report energy-relevant behaviour. A seemingly unrelated regression equation (SURE) model was then used to estimate the possible correlation between a series of covariates familiar to the energy savings literature and the decision to initially join and then saving energy through the program. The result shows the family size and recent income changes (during the last five years) were more likely to join voluntary program, while senior citizens were less likely to join. The results also reveal that education level play significant role in changing behaviour of households in the program. The results suggest that the program needs to be made convenient for low-income and elderly households. Accompanying the program with additional information on energy savings might also help make the program more effective.