Description: Explore wellness programs and their effectiveness within the LTC industry by attending the Considerations for LTC Wellness Programs webcast. You will experience discussions about design tactics and evaluation processes for programs, as well as discovering ways to assist policyholders achieve a sustainable and equitable life. There will also be a conversation about the current regulatory environment as it relates to LTC wellness programs. This webinar will focus on subsets of insured populations that are high risk of claim in order to properly manage care decisions and ensure unfair bias is avoided. Learn how to test for unfair bias and determine best possibilities on how to guard against this when testing is unavailable.

Description: The Society of Actuaries Long Term Care Insurance and Health Sections are seeking researchers to author a primer on long-term care insurance wellness programs. The underlying motivation for this effort is to educate actuaries on these programs and provide a useful resource for understanding their benefits, structure and limitations.

Description: This article discusses the ways reinsurers support ceding companies: 1. Sharing morbidity risk. 2. Sharing other risks such as return on investment. 3. Sharing of expertise such as providing underwriting advice. 4. Sharing financial resources. 5. Sharing the role of consumer protection.

Description: Preparing an initial LTCI rate filing under the 2000 LTCI Model Regulation certification requirements. From Long-Term Care, Dec 2003, Issue No. 10

Description: Cognitive tests used in the long-term care insurance industry differ in cognitive domains tested, time required for testing, ease of test administration, sensitivity and specificity. Recently, new approaches to scoring or testing have improved test utility for screening for cognitive impairment.

Description: The Minnesota Cognitive Acuity Screen MCAS is a brief cognitive screen that has been validated to correctly identify mild to moderate cognitive impairment in 98.1 percent of all cases. The MCAS has been in use in the LTCI industry for more than five years, and has shown excellent results in reducing early cognitive claims.

Description: Discussion of the implications of the newly unveiled health care reform proposal by Senator Baucus. Key issues include abandonment of the CLASS Act, inclusion of LTC in cafeteria plans, funding and tax concerns, individual mandate, privacy concerns, play-or-pay employer mandate, impact on Medicare and Medicaid, and gridlock in the legislative finalization process.

Description: A model for an effective, cost efficient national public LTC/LTCI education program that will increase LTCI sales nationwide.

Description: A discussion of the efforts to implement straight through processing and standardization of the HIPAA form for long term care claims data.

Description: An introduction to other articles in this issue about Medicaid abuse and genetic testing.