Description: This article describes Singapore's Central Provident Fund and how it involves government, employers and employees in a cooperative partnership for mandatory savings and investment to assist with the primary lifetime goals of home ownership, medical care and retirement provision.

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: 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: 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: 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: 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 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 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: This session will address the increased cases of managed care in Medicaid states. This will include some indication of how utilization patterns differ for those populations versus commercial populations. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 21, No. 3b.

Description: An update on HMO market trends and reinsurance products, and services supporting them.