Description: This panel discussion session focuses on health care alternatives with the objective to improve care and reduce costs. Includes discussion on national programs, managed care

Description: This project shows how to use agent-based models to simulate the behaviors of agents in complex health systems.

Description: This project shows how to use agent-based models to simulate the behaviors of agents in complex health systems.

Description: This is the databook for the "Health Care Cost - From Birth to Death". This study used commercial data held by the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) and Medicare fee-for-service data to analyze health care cost differences by age and their contribution to overall health care cost change. The commercial data includes claims from 2002 through 2010 and the Medicare data includes claims from 2006 through 2010.

Description: The heathcare academic literature seems to be saturated with articles on technology. This paper presents summaries of several articles that are intended to be representative, covering a wide range of topics relating to the impact of technology on the healthcare system.

Description: This article focuses on mandatory supplemental benefits offered by general enrollment plans and Dual Eligible Special Needs Plans (D-SNPs) Medicare Advantage plans from 2017 to 2021.

Description: In this session, an employer representative and broker will discuss their views on the current health care marketplace and cost containment including utilization review, self-funded plans and ASOs. From Record of the Society of Actuaries 1987 Vol. 13, No. 1.

Description: This article is the third in a series from the '2011 Living To 100 Symposium.' It examines the growing concern about doctor to patient ratio, including perspectives from Canada, the U.S. and the U.K.

Description: The Canadian public health care delivery system continues to experience growing needs for increased funding. The total health care delivery system today costs Canadians $98 billion a year or about 9.7 percent of GDP. Of that total cost, 71 percent is paid by the government, which means the taxpayers. While that may pale in comparison to the costs in the U.S., it does make the Canadian system one of the five most expensive health care delivery systems in the world. While today’s cost pressures are of major concern, of even more concern are the costs being projected by many participants in the current health care debate for the period when the Baby Boom makes higher demands on the Canadian health care delivery system. Traditional projection methods, however, do not differentiate between the elderly who survive the year versus those who die as to their use of health care systems. This paper first looks at the impact that this differentiation could have on projected costs. Second, the paper looks at the impact that the wide use of Advance Directives [also called Living Wills] might have on future health care costs and some of the issues surrounding their use. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 2004, Vol. 1.

Description: Direct Primary Care (DPC) is a newer model of primary care delivery in which patients or employers pay for care directly on a membership basis; insurance and other third-party payment is not used. Early studies show significantly improved patient health outcomes and lower expenditures for DPC patients compared with similar patients receiving traditionally delivered primary care. Additional research is needed to better understand physician perspectives about the model and the role of patient selection in early results.In this session we discuss research projects that may shed light on the DPC model and on whether early results indicate more about the model or about the patients who use it.We discuss an SoA research project that interviews DPC physicians to better understand their views about the model and its early results. We also discuss a paper that analyzes characteristics of patients who receive primary care from a DPC physician and compares them to characteristics of patients who receive primary care in more traditional ways. This cross-sectional study surveys all adult patients of a convenience sample of several DPC practices. Variables include demographics, socio-economic status (SES), type of additional coverage (if any), whether DPC fees are paid by an employer, and self-reported health status. The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey is the main source of comparison data. For a given cohort of demographics and additional coverage, we determine whether DPC patients have similar health status, demographics and SES as non-DPC patients. This study will provide insight into the degree of selection into DPC by observable patient characteristics.