Description: Discussion of ways direct marketers have beaten recessions in the recent past and suggestions for beating this recession.

Description: Medical stop-loss reinsurance continues to play a vital role in containing employers’ health care costs. Managing general underwriters [MGUs], who originally handled these programs, have lost market share to large direct writers. This article discusses how health care reform and highly disciplined underwriting tools offer growth opportunities to MGUs.

Description: Panelists at this session of the SOA 1998 Maui II Spring Meeting discuss the impact point-of-service [POS] plans have had on both HMOs and on indemnity carriers. Different types of POS plans and the problems presented by primary care gatekeepers are discussed.

Description: This is an article about The 5th Annual Forum's Institutional sponsored by the Society of Actuaries, LIMRA, Target Marketing magazine, Best's Review, and "Insurance Newscast." From News Direct, June 2007, Issue No. 56.

Description: This article discusses the comparative results from the SOA Mortality Table Structure survey. From Reinsurance Section News, November 2007, Issue No. 61.

Description: This session discussion is about marketed health products, distribution methods, and experience. Discussion includes direct response, return of premium, accident, hospital indemnity, hospital income, medicare supplement, nursing home indemnity, long-term care and AIDS. From Record of the Society of Actuaries 1987 Vol. 13, No. 1.

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: Risk Adjustment continues to be a hot topic in Health Insurance since its emergence. This mechanism came into being as a means of reducing the risk of selection, particularly in marketplaces where underwriting is not allowed, and rating factors are significantly restricted. Risk adjustment serves to adjust premiums to reflect the risk of individual members or overall members as a whole within a particular cohort of a health plan. Risk adjustment is not perfect, as it does not perfectly predict future costs or perfectly adjust for the differences in expected costs. Different marketplaces have different challenges with risk adjustment.

Description: 1993 SOA Annual Meeting in New York. This session is about core benefit plans from a state and from a national level. Core benefit plan is used interchangeably in this session with standard benefit plan, basic benefit plan, and minimum benefit plan. Topics included: 1. A summary of the legislative process. 2. A summary of options available within the national health-care debate, with a primary focus on the Clinton proposal. 3. The role of core benefit-plans in health-care reform.

Description: This report presents results from the study undertaken during 1993 and 1994 by the Direct Response Persistency and Mortality Task Force. Direct response product experience is presented for persistency, and mortality for both underwritten and guaranteed issue products.