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: This essay focuses on elements of success in a system linked to employment.

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: LTCi rate increases are large and becoming larger. As more and more policyholders cannot afford the cumulative impact, they need some relief - like access to the large contract reserve they have funded for the benefits they can no longer afford.

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.

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

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 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.