Description: This 1991 panel discussion is about health care trend including current experience, measurement techniques and problems, uses of trend projections, and other considerations such as the impact of selection and the impact of initial and renewal underwriting practices. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 17, No. 3A.

Description: This presentation is an open forum from the 1991 Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held June 3-5 in Colorado Springs. The panelists debate on who should pay for medical care for the uninsured, and how it should be financed. The debaters represent advocates of private, voluntary, and cooperative private state solutions and state or government intervention to finance health care for the uninsured. Discussion from participants is included. From the Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 17, No. 3B.

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: Predictive Analytics and Epigenetics are two of the most impactful driving forces for the future of healthcare, precision medicine, and insurance. Learn why this is true, how if will change the way our industry operates, and how you can stay viable and contribute to the betterment of humanity while also protecting the actuarial profession from obsolescence. Learn how personalized medicine keying off genetic testing is saving life insurers big dollars. The only limit seems to be testing access for their insureds.

Description: The article provides insights about the need for revolutionary actuaries in Saudi Arabia due to the reform that is happening across the kingdom under all sectors. Then I talk briefly about the health sector and the transformation that is happing in the sector, and how qualified health actuaries can contribute to this health reform.

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.

Description: Article summarizes the sessions of the 2011 SOA Health Meeting held in Boston.

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: To look at the impact of the amalgamation of drug price fluctuations, pandemics, and mergers and acquisitions, especially the interaction of them with each other and the overall impact on claims and costs to the company.

Description: In this paper, we shine a light on the global public health epidemic of intimate partner violence (IPV). This first paper presents background information on the problem with a focus on health and economic impacts for the actuarial audience