Dealing With Public Service Ads on Your Website

Many of us start out with websites that we want to generate some income with, so we think that Google is the one and only solution to our desire or even our need to earn some extra money. And, it's fair to say that a lot of money can be made with the use of Google ads on one's website, but only if they work correctly. Money is made on these ads when relevant ads are posted on our website so that visitors can click on them and we can be compensated for every click! Unfortunately, a good deal of the time one will visit their website only to find that public service ads have been placed on their website by Google, and these ads don't pay at all when your visitors click on them.

You can report the fact that you have had a lot of public service ads on your website to Google, but generally there is not much that Google can do about it. The public service ads are placed on your website when relevant or targeted ads are unavailable, or when Google is simply unable to obtain information from the page to display relevant ads. This can be frustrating when for one reason or another ads that pay are not posted on your website continually. The reason that this is so frustrating is that you have only aligned yourself with Google AdSense to make some cash on your website, even if you are not profiting from it in any other manner.

Luckily, if you are tired of seeing public service ads on your website you CAN do something about it. You don't have to sit by and wait for Google to decide that you are worthy of those ads that pay! You can visit a website such as http://www.defaultads.com which will show you how to monetize public service ads and even alternate the ads shown when Google AdSense, or Chitika, and other content advertising networks cannot accommodate your needs with targeted ads on your webpage. This awesome website can help you out when you load all of your affiliate or other ads into DefaultAds when it quickly generates a link to include in your Google AdSense alternate ad URL.

This system will allow you to make money when you typically wouldn't be making any at all! The best thing about this system is that it is totally risk free. You don't have to worry about the content that will be shown as DefaultAds will only show their ads one out of every 100 impressions and they will be the same size, quality, and will even target the same category that you would target with the Google ads!

Facts About Public Transport in Berlin

Berlin, the capital city of Germany, is famous worldwide for its historical sites, art museums and beautiful architectural structures. Travellers love to go to Berlin because aside from enjoying the fabulous tourist spots, the city has an amazing public transport system, which enables the visitors to explore the whole city. Aside from that, public transport Berlin is convenient for all tourists because the public transportation staff underwent language training, thus they can speak in English for the convenience of the travellers.
The biggest public transport system in Berlin is called Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG), and is known as the best mode of transportation when touring around the city. It has a three zone system which is interconnected, and requires you to give only one ticket when you ride the bus to underground, to surface rail and to tram.
The underground network in Berlin does not have ticket barriers. However, it is important that before travelling, your ticket must be validated. There are several spot checks along the way, and you would not want to get caught by the transport officials. So to be sure, you need to validate your ticket in the validating machine before you travel around.
BVG makes sure that tourists are having a fun time in exploring the city. Even during night time, many locals and travellers from all over the world ride the public transport Berlin because of the convenience and comfort that it brings. BVG continues to improve the services and facilities to keep the public transport system a success.
The second biggest transport service in the city is known as S-Bahn Berlin GmBH. It has fifteen lines and can transport daily of more than a million passenger. Just like BVG, S-Bahn Berlin makes sure that it provides excellent service to its passengers. And to encourage the use of buses and trains, it continuously improves its facilities and services. It also uses sulphur free diesel in order to promote a clean and healthy environment.
Another great way of getting around the city is through taxi. Taxi cabs can be found in airports, hotels, and all the main stations of Berlin. But if you want to drive around to explore the wonderful sites, you can use a car. The great thing about Berlin is that it has wide and long roads that are best for driving. And if traffic is your concern, you do not need to worry about it because the city has civilized traffic, so there are no traffic issues.
Now if you want to go around by bicycle, you will definitely have a fun time exploring the city. Berlin highly recommends cycling because aside from being easy to use, it is safe as well. There are various cycle lanes and they are separated from the cars to keep the cyclists isolated from the vehicles, hence you can be assured that driving your bicycle is safe.
Staying in Berlin is definitely a great way to enjoy your vacation. Travellers love to come back to this beautiful city because aside from the fabulous tourist spots and architectural structures, public transport Berlin is great and is a big help in making the tourists easily explore the whole city.

