Description: This discussion seeks to answer what reserves are required for individual accident and sickness policies, looks at the actuary's responsibility for experience analysis, discusses product development and policy change problems, and examines the major current developments affecting individual accident and sickness insurance.

Description: This literature guide focuses on the distribution costs, especially the field compensation costs, that are incurred through the traditional general agency, branch office or brokerage structures for individual life, annuity and disability products.

Description: Chapter 6 identifies four general and practical considerations in comparing methods: practicality and administrative cost, ability to restrict manipulation, timeliness and predictability, and incentives for efficiency and quality care. From A Comparative Analysis of Methods of Health Risk Assessment, M-HB96-1.

Description: Exploration of sources of volatility in retiree health valuations, noting how volatility arises and might be mitigated, with discussion of valuation parameters more problematic for retiree health benefits than for pensions. Three significant influences on retiree health valuation volatility are covered-- changes in benefit level, fluctuations in cost level, and alterations in eligibility for, or duration of, benefit – and attention focused on the last two. Specific conclusions result in recommendations, which are supported by practical examples contrasting volatile measurement results with those likely from the recommended practices. Theoretical discussion includes health claim variation, health trend usage, financial economics, option pricing, discount rates, and deterministic vs. stochastic modeling.

Description: Panelists use defined-contribution health plan case studies to review successful plan designs, effective plan communication strategies and plan implementation issues. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 29, No. 2, Session 64

Description: This article examines two general approaches to pricing The Forecast Approach and the Rebuilding Approach. The author then supplies the reader with the best approach. From Health Watch Newsletter, March 2005, Issue No. 49.

Description: Panelists discuss the history of this 75-year-old Medical Information Bureau MIB, its very active and data-rich source of medical information, and the services that the MIB offers to clients and other industry groups. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 24, No. 1.

Description: Summary of the health section council’s research project to assess the accuracy of commonly used IBNR estimation methods over a wide range of scenarios.

Description: Discusses how a small health insurance company may be able to create and successfully maintain its wealth through careful actuarial model considerations used in calculating reserves. A traditional and a conservative approach to calculating the reserves are compared. The conservative approach was found particularly useful when estimating reserves for an individual health insurance company with numerous product lines each relatively small in volume.