Description: Presented at the Living to 100 Symposium, January 2011. The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports 'CLASS' Act’s designers and promoters envision the program as a noble plan to relieve the financial strain on Medicaid long-term care and enable disabled and elderly Americans to purchase more home care and suffer less nursing home institutionalization. This paper explains why CLASS, like private long-term care insurance, is doomed to failure unless and until the crowd-out effect of easy access to Medicaid LTC benefits is addressed.

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: Abstract for “Home Equity and At-Need Annuities—A Dynamic Long-Term Care Funding Duo.” This paper describes the prevalence of the still uninsured long-term care financial risk, and how the at-need annuity/home equity combination can address long term care needs.

Description: Delinquency rates are closely related to the economic conditions and can be analyzed using measures of economic growth and stability. In an attempt to predict the delinquency rate for the health care equipment financial industry, we investigated the relationship between delinquency rate and key macroeconomic variables for the period from 1998 to 2008. The study reveals that the tightening credit standards and unemployment rate are the key macroeconomic indicators influencing the delinquency rate. The analysis further helps in arriving at a trigger to monitor the delinquency rate based on the macroeconomic indicators, thus enabling proactive portfolio management. Presented at 2010 Enterprise Risk Management Symposium, Society of Actuaries, April 12-15, 2010.

Description: A glossary of terms.

Description: A call for essays issued by the SOA Health and Long Term Care Sections on the visions for the future of the U.S. health care system.

Description: While there are many issues in healthcare, the single most significant issue is cost, both in terms of the cost today and in terms of the growth in cost over the past several decades. We need to increase the ability of all citizens to purchase healthcare services or health insurance that in turn purchases healthcare services, and decrease the growth in the cost of healthcare.

Description: This is the abstract for the paper, The Need for Coordinated Care for Depression, and the Need for Creative Innovation by Stephen P. Melek, FSA.

Description: Abstract: This research paper assesses the adequacy of the combination of elder care and support programs in six developed countries. The programs considered are social security (retirement income), health care and long-term care, and four family compositions are considered to make the assessment. The paper discusses the difficulties of defining adequacy. The fuzzy set methodology of Ragin (2000) is used to label the level of adequacy of the combined programs. This is the first time this methodology has been applied to this problem. The paper contributes to research in the social sciences by combining quantitative and qualitative results. It finds that the combined programs are: often inadequate in England and the United States; not adequate or inadequate in Canada; and mainly adequate in France, Germany and Sweden. Three policy recommendations, which would increase the likelihood of benefit adequacy, are made.

Description: Discussant comments for the 2009 Housing Wealth monograph paper, “Home Equity and At-Need Annuities—A Dynamic Long-Term Care Funding Duo”. The author finds that the ideas discussed in this paper should stimulate more thinking about financial products and public sector programs and how they can better serve older homeowners.