Data Management For Improved Government Services

Information is at the core of government activities. Managing data and ensuring it is as accurate and up to date as possible is critical for all levels of government in Australia, from local councils to state or federal departments.

Governments collect a wide range of personal information for a variety of reasons. Voting information, tax information, vehicle registration, criminal records, residency information, child safety -the list goes on and on.

Call centres, letters, email, face to face, citizens interact with government via multiple channels. The rise of e-government has also seen a massive increase in data collected via the internet.

According to Experian QAS government research "Almost 95% consider data quality to be a 'priority' or 'important' - but less than 60% have a data quality strategy in place."

However it is captured, the data government departments' possess is vital and the consequences of 'getting data management wrong' are both wide spread and severe.

1. PUBLIC SAFETY AND RISK MANAGEMENT

Imagine if a social worker arrived at a home to check on the welfare of minors in response to a report of abuse - and the address was wrong. Not only would this be embarrassing for the government department, it could also jeopardise the safety of the young people involved. This is just one of numerous scenarios where public safety could be at risk due to insufficient or incorrect data held by government departments.

There are multiple acts and guidelines pertaining to the mitigation of risk through personal information. For example, legislation relating to background checks on employees working with children, criminal records legislation including the National Offenders Register, public housing records, and elder care records. Even emergency services can be affected by improperly collected or maintained government records.

There are multiple acts and guidelines - from the National Privacy Act to state and local based guidelines on personal information and data quality, as well as legislation pertaining to the mitigation of risk through personal information.

2. REPORTING AND COMPLIANCE LEGISLATION

The introduction of increased levels of compliance and reporting place a greater onus on businesses, and government departments, to ensure they are regularly updating and maintaining accurate information within their databases.

For example, the Federal Government introduced privacy protection legislation in 2001 which proscribes that organisations have an obligation to uphold individual's rights to privacy by regulating the collection, usage and disclosure of personal information. Centralising all of the information a department holds about an individual and ensuring its accuracy is imperative to ensure compliance.

Legal requirements from Federal law state that Government departments must archive data for the past 25 years and demonstrate reasonable care in the maintenance of databases. As it is a well-documented fact that 17% of the Australian population move home every year, it immediately becomes obvious that a 25-year-old database will contain an inordinate amount of inaccurate data. Australia Post advises that every day over 9,000 addresses change.

According to the National Privacy Act, "An organisation must take reasonable steps to make sure that the personal information it collects, uses or discloses is accurate, complete and up-to-date." Therefore it is a matter of law that the public services has systems and processes in place to ensure the accuracy of data, both when it is initial collected and over the period of time the data is retained.

3. PROCESS IMPROVEMENT

While Government departments span an overwhelmingly diverse range of functions from education and human services through to emergency services, they share a single goal, the provision of quality services to the citizens of Australia.

Although Government departments operate on a decidedly different methodology to the corporate sector, the aim is to operate in the most efficient manner to drive value from the taxpayer's dollar.

Data quality is an aspect often overlooked by government departments, but one that can offer wide ranging benefits to departments across the board. Not only can the accuracy and validation of data prevent fraud and improve security, it enhances co-operation and sharing of information between departments and allows Government agencies to better interact with the citizens they serve.

For example, the quality of data retained by an agency can be instrumental in preventing fraud. Each address in Australia has a unique DPID code assigned by Australia Post. Government programs that overlap each other can use this code as a means to trace cross program involvement (ie. Community Services, Centrelink and Justice). Fraud can be detected via address verification as multiple claims from a single address will be identified instantly.

IMPROVING GOVERNMENT DATA MANAGEMENT

Successful data management requires a focus on deploying the right people, processes and technology and a focus on proactively managing data quality.

There are several steps government departments can take to improve data management and mitigate the consequences of poor data quality.

