Description: This panel discussion, which occurred at the April 1982 SOA meeting in Orlando, presented information related to developments in medical benefit plan design which will help control costs. The panel discussed: What has already been tried?, What works?, and, What else can be tried?. From Record of Society of Actuaries Vol. 8, No. 2.

Description: The Society is taking a hard look at its members’ needs and our future as a profession. Two recent studies have focused attention on the building of our future: Report of the Task Force on the Future of the Actuary and Report of the Task Force on Strengthening the Profession. Both reports discuss the importance of our profession in health care matters. But, neither report is designed to address the practical issues involved with building toward our future in health care.

Description: 1994 SOA Meeting, San Antonio. This session provided an update from representatives of the IRS and the Department of the Treasury on several topics including: 1. PBGC issues. 2. Social Security issues. 3. Health care issues. 4. Title I issues. 5. Broad principles underlying some remedial amendment period issues.

Description: Panelists discuss the results of three research projects funded by the Actuarial Education and Research Fund [AERF] and other sources. They look at HMO and managed-competition health-care plans, offered primarily to Minnesota state employees, to examine the risk of premium death spirals. From the 2002 Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 28, No. 3. Session 98PP of the Boston Annual Meeting.

Description: From a session at the Health/Pension Spring Meeting held in New Orleans, Louisiana June 15-17, 2005 Panelists discussed some of the research behind understanding decision-making and how this type of research can be used to enhance the modeling of consumer choice. Discussion of the field of behavioral economics and its potential application in improving assumptions for modeling health care purchasing.

Description: Panelists discuss pricing issues regarding supplemental products, which for this purpose, are defined as cancer, specified disease, student accident, and other special risk accident and health coverages. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 25, No. 2.

Description: This article explores the changing risk profile between the transitional Affordable Care Act (ACA) period (2014-2016) and under the final ACA period (beyond 2017) for the individual market. Actuaries are in a unique position to help facilitate the change from the current ACA period to the final period when health plans will have to take on substantially more risk.

Description: The author attempts to weave together biological and environmental explanations into the mathematical approaches developed over the past two centuries so as to, in the words of two earlier authors from the actuarial profession, reground the relationship of actuarial science with cellular biology and gerontology. Also examined is the extent to which increasing wealth and higher standards of education and health contribute to happiness.

Description: The Reinsurance Section, Product Development Section and the Committee on Life Insurance Research announce the release of a new report that investigates life and annuity living benefit riders and their implications from both a direct writer and a reinsurer perspective.

Description: When we put together a newsletter for you, we submit all of the content about two months in advance of the publication date. I'm writing this editor's note on July 5th. I'm thinking forward and wondering what the rest of the summer will bring to us. What will have happened between July 5th and September 5th? From News Direct, September 2006, Number 54.