Description: Summarizes Actuarial Notes 98 and 99 - Nov. 1979 and Jan. 1980. Also summarizes a booklet entitled History of the Provisions of Old-Age, Survivors, Disability, and Health Insurance 1935- 1979, Social Security Administration ,Baltimore, MD, January 1980.

Description: This article notes that 1975, marks the hundredth anniversary of the appointment of the first federal Superintendent of Insurance in Canada, and provides a brief history of insurance regulation, highlighting the contributions and leadership of actuaries, and the recognition of the actuarial profession.

Description: The SOA’s recent work related to public policy research and an update on the General Insurance track.

Description: Summary of testimony by an AAA Board member before a congressional subcommittee, as an expert on risk assessment and adjustment, especially in relation to Medicare risk contracting and HMO payments. She recommended: mitigating the geographical region values, credibility weights for payments to health plans, carving out high cost claim segments, reengineering the ACR methodology, shifting AAPCC methodology from fee-for-service toward competitive bidding, and further projects to improve risk methods.

Description: The editorial suggests taking to a new level the SOA’s commitment to finding ways that will benefit society.

Description: The author, a Director of the National Insurance Consumer Organization, ‘NICO,’- a new non-profit organization, notes that ‘a consideration in forming NICO is the lack of adequate insurance expertise within the consumer movement.’ The article describes the public comments the organization has made on various life and health insurance issues.

Description: This is an editorial about the expression of professional opinion about matters outside the special professional competence of actuaries, and we aren’t urging that Article X be either amended or violated.

Description: Discusses a proposal that Social Security retirement benefits should be adjusted according to a special cost-of-living index based upon retirees spending habits rather than the familiar CPI.

Description: There are challenges against the professional world today, particularly in North America and to some extent in the English-speaking Western world elsewhere. Generally speaking, the public takes the view that a profession is somewhat in the age of ancient Druids and [that these] secret societies and mythical groups [are] somehow seeking and getting occasionally, if not too frequently, privileges and preferences over the balance of the population.