Description: The level-funding approach to medical stop-loss insurance is growing in popularity, yet is highly specialized. This session will give the actuarial community an overview of level-funding, including the basic mechanics, the benefits of offering level-funding to clients, and the five keys to success, including the ability to underwrite this specialized coverage.

Description: This paper helps the audience understand the actuary’s role in estimating the financial impact of primary care programs. In addition, the paper can be used by actuaries to think about key issues when estimating the financial impact of their employers’ and clients’ own primary care programs.

Description: What can the United States learn from other countries' health care systems? How are other countries more efficient? We selected five countries that have been among those debated as having some of the most efficient health care systems to explore what the United States can learn from these examples.

Description: This article discusses the court cases dealing with the severability of the individual mandate from the Affordable Care Act. Severability is related to essentiality, and actuarial input was relied upon to determine essentiality. The article concludes with lessons that actuaries should learn from the legal proceedings.

Description: The article offers a discussion about future products, distribution, insurance laws, and contracts. Some ideas might not be possible today, but it is offered as food for thought.

Description: There are growing concerns that the Asian bird flu virus will evolve into a form that can be transmitted from human to human, thus unleashing a new global flu pandemic. This article uses the Spanish flu epidemic and the German life insurance portfolio to analyze the additional claims expenditure due to a pandemic.

Description: The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act affects all exchanges of health information. It has a major impact on health-care management and the distribution of health information used in underwriting and claim management practices for all medical and non-medical lines. Also discussed are changes to Medicare, Children's Health Insurance Program, CHIP, and a proposed prescription drug plan under Medicare. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 27, No. 1, Session 24PD of the Dallas Spring Meeting.

Description: Healthcare costs have been rising faster than general inflation for many years. Early models that predicted this past pattern projected healthcare expenditure growth that continued to outpace total expenditure growth leading to the fallacious position that the whole of the US economy would ultimately be consumed by healthcare. The Society of Actuaries' Pension Section and Health Section Research teams commissioned Professor Thomas E. Getzen of Temple University to construct a resource model for the projection of long term healthcare cost trends that includes capacity constraints to ensure the long-term projection is rational. The motivation for creation of the model was driven by its potential usage as a resource for the estimation of reportable liabilities for retiree healthcare benefits as specified under FAS 106 and GASB 45 accounting statements. This is a zip file containing the following: 1. A background paper on the creation of the health trend model, 2. The model, programmed in Microsoft Excel [xls format], that projects per-person expenditures and growth rates through 2099 using baseline assumptions, but also permits the flexibility for user–inputted alternative assumptions, and 3. Technical documentation providing transparency and support for the ultimate results.

Description: This discussion looks at Group Accident and Sickness Insurance and asks the following questions: What loss ratios are expected during 1960 and 1961 under newly determined premium rates for basic medical care, supplementary major medical and comprehensive major medical insurance coverages? What are the design trends under comprehensive major medical insurance coverages? From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1960, Vol. 12, No. 34.

Description: ACA risk adjustment has now been in play for years. The original intent of risk adjustment was to help stabilize the market through measuring risk levels of each issuer. However, the risk adjustment program may have introduced additional uncertainty due to annual market shifts and model changes, making risk adjustment estimation is a difficult task. This article analyzes the results over time, including impacts from market changes and model changes.