Description: What is the difference between a Single-Payer and Universal Health Care System, and how could the U.S. implement a system that would reduce the growth of medical costs while increasing quality.

Description: ACA risk adjustment is intended to "bridge the gap" between allowed rates and actuarial rates. If risk adjustment methodology is not bridging that gap & becomes an additional input to pricing formulae, it is not serving its intended purpose.

Description: As actuaries in health care, we spend most of our time focused on reviewing claims, enrollment and clinical data. That information is captured while patients are in health care facilities. Yet most people spend only a small fraction of their time in these facilities. This article explores what types of data are available to actuaries the provide a more holistic view of the member so that a members physical and emotional needs, the social determinants of health can be taken into consideration along with their clinical needs. Two uses cases are presented so actuaries can see how these types of analyses can be leveraged to improve clinical, operational, and financial performance of risk bearing health entities. Understanding the customer (member) not just the patient enables actuaries to provide new insights and values to our stakeholders across a wide range of business and risk applications.

Description: Actuaries are currently familiar with the impact of new technologies used primarily by clinicians and health care providers, such as new drugs and devices. The common theme emerging from many of the articles points to a technological revolution in health care accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis this year. Actuaries need to understand these technologies, their impact, learn how to drive this technological change and guide the response of their profession and their own health care organizations.

Description: Discussion and Opinion on how randomness affects measurement of provider contracting risk-sharing agreements

Description: This is one of a series of SOA-sponsored papers on the subject of Evaluating the Results of Care Management Interventions. This paper addresses the theory of measurement design and provides a practical evaluation of the most common designs for the practitioner.

Description: Answers to questions that have surfaced with regard to recent trends in the use of psychiatric medications, including relative effectiveness compared to prescribing patterns, drivers of prescribing patterns, classification and indications for recently publicized drugs, role of primary care providers, preventive use ofdementia medications, and new developments in the field.

Description: In the evolving realm of healthcare actuarial practice, value-based contracts are reshaping the landscape. This article explores the pivotal role of AI-enhanced Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) in empowering actuaries to navigate this dynamic sector. Despite challenges in data standardization, AI-enhanced EMRs offer a solution by extracting and standardizing diverse medical records. The article delineates how AI-EMR integration benefits actuaries and provider organizations, enabling more accurate forecasting, earlier shared savings prepayments, and real-time quality metric aggregation. Moreover, it discusses how this fusion addresses historical data limitations, can help project catastrophic claims, and can help identify risk score capture opportunities. Ultimately, it indicates the transformative potential of AI-EMR synergy, positioning actuaries at the forefront of healthcare analytics with unprecedented precision and insight.

Description: Savings from biosimilars have accelerated significantly in the past few years. There has been a number of relatively recent biosimilar launches that can help to shape our expectations of the financial impact that could result from this year’s big event. Savings from biosimilars have accelerated significantly in the past few years. There has been a number of relatively recent biosimilar launches that can help to shape our expectations of the financial impact that could result from this year’s big event.

Description: The big event of 2023 is the launch of multiple Humira biosimilars, which began in January with the arrival of Amgen’s Amjevita on the market. The launch of Amjevita kicks off the process of changing the specialty drug marketplace in the United States. The expectation of the full impact of this big event is very hopeful, but there is still uncertainty several months after its beginning. Humira is the highest-selling drug in the world and has been since 2013 (Figure 1)—except for when COVID-19 projects temporarily surpassed it. The world is eagerly awaiting the launch of multiple biosimilar drugs to compete with Humira and hopefully bring more competitive pricing to the benefit of payers and patients everywhere.