1. Determine how the data collected will be used. What will you be doing with the data collected? Are there new products, services, legislation that will arise in the near future that will impact on the type of data you need? For example, do you need just address information or are you planning on increasing communication via other methods such as email or phone? Determining what you want to do with the data, or may want to do with the data, ensures that you are capturing the right information from the beginning.

2. Where are the gaps? Look at the data you already possess and see where information is missing. What are the issues your department is most concerned about? How do you communicate these issues to your citizens? For example, a local council can analyse its citizens service utilisation and payment history to build a picture of the services used in the past and predict what they are likely to use in the future. Combined with lifestyle and geodemographic data profiling, the local council can better develop new services and improve communication with their citizens.

3. How good is your current data? Analyse your existing data to determine how well your existing processes are working to capture and maintain accurate data. Do you have multiple entries for the same person or address, how many incomplete records are in your system, how often are the records verified or updated? Once the quality of your current data is assessed, it will be possible to identify where the process is falling down.

4. Put new process in place Data is constantly decaying. Processes need to be developed and implemented to collect, clean and maintain data in a robust and future proof manner. Think beyond today when developing these systems to how you may need to collect and utilise data in the future.

5. Make technology work for you. Technology makes the daunting task of data verification, both at the point of entry and over the lifecycle of the data, much easier. There are tools to standardise the input of information and verify it at point of entry, tools to clean an existing database by verifying address data against Australia Post's Postal Address File (PAF), and even tools to profile your database based on lifestyle or geodemographic information to better target communication.

6. Measure your progress To ensure that new policies, procedures and technologies are providing improvements and return on investment it is necessary to measure the improvement and performance of your data quality on an ongoing basis. This will also offer you the opportunity to identify new areas which may need improvement or ways new technologies may be able to enhance the data quality even further.

WHAT IS THE G-NAF?

The development and launch of the nation's first index of physical addresses and geocoordinates for the corresponding parcel of land was engineered by the Public Sector Mapping Agency (PSMA) in 2004. The key objective of the Geocoded National Address File (G-NAF) is to provide the ultimate source for actual, physical address data.

The G-NAF is the collation of data provided by 15 government agencies, including Australia Post, Australian Electoral Commission and land and mapping agencies. All these data providers send their files of address data and geocoordinate information to the PSMA. These are then compared, given a confidence level depending on how many times that exact address appears on multiple sources and deduped. The ultimate aim is to create the authoritative national database for physical addressing in Australia.

BENEFITS OF GNAF TO GOVERNMENT

1. Service Provision (Federal & State level)

o By understanding where citizens are located, Service Providers such as Centrelink are able to plot their physical locations onto a map and immediately see if existing centres are close to clusters of those in need of assistance.
o A further example is NSW Health who are able to plot the location of citizens and the location of hospitals and doctors. It can then instantly view whether there is adequate service provision to those in need.

2. Local

o Allows more accurate planning as statistical data can be more closely aligned with areas of interest such as shopping centres or high school catchments. This would support more accurate socio-economic and demographic analysis which would in turn lead to improved government policy and delivery of services and support.

3. Emergency Response

o Streamline the incidence response processes and decrease response times
o Emergency crews can pinpoint the exact location of an address
o Houses under immediate bushfire threats can be located and warned with the aid of GNAF
o Beneficial in Counter Terrorism responses. With GNAF, authorities can ensure resources are immediately directed to exactly the right location.

CONCLUSION

Government exists to provide citizens with services in an efficient and cost effective manner. These services range from protecting the welfare of children to providing each household with recycling bins and everything in-between. Without accurate and up to data databases, governments will be unable to fulfil their core purpose and will risk failing in key areas such as risk management, public safety, fraud prevention and guaranteeing the privacy of its citizens. It is therefore critical that government department increase their focus on developing and maintaining quality data management processes.

