Description: An essay discussing universal access to high quality, low cost health care.

Description: Essay where payers desiring to optimize health gains per dollar spent should avoid “across the board” cost sharing, and instead implement a “value based” design that removes barriers/provides incentives to encourage desired behaviors for patients and providers.

Description: Remarks on long term care insurance for business owners and executives, including its role in financial planning and asset protection, the growth in likelihood that the coverage will be utilized, and tax incentives for employers.

Description: This essay highlights a view that many have for meeting these goals is one of a two-tiered system. The first tier in this system is a universal one controlled by the federal government, while the second tier is a private sector supplementing the first tier. The remainder of this paper will examine this two-tiered system and how various stakeholders in today’s system will be affected.

Description: The adoption of FAS 158 forces sponsors of post-employment health benefit plans to consider how to manage the volatility that changes in medical care inflation create in the other postemployment benefits (OPEB) liability. By choosing carefully how the nominal discount rate used for the liability is decomposed into real rates and inflation, I illustrate that the true exposure to an OPEB plan is to the spread of medical care inflation above (or below) the overall inflation rate. The implication is that an effective immunization strategy exists that can eliminate most of the volatility in the OPEB account.

Description: This paper describes the prevalence of the still uninsured long-term care financial risk, and how the at-need annuity/home equity combination can address long term care needs.

Description: Presented at Living to 100 Symposium, January 2011. This article estimates the impact of obesity and diabetes on disability and mortality for those older than 65 using the 2004 National Long Term Care Survey with disability based on the Health Insurance Accountability and Portability Act's Activities of Daily Living and Cognitive Impairment triggers.

Description: This paper examines how the costs in Canada of life insurance, medical care, disability, and retirement are impacted by increases in longevity. The paper then examines possible courses that policy action may take, and then proposes directions that employers may take in designing employee benefit programs.

Description: An essay suggesting a health care financing system.

Description: This paper presents a health status transition model developed as part of a larger LTC insurance pricing model. From The Old-Age Crisis - Actuarial Opportunities - The 1996 Bowles Symposium, M-RS99-1.