Description: The SOA’s research objective is to provide guidance to state exchange officials and administrators, federal officials and administrators, and actuaries assisting states and health plans. The goal of the project is to estimate the morbidity and/or cost for newly insured individuals in the individual market (and to some degree, the small group exchange) relative to the morbidity and/or cost for the current commercially insured population. This analysis will primarily focus on the individual, non-group market. In order to plan for the impact that these currently uninsured individuals will have on the health insurance markets, it will be important to understand their costs relative to the costs for people already enrolled, for whom many health insurers have experience and data.

Description: The purpose of the SOA project Modeling Long Term Healthcare Cost Trends for Valuation is to provide a benchmark projection of medical cost increases and provide a user-firendly model for making alternative projections. This paper presents sample output from the model, technical documentation of the model, FAQs, and a review of the literature and references.

Description: The Society of Actuaries has developed and released a health care forecast model to illustrate the potential impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on insurance plan health care costs in the United States. Users of the model may include insurance company actuaries seeking an additional reference point for 2021 cost development, regulatory actuaries seeking additional insights and validation of costs as part of rating submissions for 2021, and insurance purchasers seeking a deeper understanding of the forces driving 2021 health care costs and premiums. The model is not intended as a replacement for existing modeling tools developed by insurers or regulators. Rather, the model’s primary purpose is to illustrate the key outbreak-related forces that are affecting the trajectory of health care costs. In addition the model can provide a common reference point to facilitate dialogue with respect to the regulatory review of 2021 health insurance rate filings.

Description: A report analyzing the cost of care for deceased cancer patients over the last six months of life.

Description: This study aims to answer the question of how much of an episode’s cost and use of specific services can be attributed to the patient’s own health status, as opposed to being driven by other factors such as the care setting, patient preference, and provider practice patterns. In other words, do episode costs vary so widely because of patient characteristics, including health status, or are they related to other, nonclinical factors?

Description: This study used commercial data held by the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) and Medicare fee-for-service data to analyze health care cost differences by age and their contribution to overall health care cost change. The commercial data includes claims from 2002 through 2010 and the Medicare data includes claims from 2006 through 2010.

Description: This project shows how to use agent-based models to simulate the behaviors of agents in complex health systems.

Description: Recognizing the importance of fortifying risk adjustment programs against selection based on nontraditional variables, the Society of Actuaries’ Health Section sponsored an in-depth study into the relationship of nontraditional variables with health costs. This report presents the results of this study.

Description: This model arose from a project to evaluate the cost of a health care access' program to provide comprehensive medical care to uninsureds in Minnesota, for the Minnesota Health Care Access Commission. The project was to provide estimates of the impact on per-person and aggregate costs for various participation percentages in the access program. In order to evaluate those costs, the antiselection model described in this was developed. Of note, this was the ACTUARIAL EDUCATION AND RESEARCH FUND 1991 PRACTITIONERS AWARD WINNER. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1991, VOL. 2.

Description: To provide a quantitative model to identify potential business disruptors and quantify their impacts.