Description: Health care has changed rapidly over the past couple of years. The pandemic has shifted consumer behavior in how and where they receive health care as well as consumer attitudes toward health care. Payers continue to design innovative solutions in responses to their patient’s needs and expectations. These changes in consumer behaviors and the responses by payers are expected to impact both health care cost and utilization. Discuss changes in health care that have emerged due to the pandemic and how they are expected to influence actuarial assumptions. Explore epidemiological models commonly used in the industry, the considerations when using these models, as well as the challenges with regards to gathering and interpreting relevant experience data. By attending this session, you will be able to: Identify shifts in consumer behavior that have emerged from the pandemic and describe how payers are responding to new patient expectations. Discuss how these post-pandemic changes by consumers and payers influence medical spending. Determine which actuarial assumptions are impacted and how and if the impact is expected to be temporary or permanent. Discuss considerations taken by actuaries and challenges faced when modelling actuarial assumptions post pandemic.

Description: This session series is sponsored by Hannover Re Session 1 - COVID-19: Past, Present and Future and Its Impact on Health Products COVID-19 has had an unprecedented impact on the health industry, forcing insurance companies and other risk-sharing entities to re-assess how to write and manage its business going forward. This first of two sessions in the special COVID-19 series will review the impact the pandemic has had on the development, pricing and risk management of health products. The speakers will review COVID-19 mortality and morbidity trends, share possible outlooks for the future of the virus, and analyze how COVID-19 has impacted the pricing strategies and risk management of health business across various markets (e.g., the ACA marketplace, Group Commercial and Medicare). By attending this session, you will be able to explain the latest COVID-19 trends in the US and globally and the resulting impact on mortality and morbidity experience. Attendees will develop a clearer understanding of how the pandemic has impacted the pricing and risk management of health products.

Description: The past couple years during the pandemic have had a tremendous and costly impact on society’s collective mental health. What’s next? Examine patterns of MH/SA needs identified from living with COVID-19 for two years and discuss what MH/SA needs to expect in the future. Across society, mental health has been one of the most impacted areas of total health and wellness and has been highly publicized. What’s here to stay, and how does that impact how we think about mental health going forward? With increased publicity and campaigns to normalize MH/SA needs, what are the supply-side and demand-side limits? By attending this session, you will be able to: • Identify drivers of MH/SA services in the pandemic. • Understand future expectations of MH/SA needs, with population specific considerations (ex. gender, business type, etc.). • Analyze impact of increased awareness of MH/SA needs and reduced stigma.

Description: Telehealth continues to be a story of unrealized potential than realized success. Find out what's pushing telehealth forward as a means of remote healthcare and the challenges its facing. Discuss questions, including: - Telehealth's role in expanding access to mental healthcare is clear, but what about other conditions? - Was access expanded for all patients or do modern delivery methods leave some patients behind - How do telehealth costs compare to in-person costs? - What happens to the value proposition if unit cost savings is off the table?

Description: "Hear an overview of recent results and potential scenarios that may impact the future of the ACA market. Review recent reported industry level profitability before transitioning to a discussion of how current market dynamics may influence the future profitability of this segment. Results from microsimulation economic models will be presented to help illuminate market shifts. Issues that will be explored include how ICRA availability might influence individual decision making, as well as how a move to level funding is impacting the small group market. By attending this session, you will: Understand the recent average and variation of industry performance in the ACA market segment. Describe current policy and market forces that are expected to impact this segment. Explain the range of market scenarios that may result due to these forces."

Description: With the mandated health plan transparency files, health plans and providers are now able to substantially enhance their provider contracting efforts. Although the files are large and cumbersome they are market disruptors and provide new insights for provider contracting efforts. Explore a demonstration on the type of information now available and how it can be used to enhance this from both a health plan and health care provider perspective.

Description: Learn about key topics affecting actuaries working in the dental insurance space! The session will include valuable information for health actuaries looking to better understand how dental fits into Medicaid, Medicare, commercial, and ACA markets.

Description: Review a recently completed research project for a multi-stakeholder data consortium on social determinants of health (SDOH). In this project, claims, external SDOH data, geospatial analysis, and machine learning models were used to examine several questions: How to identify SDOH vulnerabilities? How sensitive are the findings with respect to provider coding pattern variations? How much variability in cost can be explained by SDOH vs. morbidity? What are the key risk drivers revealed by machine learning models? The session will review the methodology and main findings from this project.

Description: Focus on how innovative health care organizations develop their value proposition for their intended buyers. Presenters will share information about their specific solution and the methods used to derive credible savings estimates, ROI, and performance guarantees. Learn about data utilized, the methods deployed, advantages, disadvantages, and buyers' reaction. This session is expected to be technical, highly informative, and interactive with audience members.

Description: In this session, you will learn about key cost drivers in pharmacy trends, including but not limited to: New high-cost drugs, including gene therapies, that treat rare and/or expensive conditions such as spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), inherited retinal disease, hemophilia A and B, Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), sickle cell anemia and cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy (CALD) Other cost drivers in the prescription drug category, including the emergence of GLP-1s, digital therapeutics, targeted immunomodulators, accelerated approval drugs and expanded indications The implications of the end of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) on the costs of COVID-19 vaccines, testing and treatment claims Downward influences on pharmacy costs, such as the availability of new generic drugs and biosimilars Emerging trends in pharmacy benefits manager (PBM) contracting, the initial portion of this discussion will be led by a pharmacist and former state pharmacy director.