Description: Cover a variety of topics centered around the unsupervised learning technique called 'clustering'. The presenters will take you through a wide array of topics that range from 'What is Clustering?' to 'How can I use this technique to solve problems I didn't even know existed?' In the health care industry, everyone is looking for an edge in reducing total spend-cluster analysis finds the unambiguous in an ambiguous framework of results.

Description: The presenters give a history lesson on the origin of CMS Medicare star ratings, including why this demonstration was originally created and how the program has worked over the years. The discussion will cover both the evolution of the underlying measures and the financial impact to Medicare Advantage stakeholders. By attending the session, you will have a stronger understanding of how member experience and outcome-based measures can be factored into the funding within a health care system to better align incentives among various stakeholders.

Description: Hear about some applications using quantile regression-derived individual and group claim distributions and how they may be used in various traditional health care modeling situations. The session will not focus on the technical use of quantile regression to obtain estimates of claim distributions, but more so is intended to focus on the uses of the distributions in actuarial modeling and the additive framework in assessing claims distributions. Presenters will show how actuaries can better assess risks by focusing on the individual- and group-specific claims distributions as opposed to traditional point-estimate-centric models.

Description: This section presents book reviews and summarizations of recent publications: 'Regulation of Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans' by Eilers, 'Changes in Family Medical Care Expenditures and Voluntary Health Insurance' by Anderson, Collette, and Feldman, 'Risk Management' by Snider, 'Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service' by Public Health Service. Digests are also included.

Description: This report covers Group Accident and Health experience, including Group Hospital and Surgical Expense benefits. The basic tables contained in the report furnish the crude claim costs for the total experience of three policy years.

Description: You will be reminded how to spot and avoid statistical biases and fallacies that are common to health care actuarial data and problems. We plan to explain various statistical biases and fallacies and for each show one or two examples of how they might pop up in healthcare data and what strategies can be used to avoid/account for them. Likely topics include simpson's paradox, regression to the mean, base rate fallacy, sampling bias, survivor bias, Berkson's fallacy, and others.

Description: The Society of Actuaries are once again offering a seminar that investigates all aspects of life insurance, annuity and long term care product tax compliance. Developed by the Taxation Section, participants will be brought up-to-date on recent Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guidance and learn about the newest tax issues related to product design and administration. Legal, IRS and product development experts will provide vital insights into the challenges of developing and administering products within the requirements of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), and allow ample opportunities for networking, questions and information exchange.

Description: This report contains historical U.S. population crude mortality rates by gender and single year of age for calendar years 2000-2015.

Description: Table of contents for the 1999 Spring meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held in Seattle, Washington

Description: These are the discussant comments for the concurrent session 4A: Longevity in the Public Eye from the January 4-6, 2017 Living to 100 Symposium in Orlando.