How to Fix Public Utilities in Africa

Any person travelling to most parts of Africa will notice the level of infrastructural decay in the continent. From roads to electricity, public water system to waste disposal system, the continent continues to struggle to join the league of modern world by not providing necessary services to its citizens.

During the time of Africa's greatest generation, the legends of our 1960s that liberated us from colonization, we saw a continent on the path of continuous progress. It had a virtuoso agricultural system and was revamping the social amenities. Good and durable roads were built and Africa was respected across the regions of the earth.

Those days, the brightest African minds were living in Africa. From Chinua Achebe to Camara Laye, Africa gave the world literary icons. Interesting, as our literature was developing and growing with African voice and writing under the African Writers Series, our engineering was solid. Our engineers were in charge of the railway system which was functional and efficient.

Our engineers built the best roads. Our few water boards were working. The electricity where they were was reliable. Construction houses were not collapsing. Across the universities, there was an aura of order and intellectual haven. The public utilities were functioning and government had access to the brightest African minds to hire and retain.

It was an honor to be working for government because they offered the best package.

But, that was then. Things have changed, for worse. Military governments destroyed that harmony and alienated many Africans to their leaderships. Many left the continent and some vowed never to work for government.

During series of workshops and seminars across Africa last year, I asked groups of students where they would like to work upon graduation. At Universality of Nairobi (Kenya), none of the engineering students I spoke with showed any interest to work in the public utilities.

At Ahmadu Bello University (Nigeria), the brightest of the engineering students noted that public utilities like Nigeria's PHCN (public electricity corporation) and NITEL (public telecom corporation) were lasts on their lists. From Uganda to Cameroon, Senegal to Botswana; government agencies are not attracting the very bests of African talents. These students do not see public utilities as places to build their careers.

In short, the students thought that by working with government, people will think they are not good enough to compete for private sector jobs.

In a seminar in Benin, we made this observation to students: "why do you complain when there is no light considering that the very best among you are not interested in helping to provide that light". They all smiled and said it was none of their problems. We gave a lecture making an argument that any sector that cannot recruit and retain the bests in the land cannot compete.

It does not matter whether this sector is run by government (many public utilities are still monopolies in Africa) or the private sector. The point is that we cannot necessarily expect the governments to give us the best service on electricity, water, etc when the brightest people do not engage in those areas.

When they hire third class graduates, they cannot provide a first-grade service. It is the same analogy where a school district asks a teacher to provide A students when the teacher is not an A grade quality. It is a vicious cycle and can only be broken by getting the right talents in the pipeline.

The best African technical graduates are employed by banks and multinational corporations (MNCs). The few more ambitious and risk taking ones travel abroad. Usually, the ones that make it abroad are above average; at least they pass the visa interviews. Under these conditions, the monopolistic public utilities have to plan with some graduates who may not be on top of their games.

Sure, this does not mean that all those that work in public utilities are not bright; we are discussing averages here. We are aware of first class graduates in these agencies, though we acknowledge that those might have been hired more than a decade ago.

Many of our public utilities are not efficiently managed and lack dynamism you will see in banking or MNCs. The bureaucracy is stifling with usually below average remuneration. To compound all is that many African governments do not see talent drains in the utilities as a problem they have to find a solution.

It makes one laugh when governments issue orders that public utilities in different African countries would double capacity. Nigerian governments have consistently missed targets in this yearly ritual for more than a decade. They promised to raise electricity capacity; they will revise at year end.

On rare occasions, they have small success because they brought in some foreign contractors. But when these expatriates are gone and time to sustain that capacity, you will notice in few weeks, the system has broken. In the good old Africa when public utilities had the brightest stars from universities, competing far better than banking, many nations had better electricity and water than today. Those talents will not just support the capacity, they will improve on them.

So how do you fix this problem?

It is about knowledge and skill - the greatest tool of this century. To modernize and make utilities functioning in Africa, it is time African leaders understand that talent drain in the public is hurting everyone. They must find ways to bring talented Africans to public service to move our continent forward.

