Description: This article deeply examines Pay-for-performance and presents curious findings through the lens of unwarranted variation. From Heath Watch Newsletter, May 2006, Issue No. 52.

Description: This abstract describes a paper that illustrates that the true exposure to an OPEB plan is to the spread of medical care inflation above (or below) the overall inflation rate.

Description: This report presents the results of a market research study to explore untapped opportunities for actuaries in the health care industry.

Description: This is the abstract for the paper, The Need for Coordinated Care for Depression, and the Need for Creative Innovation by Stephen P. Melek, FSA.

Description: Essay offers a vision of health care where everyone is covered, everyone is eligible, receives fair pricing, receives vital information and is taxed the same.

Description: This discussion is on the availability of utilization and cost experience data for group medical care insurance coverages. Specifically, it highlights the role of the Society of Actuaries in intercompany data collection, employer demands for sophisticated utilization data for comparison by industry and geographic location, sources of industry-wide data, data resource potential of health claims processing by the National Electronic Information Corporation, and antitrust implications. From Record of the Society of Actuaries 1981, Volume 7, No. 4.

Description: Reinsurance reduces the required capital of the primary insurer but increases that of the reinsurer. Capital is costly. All capital costs, including that of the insurer and the reinsurer, are ultimately borne by primary policyholders. Reducing the total capital of insurers and reinsurers brings down the total capital cost and the total primary policy premium. A reinsurance arrangement is considered optimal—if it minimizes the total required capital. This optimal reinsurance is an attracting equilibrium under price competition. Evidence suggests an inverse relationship between the total required capital and the correlation between the losses held by different insurers and reinsurers. Examples are constructed to examine this and other properties of the optimal reinsurance.

Description: This article discusses the problems facing long-term care insurance. These include slowing sales, large premium increases and carriers exiting the market. The author suggests that the public needs to be better educated and that insurers need to find innovative ways to design products that are sustainable, yet sufficiently affordable to be attractive to a wide variety of buyers.

Description: This paper describes the prevalence of the still uninsured long-term care financial risk, and how the at-need annuity/home equity combination can address long term care needs.

Description: This session from the 1995 SOA New Orleans Meeting reviews long-term care LTC products. Discussion topics include product design, pricing administration, regulation, marketing and AARP. From the Record of the Society of Acturaries, Vol. 21, No. 1.