Description: Review of non public options to finance care including personal savings, revers mortgages, family care and private insurance.

Description: Realizing the impact of medical errors on the U.S. health care system, the Health Section commissioned a research project to measure the annual frequency of medical errors and their total measurable direct and indirect cost to the economy.

Description: Health Watch Newsletter, May 2006, Issue No. 52. This article presents information from a recently completed client-sponsored survey of hospital contracting best practices. Individual health plans were evaluated using a structured survey document. The primary objective of the survey was to identify best practices that the client sponsor could implement to improve its already better-than-average hospital contracting practices

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: 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.

Description: This is the third and final installment of an article about using microeconomics and the concepts of embedded value to better manage and understand the profitability of direct marketing programs. The article illustrates how traditional asset share calculations are not appropriate in this case.

Description: As actuaries in health care, we spend most of our time focused on reviewing claims, enrollment and clinical data. That information is captured while patients are in health care facilities. Yet most people spend only a small fraction of their time in these facilities. This article explores what types of data are available to actuaries the provide a more holistic view of the member so that a members physical and emotional needs, the social determinants of health can be taken into consideration along with their clinical needs. Two uses cases are presented so actuaries can see how these types of analyses can be leveraged to improve clinical, operational, and financial performance of risk bearing health entities. Understanding the customer (member) not just the patient enables actuaries to provide new insights and values to our stakeholders across a wide range of business and risk applications.

Description: The Casualty Actuarial Society, Canadian Institute of Actuaries, and the Society of Actuaries' Joint Risk Management Section and the Joint Risk Management Research Committee are pleased to make available a new report on the application of ERM. Authored by Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald, Sim Segal, Michael Wolfson and Heidi Walsh, the report provides a novel demonstration on how ERM can be applied to serve the Canadian public by informing decision makers on the risks facing the current and future delivery of long-term care.

Description: 2001 SOA Annual Meeting, New Orleans. Health care cost trends have substantially increased in the past two years. Panelists discussed the factors contributing to these increased trends, the prospect for further increases in the future, and national health care issues.