Description: Recognizing an opportunity to help serve its members in this age of increased financial oversight, the Health Section of the Society of Actuaries commissioned a series of guides on the use of statistical techniques specifically geared for the work of health actuaries. From Health Watch Newsletter, January 2008, Issue No. 57.

Description: This essay highlights that the healthcare of the future should offer unversal coverage, preserve competitiveness, research cost and quality and offer free or low cost preventative services.

Description: This article discusses a study of the impact of the drug infliximab on Crohn's disease patients. This study had been approved in response to an SOA request for proposals for research on the health cost and utilization effects of a specific prescription drug.

Description: Healthcare costs have been rising faster than general inflation for many years. Early models that predicted this past pattern projected healthcare expenditure growth that continued to outpace total expenditure growth leading to the fallacious position that the whole of the US economy would ultimately be consumed by healthcare. The Society of Actuaries' Pension Section and Health Section Research teams commissioned Professor Thomas E. Getzen of Temple University to construct a resource model for the projection of long term healthcare cost trends that includes capacity constraints to ensure the long-term projection is rational. The motivation for creation of the model was driven by its potential usage as a resource for the estimation of reportable liabilities for retiree healthcare benefits as specified under FAS 106 and GASB 45 accounting statements. This is a zip file containing the following: 1. A background paper on the creation of the health trend model, 2. The model, programmed in Microsoft Excel [xls format], that projects per-person expenditures and growth rates through 2099 using baseline assumptions, but also permits the flexibility for user–inputted alternative assumptions, and 3. Technical documentation providing transparency and support for the ultimate results.

Description: This article talks about forging relationships between Health actuaries and CMS. Issue No. 60

Description: This session discussion is about high cost claimants in medical benefit plans and how to control costs and anti-selection. From Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 15, No. 3B.