Description: Presented at April 1986 Spring Meeting. This session discussion is about participation in alternative delivery systems, direct contracting with medical providers, participation in coalitions, employer demands for data, employer selection criteria for health carriers.

Description: In an age of accelerating transformation—technological, financial, and regulatory —reinsurance continues to be an important component of capital management strategy across the insurance industry. This is true in spite of, and sometimes because of, the evolving ecosystems of ceding companies and reinsurers. Direct writers and reinsurance carriers are coping with a number of critical challenges that are undermining growth potential and threatening profitability. Waning demand and increased capacity for traditional products have, in some instances, led companies to struggle to achieve traditional profit targets. An increase in commoditized pricing, internal expenses related to increased regulation, inefficiencies in internal infrastructure, and the sustained low interest rate environment are additional factors impacting the top and bottom lines of reinsurers and primary carriers alike. In this session we will explore these critical challenges and highlight prevailing practices that organizations are using to deal with the changing landscape.

Description: Panelists at this session of the SOA 1998 Maui II Spring Meeting discuss the impact point-of-service [POS] plans have had on both HMOs and on indemnity carriers. Different types of POS plans and the problems presented by primary care gatekeepers are discussed.

Description: 1993 SOA Annual Meeting in New York. This session is about core benefit plans from a state and from a national level. Core benefit plan is used interchangeably in this session with standard benefit plan, basic benefit plan, and minimum benefit plan. Topics included: 1. A summary of the legislative process. 2. A summary of options available within the national health-care debate, with a primary focus on the Clinton proposal. 3. The role of core benefit-plans in health-care reform.

Description: Medical stop-loss reinsurance continues to play a vital role in containing employers’ health care costs. Managing general underwriters [MGUs], who originally handled these programs, have lost market share to large direct writers. This article discusses how health care reform and highly disciplined underwriting tools offer growth opportunities to MGUs.

Description: This session discussion is about marketed health products, distribution methods, and experience. Discussion includes direct response, return of premium, accident, hospital indemnity, hospital income, medicare supplement, nursing home indemnity, long-term care and AIDS. From Record of the Society of Actuaries 1987 Vol. 13, No. 1.

Description: An examination of past Flaspohler Survey data to identify drivers of direct writer satisfaction with reinsurers.

Description: This is the third and final installment of an article about using microeconomics and the concepts of embedded value to better manage and understand the profitability of direct marketing programs. The article illustrates how traditional asset share calculations are not appropriate in this case.

Description: This discussion at the SOA 2000 Las Vegas Spring Meeting focuses on the polictical landscape with respect to health care issues including Medicare, prescription drug coverage, the concept of a patient's 'bill of rights', and other health care reform ideas.

Description: This is a 1992 panel discussion about health care reform. Topics discussed include the political environment on health care reform, how and why this environment has changed, the policy options for health care reform, how the political parties view these options, and the prospects for reform in the reasonably near future. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 18, No. 1A.