Description: "Minimum Social Security Benefit (s) and the Alone Stage of Retirement in the U.S.? – Lori J. Curtis, PhD., Douglas Andrews, FSA, FCIA, Ph.D., University of Waterloo The Importance of Cognitive Health – Gordon Woo,Ph.D., RMS LifeRisks"

Description: The SOA Research Institute and LIMRA have completed the most up-to-date study of variable annuity contract owner behavior. Learn more about this vital resource for actuaries working with annuities.

Description: Almost half of recent FDA approvals have been for orphan drugs. This trend is expected to continue in 2023. Orphan drugs are priced more than 30 times higher than non-orphan drugs, therefore their cost burden in aggregate has the potential to overwhelm the budgets of payers, especially that of smaller health plans. Hear how the cost impact analysis for smaller health plans require different considerations than for a larger health plan when modeling the impact of rare diseases.

Description: CMS provides ACOs with monthly claims data for members, including their medical visits and ACO program eligibility. This data can be divided into Membership and Claims tables through the ETL process. However, when calculating PMPY at specific levels of detail using these tables, issues arise due to unrelated dimensions, leading to inaccurate and understated results. This article presents a solution to this problem by utilizing Tableau's data blending capabilities.

Description: "Driving Longevity Through Educational Attainment – Robert L. Brown – Ph. D. Higher Age U.S. Mortality By Education and Cause of Death Trends, Inequality and Controllable Risk Factors – Andrew J. G. Cairns – MPA Ph.D., Maxwell Institute for Mathematical Sciences, and Department of Actuarial Mathematics and Statistics, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, Cristian Redondo Lour´es, Ph.D., Actuarial Solutions,"

Description: Learn how modernization of data, models, and technology are influencing workflows. This webcast will address how workflows are changing in response to new regulatory requirements and the impacts the changes have on modeling and end-to-end future state operating models. Industry leading actuaries will discuss: How team collaboration can increase quality and speed of reporting to internal and external stakeholders How to strengthen controls and compliance frameworks across finance and actuarial departments How to modernize actuarial input/output for strategic analysis and insights How to attract and retain top talent by improving opportunities for actuaries There will also be dedicated time to ask questions of those who have made the transition.

Description: Universal Life with Secondary Guarantees (ULSG) was first introduced in the late 1990's as low-cost, long-term death benefit protection. As this business ages, writers are experiencing pressured earnings from emerging experience, secondary markets for insurance products and low interest rates. In response, writers are sharpening their pencils on experience analysis and risk management with an eye for opportunities to increase the performance of their blocks.

Description: Every patient leaving the hospital has personal life-context circumstances that impact their chances of successful recovery and complications can be costly. Complex care management impacts over 50 percent of health care spend, with the admitted commercial population driving 37 percent of spend or $177M per 100,000 lives and the Medicare population driving 53 percent of spend or $600 million per 100,000 lives. The stakes are high, but existing care management solutions are mostly clinical and navigation call centers provide fragmented and outdated patient management systems, and do not address individual life-context. Discharged patients therefore remain underengaged and undercompliant, leading to costly complications. Innovative technology can help enable and integrate systems and existing infrastructure to leverage evidence-based contextualized care that will enhance care management, improve efficiency, and drive a better experience and outcomes for patients. This technology helps codifies life context, dynamically stratifying and engaging members digitally and telephonically helping virtual care teams to be more effective and efficient. In a recent randomized clinical trial, this technology and approach has shown a 50 percent reduction in the total cost of care, cutting the average and total cost of readmission, increasing virtual care team impact and member engagement and trust.

Description: Anti-obesity medications have been met with reluctance from payers and employee benefits consultants who often lack analogs or empirical data to estimate the cost impact of new therapies coverage. Health plans considering coverage of anti-obesity medications will need to assess and manage the potential costs of covering these new therapies in context of their overall obesity management strategy, including coverage of nutrition counseling, weight management, and bariatric surgery.

Description: CMS has required hospitals to publish their chargemaster rates, cash discounts and negotiated rates as of January 1, 2021. Our panel is comprised of a data strategist, an executive from a large hospital system and an actuary.