Description: Opioids overdoses have contributed to increases in mortality among white American. This article gives some detail on the speed and the reach of the epidemic.

Description: Beneficiaries who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid often have complex health needs. The two programs have not typically been well integrated and care can become uncoordinated, fragmented and incomplete. The ACA includes provisions to address the shortcomings.

Description: MHPAEA prohibits health plans from imposing financial requirements or treatment limitations on behavioral health benefits that are more restrictive than those applied to medical and surgical benefits. MHPAEA's regulations define treatment limitations to include nonquantitative treatment limitations (NQTLs), which are benefit design features that are not numerical, but otherwise limit the scope or duration of benefits.

Description: Medicaid and the ACA

Description: Highlights of the 2013 Health Meeting

Description: This paper applies the principles and methodologies discussed in earlier papers in this series to measure cost savings from a two-year disease management DM program for the 200,000 Medicare members of a regional managed care plan. We then study how savings estimates change when we allow for four variations in key assumptions: methods for identifying or excluding plan members, requirements for eligibility in the health plan, methods for calculating health care trend and study design. Finally, we also examine the sensitivity of these results to product type by comparing the Medicare results to those of the Commercial HMO/POS product. Paper 8 of an 8 paper series titled: “Evaluating the Results of Care Management Interventions: Comparative Analysis of Different Outcomes Measures” sponsored by the Society of Actuaries’ Health Section and the Committee on Knowledge Extension Research.

Description: Health care cost trends are a key ingredient that health care actuaries use in their practice. In collaboration with the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI), the Society of Actuaries has put together a data extract for practicing health actuaries to be able to better understand historical trends and cost disruptors.

Description: An introduction to the National Academy of Social Insurance and how actuaries can contribute.

Description: This article highlights several state's Medicaid innovatioins, including cutting edge payment changes based on episodes of care, patient outcomes, and quality metrics.

Description: This collection of articles, essays and research reports look at the impacts of excessive heat on mortality, morbidity, property damage, and other costs, and the applications to actuarial practice and quantification of risks resulting from excessive heat.