Description: The U.S. health care system continues to have its problems. It costs too much and even with public policy developments we are not meeting the desired objectives. What's next? What else can we do? Discuss some of the emerging ideas that are being pursued and the likelihood of their success at solving our collective problem.

Description: The presenters will discuss recent developments related to the federal qualification and taxation of life insurance and annuity contracts. Among other topics, there will be a focus on comparing and contrasting life insurance product qualification in the U.S. under IRC sections 7702 and 7702A versus qualification in Canada under the 'exempt test' of the Income Tax Act, which has been revised in recent years. Discussion will include comparisons of Canadian provisions to U.S. definition of life insurance and Modified Endowment Contract concepts.

Description: 2020 and 2021 presented numerous challenges to life and annuity product development actuaries. External forces required carriers to rethink underwriting requirements and risk assessment in real time. Alterations in regulatory frameworks and statutory requirements forced changes to product development priorities while alterationsin the work environment forced changes in how work routines were structured. This session will bring together a group of life and annuity stakeholders to discuss how they addressed these and other challenges, and how their work will be impacted going forward.

Description: These are the updated in the Taxation Section.

Description: Article on the history of the Long Term Care Discussion Group, a Washington DC-based venue for discussing long-term care and related issues for over 20 years.

Description: The NAIC Innovation work group has set out 10 ideas for improving the LTC insurance market. This article discusses and critiques those ideas.

Description: Currently there are ten states in the U.S. —Rhode Island, California, New Jersey, New York, Washington, DC; Washington, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon and Colorado —that have enacted Paid Family Leave. Paid Family leave is an employee funded state insurance program that provides wage replacement to eligible workers when they take time off of work to care for a seriously ill family member or to bond with a new child. Who pays the taxes? The employer or the employee? How will this effect short term disability benefit offerings in the work place? How does a Paid Family Leave plan get implemented? Is it up to the employee to file for the benefit through the unemployment office or does the employer file? At the state level, how is paid family leave reserved for? How is it administered? What job protections are there? How does this work with the Family Medical Leave Act? Get these and more questions answered. By attending this session, you should have an understanding of the state Paid Family Leave programs, what it means to future short term disability plans, and how the state accounts for this program.

Description: This article provides a basic introduction to the taxation of qualified annuities held in qualified retirement plans and IRAs. The article has been updated for the SECURE Act and the SECURE 2.0 Act. The article describes the basic types of employer-based plans, provides of overview of the taxation of contributions and benefits when annuities are held in connection with plans and IRAs, explains the required minimum distribution rules, and offers a brief introduction to recent legislation impacting qualified annuities.

Description: At the end of December 2020, Congress enacted the Consolidated Appropriates Act, 2021, which included revisions to Section 7702. Effective for policies issued after December 31, 2020, the fixed 4% and 6% minimum annual effective rates under these tests were changed to refer to a market-based rate called the “insurance interest rate”. For contracts issued in 2021, the insurance rate was set to 2% - defined as the lower of the Section 7702 applicable federal interest rate based on the 60-month period ending December 2019 (2%) and the Section 7702 valuation interest rate in effect for 2020 (3.5%). This reduction in the rates used for compliance testing required significant product, operational, and technology changes for companies to reach product compliance. After 2021, the insurance interest rate is redetermined annually with a minimum change floor.

Description: A call for project proposals to study the impacts of climate-induced migration on various areas which can influence the delivery of services and availability of insurance coverages.