Description: This essay discusses the long overdue effciencies that would improve the quality of healthcare in the United States.

Description: Discussion of managing the organizational changes into the 21st century Includes the following topic: 1. Consolidation 2.Business moving out of the U.S. and Canada 3. Managing the remainder of the business 4. Outsourcing 5. Lean staff 6. Joint ventures 7. Downsizing 8. Product focusing.

Description: Overview of Medicare's 1979 financial projections under optimistic, pessimistic, and intermediate assumptions, for the Hospital Insurance and Supplementary Medical Insurance programs.

Description: The author identifies miscommunication challenges that may exist in the workplace, including misunderstandings and communication mishaps, assumption of motive, and relational tension, and suggests clarifying conversation as a way to address these challenges.

Description: Three papers use sophisticated actuarial methods to develop a straightforward retirement income strategy that can be implemented in virtually any IRA or 401(k).

Description: This is an article about the sales process for long-term care insurance.

Description: The article is Part 1 of two articles that provide a case study for the development of a profitability and risk dashboard. The sample dashboard provides distilled information regarding actual to expected (A/E) ratios for key risks, agent quality scores and customer value scores. The dashboard would also provide the value of new business written, surplus strain, debit balances, and expected losses on debit balances at different levels, down to the agent level. A product mix index is provided, together with visual comparisons of key metrics to the company's business plan. The Part 2 article will add information to the dashboard regarding risk margins, target capital, and company value.

Description: From the 1986 Valuation Actuary Symposium, held in Washington DC in October 1986 Examination of real life case studies of recent insurance company insolvencies to test whether the concept of the Valuation Actuary would have prevented insolvencies or reduced the losses resulting from insolvencies.

Description: This article poses a hypothetical workplace dilemma. Solutions and feedback are presented in the next issue. From the October 2010 issue of Stepping Stones.

Description: A warning about keeping top management fully and clearly informed about enterprise risk assessments, as illustrated by some actual and fictional stories.