Description: 1992 SOA Regional Meeting, Chicago. This discussion is about direct marketing growth in the 1980s, sustaining the growth in the 1990s, regulatory constraints in the 1990s, impact of continuing production cost increases, new product designs, and declining response rate.

Description: This is a discussion of the medical loss ratio, the confusion and debate over the calculation method under the new MLR requirement, and the opportunities it presents to consulting actuaries.

Description: In this editorial the author discusses how actuaries can help mitigate the impact of managed care lawsuits. Examples are provided. From: The Actuary, April 2000 – volume 34 - Issue 4.

Description: Essay reforming healthcare where participants have a vested interest in reaching the best answer.

Description: Overview of plans designed to cover out-of-pocket medical costs as a supplement to major medical coverage.

Description: 1993 SOA Spring Meeting, Boston. This session is about the marketing front, including demographic trends, impact on products, market research, market segments and distribution.

Description: 1993 SOA Spring Meeting, San Diego. This session was about the Latin-American insurance market. Topics included: 1. Size, growth, regulations, products, distribution, marketing. 2. Market entry, business strategies, cultural issues, local staffing. 3. Level of activity for U.S. companies.

Description: 1992 SOA Regional Meeting, Anaheim. This session addressed the product management actuary and the product management process. Topics discussed : 1. The monitoring of the environment and how that monitoring leads to the generation of ideas. 2. Consideration of how those ideas are affected by distribution, marketing, and organizational issues. 3. The setting of assumptions. 4. How to get different areas of your company to work together, and ways to bring the product to market as quickly as possible. 5. How to manage business once your company places it on the books.

Description: 1959 SOA Regional Meeting in Atlanta. This discussion covered the advantages and disadvantages of entering the pension field through Ordinary policies or Group Annuities. The panel also discussed considerations in entering the Accident and Sickness field.

Description: This chapter focuses on creating practical models that aid in the prediction of the risk of readmission to a specific hospital within 30 days of discharge for Medicare patients, to aid in the identification and stratification of at-risk patients for hospitals considering building an intervention program in a cost-effective manner. For readers who wish to develop their own predictive model, a dataset is provided on the Actexmadriver.com website, and R code is provided in the appendix to this chapter.