Description: Why health care inflation exceeds the Consumer Price Index CPI due to tax implications. Issue No. 37.

Description: How benchmarking actual performance to a published source is a useful tool in assessing the value added by a particular program or MCO, Issue No. 38.

Description: The author explores research and concerns about sustainability, and how actuaries can contribute to the discussion.

Description: This article discusses the reliance the banking industry placed on sophisticated mathematical models.

Description: The SOA Long-Term Care Experience Committee (LTCEC) will be conducting a study on a) incidence, lapse and mortality study and b) claim terminations.

Description: Relative to group medical plans, discusses: recognition given to effect on morbidity of various demographic factors, consideration given to inflation in making rate guarantees, consideration given to group size, and underwriting transfer cases.

Description: This article states that the 40/40/20 rule, 40 percent to proper audience selection, 40 percent to the product or offer, and 20 percent to creative strategy and execution, still applies in an internet world. The article reviews the 7 deadly sins of direct marketing.

Description: This article discusses what options exist for people who don’t pass underwriting for long-term care (LTC) insurance.

Description: The SOA Committee on Post-Retirement Needs and Risks, working closely with the SOA Long Term Care Section, issued a call for papers in 2013: “Managing the Impact of Long-Term Care Needs and Expense on Retirement Security: A Holistic and Multi-Generational View.” The papers that were chosen were highlighted at the 2014 Annual Meeting and will be published as a monograph, both available on the SOA website. These papers add to the section’s and others’ ongoing discussions about the future of the long term care system including the “Land This Plane” project. Some of the items of greatest focus are integration with retirement security, impact on the caregiver and family, and integration with housing as well as offering an array of possible pubic policy reform.

Description: A proposal to address provider payment issues by gradually moving to accountable care organizations. Capitations would be risk-adjusted, non-capitated costs would be covered by hospitalization fund and stoploss, incentives for quality & effective preventive care would be tied to the amount remaining in the fund, and government involvement would be through incentives rather than mandate.