Description: This paper provides an outline of the pricing methodology used by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Virginia which incorporates trend analysis by trend component. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1993, VOL. 3.

Description: This paper gives a brief review of advanced time series models, the state space model, using Monte Carlo techniques and subsequently illustrates their usefulness to practicing actuaries. The models employed allow for the possibilities of nonnormal errors and nonlinear functionals in the state equation, the observational equation or both. The approach is illustrated with several examples and data compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics.

Description: In this paper the authors analyze data from group medical expense insurance claims and show that many insurance loss distributions have very 'heavy tails' because large losses represent a disproportionate fraction of the total cost. They also present a simple model to reproduce and explain the large loss behavior. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1990, VOL. 2

Description: This paper describes a method to determine confidence intervals for trend involving resampling - with replacement but without random numbers - of numerical convolutions for sums and quotients, and the estimating of confidence intervals for trend in average size major medical claims.

Description: This article investigates the properties of the Gompertz distribution function. Explicit formulas for continuous life insurances and annuities are given in terms of the left-truncated gamma function. Moreover, approximations for the mean, variance, skewness and kurtosis of the Gompertz distribution are also given. Finally, the article shows that using a Gompertz assumption at fractional ages produces better a approximation than the usual UDD assumption.

Description: The method described in this paper is to allocate surplus to each category of business and reserves in proportion to its estimated effect on an insurer's surplus variation. Risk load for each category of business is then selected so that the return on allocated surplus for each category is equal to the overall return on surplus. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1993, VOL. 3.

Description: This paper studies the joint distribution of the time of ruin, the surplus immediately before ruin, and the deficit at ruin. The classical model is generalized by discounting with respect to the time of ruin. The authors show how to calculate an expected discounted penalty, which is due at ruin, and may depend on the deficit at ruin and the surplus immediately before ruin.

Description: Most computations that are done within actuarial science entail using discrete death rates associated with incremental ages. It's not that continuous death rates cannot be used, it's just that discrete values tend to be more convenient to work with. Of the various continuous probability distributions, the one most closely associated with actuarial science may be the Gompertz distribution. This paper takes a closer look at the Gompertz, starting with the motivation behind Benjamin Gompertz proposing this particular distribution. Then the paper develops procedures to estimate the parameters for this distribution, and it ends with a brief example of the procedures presented in the paper.

Description: The purpose of this paper is to explain several actuarial-demographic-statistical techniques and show their application in medical investigations. Actuarial Research Clearing House 1979, VOL. 1

Description: This paper examines four and-a-half years of prescription records for an elderly population who have relatively comprehensive out-of-hospital drug coverage under the Pharmaceutical Assistance Contract for the Elderly program in Pennsylvania. The result is a discussion of the determination of non-parametric estimations of the distributions. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1991, Vol 1.