This can be done by revamping the system, paying competitively, developing merit based processes and finally entrusting our bests to run our utilities. Fixing Africa's public utilities is perhaps one of the most important competitive weapons the continent can use to reverse brain drain and accelerate economic development in the continent. It is time not to handoff the brightest talents to the private sector.

How to Design a New American Health Care System - 3 Simple Proposals

Much is currently being written about how President Obama should re-shape the American Healthcare system. Most commentators agree that the current arrangement for healthcare in this country is too expensive, highly inefficient and provides unequal levels of care, including minimal care for the 47 million uninsured Americans.

As a physician with a longstanding interest in how health services are organized, and who has lived and worked in the USA, Australia and Britain, as well as consulted to many other countries, I have strongly held views on the types of directions America should take. And at one level they are remarkably simple, and can be summarized in three suggestions.

1. A public-private partnership philosophy has to be central to the whole re-engineering of the health system. America is founded on capitalist principals, where the profit motive is central, and any new approach to healthcare must combine this with the need to develop core public services that may be less likely to ever achieve a profit. There must be the potential for cross investment in all directions - and with funding for care provided on the basis of annual or episodic whole of person care provided, rather than on individual piece rates as at present. Numerous studies have shown that if health systems can be given the incentive to provide quality care efficiently over defined time periods, and Kaiser Permanente is an excellent example, that they can do this. The primary importance of this approach is that it will force more resources into prevention of illness - to wellness promotion - rather than into the treatment of illness that has already commenced. Of course in such an environment anyone, no matter what their insurance, should be able to receive emergency care in any hospital at any time - public or private. The whole system must be developed with interoperable health information technology systems, including patient accessible electronic medical records and the provision of a unique health identifier for everyone. This approach will greatly improve the delivery of healthcare, and the security and privacy of health information.

2. The public component of the healthcare system would include universal basic health insurance (including catastrophic care insurance) and many emergency and isolated health services, as well as much more public health focus on prevention and health promotion. Public programs should also pick up much of pre/post natal and early child care (by far the most important care in the whole health system) to ensure all mothers and babies are properly looked after, and probably care of some special populations who cannot afford private health insurance such as the unemployed, some seniors and certain impoverished or geographically isolated groups.

3. The private component would be funded with the aid of tax incentives to encourage most people (or companies) to take out private insurance with aim that at least 80-90% of the population should have private insurance. It is crucial to reach this level of insurance to be confident that patients have "skin in the game" and are financially responsible for at least a good proportion of their healthcare costs, and do not see healthcare as something that is provided by the government for free. The private sector should offer a full range of services from birth to death - with the ability to charge extra for certain "non-essential" services such as cosmetic surgery and other niche areas - but with regulation to prevent people being excluded on grounds of pre-existing conditions. A voucher system for certain groups, such as the chronically disabled, funded by government payments would allow all to access the private healthcare system depending on need. The insurance process for this private component needs a complete overhaul to reduce administrative overheads and simplify the payment process - my view of the simplest way of doing this would be to limit the number of private insurance companies and make sure that they are financially viable and large enough to offer reasonable regulated levels of healthcare services to their members.

These 3 steps to providing better care, and fairer access to care, for all Americans are taken from what I consider to be the best parts of the American, British and Australian health systems. No country has a perfect health system, and all are dependent on the core cultural philosophies held by the individual nation. America is the Land of the Free and can afford to choose the best of what other countries have attempted as it debates how to improve its healthcare system, and ultimately the strength and fortitude of its people.

