Description: Summary of results of a 2010 Health Section survey of actuaries and Medicare population, on ways to bend the cost trend curve downward. Issues included transparency, quality measures, fraud and abuse, provider payment, malpractice, medical errors, consumer education, and the pros and cons of employer-sponsored coverage.

Description: This article is based on a third party administrator study and explores the relationships between family structure, spare capacity and health care utilization.

Description: This article discusses new opportunities for states to waive certain marketplace requirements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The article focuses on specific opportunities for states and the role that actuaries will play.

Description: The article gives actuaries an introduction to Academy Health, the notable health policy research organization.

Description: On May 16th, the Social Security Boards of Trustees sent to the Congress the three annual reports OASDI, HI, and SMI. These reports present cost projections similar to those provided to the Congress last year at the time of enactment of the 1977 Amendments.

Description: This articles describes how actuaries can contribute to the understanding of the financing of Medicare and the urgency of its problems.

Description: This session discussion is about outside actuarial profession's perspective on health care cost, insurer's role in medical care management, relationships between treatment decisions, available coverage, appropriate use of underwriting and paying for uncompensated care. From Record of Society of Actuaries Vol. 18, No. 1A.

Description: This study was sponsored by the Society of Actuaries Health Section. This paper explores the relative significance of aging as a determinant of financial cost of health care beyond age 50, with particular attention to the effect for ages 65 and older. The paper presents concepts of aging factors and aging curves, which define relative values between ages for utilization or cost of health care services. General conclusions are drawn from Medicare data that utilization and cost differ by age, but that aging factors vary across services and may be less significant at very old ages. The author then turns to the question of measuring the significance of an aging curve assumption and what accuracy is lost in the simpler alternative of a single value across an age range.

Description: An over view of recent revisions to Social Security, and their implications to the private sector of the insurance industry.

Description: Updates on the efforts of the Academy’s health practice council. its work groups and task forces, to educate health care policymakers on issues including principles for reform, Medicare, the individual insurance market, and risk factors.