Description: Joe Wurzburger, Staff Fellow at the SOA, shares his views and insights about the health care industry in general and the Health Section's role in particular.

Description: Intended for actuaries interested in understanding more about the Medical Loss Ratio and the impact Quality Improving Activities (QIA) and fraud reduction expenses have on the rebate calculation. This session will focus on what expenses qualifies as QIA, examples of programs from major carriers, current regulations and the differences between commercial, and Medicare, and Medicaid requirements.

Description: Dental care is an important component of everyone's health, and senior citizens are no exception. With no public dental coverage under traditional Medicare, seniors must seek other ways to obtain dental insurance, pay for services out of pocket, or go without care. In this session we will review the importance of oral care to overall health, the current state of public and private dental insurance for seniors, and innovative ways to reach this population. Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and other types of dental coverage will be discussed by three actuaries with different areas of expertise in the senior dental market.

Description: Part II of a two-part series discussing individual market evolution from before the ACA through President Trump's first term.

Description: This article outlines and summarizes research from Swiss Re about the prevalence of the Health Protection Gap throughout Asia, with a particular focus on China. Authors Robert Burr and David Zhang share key statistics on the scope of the gap, which is more than 800Bn USD in China alone, and discuss the role that technology and private-public partnership can play in reducing this gap over time. Readers will come away with an understanding of the scale of the problem within the Asia region as well as new ideas on how to solve similar problems within their own region.

Description: "The ACA RADV Program will begin to impact issuers’ risk transfers in the 2018 benefit year (BY) – potentially significantly. The program is expected to continue into the 2019 BY and beyond. Therefore, health actuaries working in the ACA market need to understand this program and its potential impact.The session includes panel experts who will provide attendees with high-level overview of the program, discuss the findings from a national study, and RADV’s ultimate impact to risk transfers, as well as downstream impacts to financial and pricing decisions. The nationwide study is based on 300+ issuers’ 2016 RADV results and contains emerging insights into the new ACA RADV program otherwise unavailable. The panel’s agenda will include:1. A succinct overview of the ACA RADV Program will be provided2. Summary of a national 2016 ACA RADV pilot study results and its findings. 3. Preliminary results from a national 2017 RADV study will be discussed (or CMS published results if available prior to session). 4. Walkthrough of how RADV results impact the overall risk adjustment transfers in the ACA market. 5. Finally, the panel will discuss RADV impact to issuer’s financial accruals and pricing strategy. 6. General Q&A, discussion"

Description: Update on Affordable Care Act topics, including Section 1332 waivers, Association Health Plans, silver loading and cost sharing reductions.

Description: This session is targeted for new ASAs/FSAs or actuaries who are new to reserving. The session will be delivered in two parts. The first part is intended to deliver a basic understanding of IBNR reserving and different reserving methods and assumptions. We will go through examples of constructing claims triangles and developing completion factors, while exploring concepts such as seasonality, trend and outlier claims. During the second part of the session, we will apply the material from the first part to look at various example from different products such as inpatient, outpatient, RX, Medicare Supplement, dental, critical illness, etc.

Description: On December 21, 2018, the Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the final rule for Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) in the Medicare Shared Savings Program. 'Pathways to Success' makes sweeping changes and will push ACOs to assume financial risk more quickly. This session will discuss the key changes in the final rule, reasons why providers would remain in the program while being forced to downside risk, and how actuaries can add value to providers who will be taking on millions of dollars of risk in the coming years.