A Socialized Health Care System Requires Population Control and Impeccable Registries

In a nationalized health care system, you need to know who is who - otherwise the system could never be able determine who is entitled. The structure depends on how the system is created and designed, but with a nationalized health care system you will be tracked by the state where you reside and how you move in a manner that is unseen in America. The nationalized health care system becomes a vehicle for population control.
If you leave the United States and are no longer a resident of the state, even if you are a citizen and might maintain a driving license, you will have to report immediately if you want to avoid the 13% health care tax. I use the number 13% as it is in Sweden to exemplify the actual tax pressure that is laid upon you for the nationalized health care.
Let's say you moved and you do not want to pay the 13% tax for services you do not receive, can receive, or want to taken out from the tax roll. The mammoth entity has no interest to let you go so easy. You will end up having to reveal your private life - partner, dwellings, travel, money, and job to prove your case that you have the right to leave the public health care system and do not need to pay the tax. If you have to seek an appeal, your information could be a part of administrative court documents that are open and public documents. As soon as you return to the United States, you will be automatically enrolled again and the taxes start to pile up.
Public universal health care has no interest in protecting your privacy. They want their tax money and, to fight for your rights, you will have to prove that you meet the requirements to not be taxable. In that process, your private life is up for display.
The national ID-card and national population registry that includes your medical information is a foundation of the nationalized health care system. You can see where this is going - population control and ability to use the law and health care access to map your whole private life in public searchable databases owned and operated by the government.
By operating an impeccable population registry that tracks where you live, who you live with, when you move and your citizen status including residency the Swedes can separate who can receive universal health care from those not entitled. The Swedish authorities will know if you have a Swedish social security number, with the tap of the keyboard, more information about yourself than you can remember. The Swedish government has taken sharing of information between agencies to a new level. The reason is very simple - to collect health care tax and suppress any tax evasion.
It is heavily centralized and only the central administration can change the registered information in the data. So if you want to change your name, even the slightest change, you have to file an application at a national agency that processes your paperwork. This centralized population registry makes it possible to determine who is who under all circumstances and it is necessary for the national health care system. Otherwise, any person could claim to be entitled.
To implement that in the United States requires a completely new doctrine for population registry and control. In an American context that would require that every existing driving license had to be voided and reapplied under stricter identification rules that would match not only data from Internal Revenue Service, state government, municipal government, Social Security Administration, and Department of Homeland Security but almost any agency that provides services to the general public. The reason why a new population registry would be needed in the United States is the fact that lax rules dating back to the 1940s up until the War on Terrorism, and stricter identification criteria following 9/11, has made a significant percentage of personal information about individuals questionable.
If America instead neglects maintaining secure records, determining eligibility for public health care would not be possible and the floodgates for fraud would open and rampant misuse of the system would prevail. This would eventually bring down the system.
It is financially impossible to create a universal health care system without clearly knowing who is entitled and not. The system needs to have limits of its entitlement. A social security number would not be enough as these numbers have been handed out through decades to temporary residents that might not even live in the United States or might today be out of status as illegal immigrants.
The Congress has investigated the cost of many of the "public options", but still we have no clear picture of the actual realm of the group that would be entitled and under which conditions. The risk is political. It is very easy for political reasons to extend the entitlement. Politicians would have a hard time being firm on illegal immigrants' entitlement, as that would put the politicians on a collision course with mainly the Hispanic community as they represent a significant part of the illegal immigrants. So the easy sell is then that everyone that is a legal resident alien or citizen can join according to one fee plan and then the illegal immigrants can join according to a different fee structure. That assumes that they actually pay the fee which is a wild guess as they are likely to be able to get access to service without having to state that they are illegal immigrants.
It would work politically - but again - without an impeccable population registry and control over who is who on a national level, this is unlikely to succeed. The system would be predestined to fail because of lack of funds. If you design a system to provide the health care needs for a population and then increase that population without any additional funds - then naturally it would lead to a lower level of service, declined quality, and waiting lists for complex procedures. In real terms, American health care goes from being a first world system to a third world system.
