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: This article from major US payers describes palliative care as a scaleable means of improving quality and reducing costs during serious and complex illness.

Description: Health Watch Newsletter, May 2006, Issue No. 52. This article presents information from a recently completed client-sponsored survey of hospital contracting best practices. Individual health plans were evaluated using a structured survey document. The primary objective of the survey was to identify best practices that the client sponsor could implement to improve its already better-than-average hospital contracting practices

Description: Appendix to the Critical Review of Stochastic Simulation Literature and Applications for Health Actuaries. The Development of a Simulation Model of Primary Prevention Strategies for Coronary Heart Disease

Description: Discussion of ways direct marketers have beaten recessions in the recent past and suggestions for beating this recession.

Description: This article discusses the comparative results from the SOA Mortality Table Structure survey. From Reinsurance Section News, November 2007, Issue No. 61.

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: Answers to questions that have surfaced with regard to recent trends in the use of psychiatric medications, including relative effectiveness compared to prescribing patterns, drivers of prescribing patterns, classification and indications for recently publicized drugs, role of primary care providers, preventive use ofdementia medications, and new developments in the field.

Description: In the face of declining response rates from direct mail campaigns, the author suggests use of the internet to generate leads will be much more efficient and successful.