Description: Chairperson of the LTC Section reflects on his three-year term on the LTC Section Council.

Description: Family caregivers are a critical link in providing long-term services and supports (LTSS), but they have significant unmet needs. To better support family caregivers, Congress authorized the Recognize, Assist, Include, Support, & Engage (RAISE) Family Caregivers Act in 2018 and created the RAISE Family Caregiving Advisory Council. The Council identified recommendations to serve as the backbone of a national strategy to improve the physical, emotional and financial well-being of family caregivers. A new report, "Asking Directions: Mapping a Course to Support Family Caregivers," identifies specific actions across a variety of players for meeting the Council’s recommendations. It summarizes insights from a year’s worth of strategy sessions and interviews with representatives of over 100 organizations. The report brings together thoughts on best practices and the most critical action steps from national and state organizations, county health providers, the direct care workforce, large and small employers, aging and disability organizations, faith-based groups, respite care providers and more. This article summarizes the research methods and key findings of the report and the work conducted by the Leading Age LTSS Center @UMass Boston and Community Catalyst’s Center for Consumer Engagement in Health Innovation.

Description: The article provides an overview of the federal tax treatment of long-term care insurance contracts, including a brief history of the tax treatment of long-term care insurance, the requirements that must be satisfied in order to be treated as qualified long-term care insurance under the Internal Revenue Code, and a brief discussion of qualified long-term care combination products and chronic and terminal illness accelerated death benefits offered under life insurance contracts.

Description: The SOA Research Institute Aging and Retirement Strategic Research Program and the Long-Term Care Insurance Section are pleased to make available a research report analyzing the need for informal caregiving and its impacts on employees, employers, and other stakeholders.

Description: Explore wellness programs and their effectiveness within the LTC industry by attending the Considerations for LTC Wellness Programs webcast. You will experience discussions about design tactics and evaluation processes for programs, as well as discovering ways to assist policyholders achieve a sustainable and equitable life. There will also be a conversation about the current regulatory environment as it relates to LTC wellness programs. This webinar will focus on subsets of insured populations that are high risk of claim in order to properly manage care decisions and ensure unfair bias is avoided. Learn how to test for unfair bias and determine best possibilities on how to guard against this when testing is unavailable.

Description: The Society of Actuaries Long Term Care Insurance and Health Sections are seeking researchers to author a primer on long-term care insurance wellness programs. The underlying motivation for this effort is to educate actuaries on these programs and provide a useful resource for understanding their benefits, structure and limitations.

Description: In this webcast, presenters will outline the key content in ERM ASOPs 46, 47 and 55 and explore the impact each ASOP has on practitioners working in these fields. We will also describe the revision work currently under way in the ERM Committee of the Actuarial Standards Board.

Description: The SOA has been interested in financing of long term care for many years. As part of this interest, they approved a state-based research effort in the chosen location of Minnesota. Join authors of the research as they present their findings . The research effort looked at stakeholder responses in Minnesota to several designs that would create a state-based catastrophic long-term care insurance program. The conceptual work was based on efforts by Cohen, Feder and Favreault using the DYNASIM model created by the Urban Institute. Catastrophic coverage would be provided after a variable waiting period based on income. Private resources, including long-term care insurance, would be expected to cover the front end. (Persons on Medicaid would continue to have their gap coverage provided by that program).

Description: Description * Coinsurance has not been widely offered as a benefit reduction option to offset long-term care premium rate increases. This article uses an illustrative example to evaluate the potential impact coinsurance could have on an insurance carrier's future claim liabilities and a policyholder's premium rates. It also explores various considerations insurance carriers, regulators, and policyholders should think about when evaluating whether coinsurance is the right option.

Description: Product complexity, the services provided by distributors, their method of obtaining clients, and their relationship to insurers all affect the characteristics of in force membership. Selecting the distribution channel(s) for a product can have a significant effect on overall profitability. Total sales, acquisition costs, anti-selection/quality of business, persistency, control over market targeting, etc., will vary based on the initial strategy decisions and future adjustments. Gaining a high-level understanding of distribution channels will help develop an appreciation for the importance of these decisions.