Thousands, if not a million, American residents live as any other American citizen but they are still not in good standing with their immigration even if they have been here for ten or fifteen years. A universal health care system will raise issues about who is entitled and who is not.
The alternative is for an American universal health care system to surrender to the fact that there is no order in the population registry and just provide health care for everyone who shows up. If that is done, costs will dramatically increase at some level depending on who will pick up the bill - the state government, the federal government, or the public health care system.
Illegal immigrants that have arrived within the last years and make up a significant population would create an enormous pressure on a universal health care, if implemented, in states like Texas and California. If they are given universal health care, it would be a pure loss for the system as they mostly work for cash. They will never be payees into the universal health care system as it is based on salary taxes, and they do not file taxes.
The difference is that Sweden has almost no illegal immigrants compared to the United States. The Swedes do not provide health care services for illegal immigrants and the illegal immigrants can be arrested and deported if they require public service without good legal standing.
This firm and uniform standpoint towards illegal immigration is necessary to avoid a universal health care system from crumbling down and to maintain a sustainable ratio between those who pay into the system and those who benefit from it.
The working middle class that would be the backbone to pay into the system would not only face that their existing health care is halved in its service value - but most likely face higher cost of health care as they will be the ones to pick up the bill.
The universal health care system would have maybe 60 million to 70 million "free riders" if based on wage taxes, and maybe half if based on fees, that will not pay anything into the system. We already know that approximately 60 million Americans pay no taxes as adults add to that the estimated 10-15 million illegal immigrants.
There is no way that a universal health care system can be viably implemented unless America creates a population registry that can identify the entitlements for each individual and that would have to be designed from scratch to a high degree as we can not rely on driver's license data as the quality would be too low - too many errors.
Many illegal immigrants have both social security numbers and driver's licenses as these were issued without rigorous control of status before 9/11. The alternative is that you had to show a US passport or a valid foreign passport with a green card to be able to register.
Another problematic task is the number of points of registration. If the registration is done by hospitals - and not a federal agency - then it is highly likely that registration fraud would be rampant. It would be very easy to trespass the control of eligibility if it is registered and determined by a hospital clerk. This supports that the eligibility has to be determined by a central administration that has a vast access to data and information about our lives, income, and medical history. If one single registration at a health care provider or hospital would guarantee you free health care for life and there is no rigorous and audited process - then it is a given that corruption, bribery, and fraud would be synonymous with the system.
This requires a significant level of political strength to confront and set the limits for who is entitled - and here comes the real problem - selling out health care to get the votes of the free riders. It is apparent that the political power of the "free" health care promise is extremely high.
A promise that can not alienate anyone as a tighter population registry would upset the Hispanic population, as many of the illegal immigrants are Hispanics - and many Hispanics might be citizens by birth but their elderly parents are not. Would the voting power of the younger Hispanics act to put pressure to extend health care to elderly that are not citizens? Yes, naturally, as every group tries to maximize its own self-interest.
The risk is, even with an enhanced population registry, that the group of entitled would expand and put additional burden on the system beyond what it was designed for. That could come though political wheeling and dealing, sheer inability from an administrative standpoint to identify groups, or systematic fraud within the system itself.
We can speculate about the outcome but the challenges are clear. This also represents a new threat to the privacy and respect for the private sphere of the citizenry as an increased population registration and control empowers the government with more accurate information about our lives and the way we live our lives. Historically, has any government when given the opportunity to get power taken that opportunity and given that power back to the people after the initial objective was reached? Governments like to stick to power.
To ensure the universal health care system is designed to function as intended it, would require procedures that would limit fraud, amass a significant amount of personal information, have access to all your medical data, and also determine who you are beyond any doubt. Just to be able to determine if you are entitled or not and, track the expenditures you generate.
The aggregation of these data could also open the floodgates for any data mining within these data under the pure excuse that it would help the universal health care system to better "serve you" and lower the costs.
To lower the costs also means to identify which procedures should not be done on which type of patients as it is not viable based on the government's interest to optimize your productivity under your life cycle. The collection of data has a tendency to look inviting and good when we start to collect it but aggregated data and personal information creates a deep intrusion in our privacy.