Description: Hot topics for Medicare, including enrollment trends, enticing benefits, risk score projections, market strategy trends, formulary considerations, STAR rating changes, and COVID implications including vaccine/testing requirements Proposed/enacted changes to Part D from the Build Back Better (BBB) Act-CMS’s commitment to advancing equity in health and health care for all individuals Discussion of removing barriers to equal opportunity, health disparities, and closing health equity gaps, including collecting more and improved data on beneficiaries’ race, ethnicity and social determinants of health By attending this session, you will be further prepared for current and future changes in the Medicare Advantage program. Gather additional insight into future trends in policy changes and cost spending and to be more equipped to adapt to changes in the marketplace.

Description: Given both the immediate and long-term importance of this topic, the ARSRP is simultaneously issuing both a call for essays and request for research proposals

Description: Current tax issues affecting the insurance industry, including the Inflation Reduction Act (Budget Reconciliation Bill)'s tax provisions, including the corporate minimum book income tax and share repurchase (or stock buyback) excise tax; the tax treatment of non coordinated benefits (also known as fixed indemnity benefits); and an update on the OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Project

Description: Critical illness insurance is a popular supplemental health insurance product in the U.S. market. This article discusses how carriers have recently sought to add value by expanded the benefits offered in their critical illness products. Specifically, the article discusses the consumer need and development considerations of adding benefits for autism Spectrum Disorder, Mental health disorders, Specified Disease Coverage, and enhance Cancer Coverage to a critical illness contract.

Description: The health insurance industry has historically used several factors to develop premium rates. Many of these, e.g. gender rating, have been largely eliminated from health insurance rating practices by regulations as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) because they were determined as inequitable. However, several other factors still remain as differentiators in premium rates charged to individuals and groups. In conjunction with the SOA, researchers studied whether there could be ‘ghost’ rating factors, like race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status, that are inherently included in some of these remaining allowable factors. Review results and opportunities for future research. By attending this session, you will be challenged to think about traditional rating factors in a different way. Rather than focusing on whether certain factors are sound based on the underlying claims cost, this session will focus on whether or not these factors are impacting certain socioeconomic or racial/ethnic groups disparately.

Description: This article shows how COVID-19 affected retirement risks, and how retirement planning was impacted by COVID-19. It ties together COVID-19 and its economic consequences with results of two recent consumer surveys that examine retirement risk perceptions and financial well being and a more complete discussion of retirement risks. The Managing Post-Retirement Risks guide divided retirement risks into economic risks, risks and personal planning considerations, and unexpected and unpredictable events. Each of the risks discussed in the guide is discussed in the article with commentary on COVID-19 and its impact, and information about how to manage the risk. For each risk, there is information provided about any insights gained in the two surveys. Results of the two surveys linked to COVID-19 are also discussed.

Description: In 2022, the Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute Committee on Finance Research (CFR) of the Investment Section in collaboration with the SOA Research Institute Catastrophic and Climate Strategic Research Program, published a research report on the impact of disaster events on investments. The report, The Impact of Disaster Events on Investment-Contagion Channels Perspective, which explored this issue from the perspective of contagion channels, provided a framework for further investigation. As a next step, CFR is seeking essays on how the concepts in the report and related studies may be practically applied in specific situations and recent experiences.

Description: On September 14, 2022, The Wall Street Journal hosted its ‘Future of Health’ event, which was a virtual event featuring three sessions on some emerging cutting-edge topics that could impact the future healthcare environment as well as health care actuaries. This report summarizes the event.

Description: The South African life insurance industry contains the largest life insurance market in Africa, it is highly sophisticated and highly regulated. In the years 2020 and2021, the industry suffered significant mortality losses due toCovid-19. What can we learn from this experience in South Africa?

Description: As results emerged showing the influence of COVID-19 on recent mortality, the Society of Actuaries Research Institute’s Mortality and Longevity Strategic Research Program Steering Committee (MLPSC) began to ponder what it means for the future. Was the coronavirus pandemic just a temporary shock to U.S. mortality with mortality quickly returning to prepandemic levels upon its conclusion or a lingering factor in future U.S. mortality from the potential occurrence of new coronavirus variants, post-COVID-19 conditions (“long COVID”), deferral of needed health care treatment, a fatigued health care system and other elements? Only time will provide the answers to these questions.