Description: As the search continues for a solution to the U.S. Social Security system’s financing problems, the U.S. Congress is considering raising the normal retirement age for U.S. workers. The House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee heard testimony on Feb. 26, 1998 from Christopher Bone, chief actuary, Actuarial Sciences Associates, Somerset, N.J., Ron Gebhardtsbauer, senior pension fellow, American Academy of Actuaries, and Robert Myers, former chief actuary of the U.S. Social Security Administration and professor emeritus, Temple University. All discussed the impact of a higher normal retirement age. This article summarizes the testimony of these three actuaries.

Description: The author, outgoing chairperson of the Entrepreneurial Actuaries Section, ‘EAS,’ relays thanks to various individuals who have helped advance the goals of the section, and describes a request to the SOA, submitted by the EAS to develop a separate website for finding actuaries. “This would not be an extension of the SOA Directory which allows actuaries to find actuaries but a website for public access to actuaries who would register as independent entrepreneurs, small business and larger consulting firms.”

Description: Preview of the May 2010 issue of Health Watch, with focus on the growing importance of actuaries, particularly in light of new developments in health care reform, clinical integration, enterprise risk management, and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.

Description: The recent Forecast 2000 forum on the environment held in Toronto dealt with such issues as increased taxes and higher insurance premiums to cover costs of natural disasters.

Description: An actuary, Jim Toole, speaks out on racial disparities in infant mortality.

Description: This article is about Ron Gebhardtsbauer, senior pension fellow for the American Academy of Actuaries, filling in for U.S. President Bill Clinton at a December 1998 White House Conference on Social Security. Gebhardtsbauer moderated a one-and-a-half-hour discussion that was carried live on the nationwide C-SPAN 2 network.

Description: The article notes, as explained in Norman Solomon’s paper, TSA XV, 167, so-called windfall appropriations are required annually to finance dual benefits to which certain railroad workers became eligible under the Railroad Retirement Act in consequence of pre-1975 employment that entitled them to both Railroad Retirement and Social Security benefits. The author then notes that the Office of Management and Budget has arbitrarily reduced revised appropriations, and that “the actuarial profession should take a strong stand against this by-passing of actuarial determinations.”

Description: This is an editorial by the president of the SOA on the subject of how the world views actuaries.

Description: Article The Actuary Revealed by Dinney in The Actuary, May 1979, Volume 13, Number 3

Description: People often describe the actuarial profession as dealing with risk. That is true, but in the case of life and health actuaries, another element may be even more important. It is the management of liabilities that accrue over time. For example, the liability associated with a group of individual life insureds increases as the group grows older.