Description: In late 2021, U.S. Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act (CCA), which requires group health plans and health insurers to submit information regarding the costs of prescription drug costs and other health care services each year to the federal government. Learn how this data can be useful to anyone responsible for forecasting and budgeting.

Description: Gene therapy is a quickly evolving field and will continue to grow as a risk concern for many health plans, stop loss insurers and reinsurers. Currently, there are only two approved gene therapies in the U.S., but that number is expected to escalate starting in the fall of 2022. Revisit the experience plans have had with the first two gene therapies, discuss plan design and network considerations in light of gene therapy, and discuss the actual composition of the near-term pipeline along with a range of modeled financial impacts and considerations for payers.

Description: There exists profound health and access disparities among people from different demographics and socioeconomic backgrounds. Health equity is now a central policy directive for the U.S. government and CMS. Speakers representing policy, health care delivery and actuarial spaces will help you discover what health equity policy directions may look like, the challenges health care providers are facing and how actuaries can contribute to the effort in bridging the health equity divides.

Description: Long-duration targeted improvements (LDTI) will have unique consequences for long-term care and disability income. Discuss how to address these issues and learn more aboutboth standalone and combination LTC contracts. Understand the impact of LDTI on DAC, policies which previously held zero active life reserves, and allocation of IBNR to cohorts. By attending the session, you will: - Be able to create and defend accounting policies and to implement actuarial models consistent with the new U.S. GAAP accounting rules.

Description: The SOA’s Individual Disability Experience Committee (IDEC) has reviewed industry experience for both claims incidence and terminations. Based on this review, the committee has published two reports with experience modifiers that when applied to the 2013 IDIVT table best fit experience from 2005 to 2015. During this session, the factors and their development will be reviewed as well as their impact on active and disabled life reserves.

Description: "Court is in session and you are the jury! Follow along as challenging aspects of actuarial professionalism are explored in a court-like setting. Deliberate among your peers based on what you already know from your own experience as well as what you learn in this session, and then deliver your verdict accordingly. If you attended in the past, plan on joining again as we will have new material and updates for discussion. Who says learning about actuarial professionalism can't be fun? By attending the session, you will be able to: Apply actuarial professionalism concepts Identify key ASOPs for actuaries Explain significant aspects of the U.S. Qualification Standards"

Description: Medicare and Medicaid finance more than half of American health care. Medicare and Medicaid are at the forefront of nearly every major change in U.S. health care payments, from DRGs in the 1980s to today’s value-based care. Listen to a conversation with Bruce Pyenson, FSA, MAAA, who recently completed six years as a Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) commissioner and Stacey Lampkin, FSA, MAAA, who recently completed six years as a Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC) commissioner. Hear about programs’ current challenges, what changes the ex-Commissioners anticipate over the next few years, and how these changes might impact Medicare and Medicaid managed care plans, and spillover into employer-sponsored and individual commercial insurance. By attending this session, you will be able to appreciate the role of Medicare and Medicaid as health care payment change agents and foresee future health care payment changes.

Description: Currently there are ten states in the U.S. —Rhode Island, California, New Jersey, New York, Washington, DC; Washington, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon and Colorado —that have enacted Paid Family Leave. Paid Family leave is an employee funded state insurance program that provides wage replacement to eligible workers when they take time off of work to care for a seriously ill family member or to bond with a new child. Who pays the taxes? The employer or the employee? How will this effect short term disability benefit offerings in the work place? How does a Paid Family Leave plan get implemented? Is it up to the employee to file for the benefit through the unemployment office or does the employer file? At the state level, how is paid family leave reserved for? How is it administered? What job protections are there? How does this work with the Family Medical Leave Act? Get these and more questions answered. By attending this session, you should have an understanding of the state Paid Family Leave programs, what it means to future short term disability plans, and how the state accounts for this program.

Description: "Direct medical costs for cancer care topped $209 billion nationally in 2020, accounting for a significant proportion of all health care expenditures in the U.S. Indirect costs are also significant, encompassing loss of productivity, wages, leisure time and decreased quality of life. The way cancer programs deliver and are reimbursed for care is rapidly changing. As the cost of cancer care continues to rise, several new value-based care programs - both public and private - have attempted to curb these rising costs. Learn about the current landscape of VBC oncology programs, several key challenges and opportunities with oncology analytics, as well as anticipated evolution of cancer care in the near future. Topics include: Current VBC oncology landscape, including a more detailed discussion on CMS' latest oncology program, Enhancing Oncology Model (EOM) Discussion on current challenges and opportunities with oncology analytics, including some advanced methodologies that have been developed based on documented clinical pathways to better understand cost drivers Future state of oncology care including emerging pharmaceuticals and novel therapies, personalized care regimens, and other clinical innovations"

Description: The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on all aspects of daily life and its impact extends to how disability incidence may play out in the future. Product profitability will be shaped by how morbidity patterns, interest rate levels and other key drivers will play out into the future. In this session, our panel will discuss COVID’s impact on IDI morbidity experience as observed over the past 18 months, offer comparisons and insights in light of other insurance lines of business, and share emerging information on the on-going effects of Long COVID. Highlights will also include how regional differences and implications for insurers as the industry moves further into the COVID vaccine era.