Description: Healthcare costs have been rising faster than general inflation for many years. Early models that predicted this past pattern projected healthcare expenditure growth that continued to outpace total expenditure growth leading to the fallacious position that the whole of the US economy would ultimately be consumed by healthcare. This paper presents a long term healthcare trends resource model, prepared for the Society of Actuaries by Professor Thomas Getzen, that includes capacity constraints to ensure the long-term projection is rational. The motivation for creation of the model was driven by its potential usage as a resource for the estimation of reportable liabilities for retiree healthcare benefits as specified under FAS 106 and GASB 45 accounting statements.

Description: Healthcare costs have been rising faster than general inflation for many years. Early models that predicted this past pattern projected healthcare expenditure growth that continued to outpace total expenditure growth leading to the fallacious position that the whole of the US economy would ultimately be consumed by healthcare. The Society of Actuaries' Pension Section and Health Section Research teams commissioned Professor Thomas E. Getzen of Temple University to construct a resource model for the projection of long term healthcare cost trends that includes capacity constraints to ensure the long-term projection is rational. The motivation for creation of the model was driven by its potential usage as a resource for the estimation of reportable liabilities for retiree healthcare benefits as specified under FAS 106 and GASB 45 accounting statements. This is a zip file containing the following: 1. A background paper on the creation of the health trend model, 2. The model, programmed in Microsoft Excel [xls format], that projects per-person expenditures and growth rates through 2099 using baseline assumptions, but also permits the flexibility for user–inputted alternative assumptions, and 3. Technical documentation providing transparency and support for the ultimate results.

Description: Healthcare costs have been rising faster than general inflation for many years. Early models that predicted this past pattern projected healthcare expenditure growth that continued to outpace total expenditure growth leading to the fallacious position that the whole of the US economy would ultimately be consumed by healthcare. The Society of Actuaries' Pension Section and Health Section Research teams commissioned Professor Thomas E. Getzen of Temple University to construct a resource model for the projection of long term healthcare cost trends that includes capacity constraints to ensure the long-term projection is rational. The motivation for creation of the model was driven by its potential usage as a resource for the estimation of reportable liabilities for retiree healthcare benefits as specified under FAS 106 and GASB 45 accounting statements. This is a zip file containing the following: 1. A background paper on the creation of the health trend model, 2. The model, programmed in Microsoft Excel [xls format], that projects per-person expenditures and growth rates through 2099 using baseline assumptions, but also permits the flexibility for user–inputted alternative assumptions, and 3. Technical documentation providing transparency and support for the ultimate results.

Description: This is the abstract for the paper entitled 'Pricing Long Term Insurance Contracts.' This paper considers several models describing the changes in the needs of the insured for care over time. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1994, VOL. 1.

Description: This paper is about an Interacting Particle System [IPS] approach to modeling treatment costs associated with a multiple stage pandemic. The model population receives differing treatments with possibly differing costs depending on the stage of exposure/infection. The total cost of treatment is a time varying utility function of the ensemble population for which this approach uses particle system methods to simulate the cost of maintaining survival of the population. The paper gives a brief background on particle systems with specific focus on 'the contact process', followed by expanding the contact process to represent more realistic state transitions.

Description: This paper examines the adjustment of premiums under guaranteed renewable health insurance policies. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1960, Vol. 12, No. 34.

Description: Using data from the Health & Retirement Study [HRS], a two-part medical claim prediction model is estimated for a cohort of survey respondents approaching Medicare-eligibility age. A High Deductible Health Plan [HDHP] with a companion Health Savings Account [HSA] is applied to simulated claims streams to model the build-up of HSA assets over the near-retirement years. Results show that the HSA is a grossly inadequate savings vehicle to provide for retiree medical care expenses at age 65. Moreover, HSA adequacy worsens exponentially with diminishing health status. Based on this simulation, it is apparent that Baby Boomers cannot adequately provide for the costs of medical care in retirement using HSAs exclusively.

Description: Tree models have been found to provide a good fit to group long term disability recovery and mortality rates. This research paper provides an overview of tree models, and details how they have been used for developing these rates.

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.

Description: This paper develops a formal framework to model the behavior of individual and small group health insurance policies in a competitive market. In this framework, anti-selective lapse is not assumed, but arises as a result of rational consumers seeking the best value in a competitive market where the premium rates are restricted by law. The authors obtain a model that addresses a number of fundamental questions which have not been fully answered previously, including the effect of price-induced anti-selective lapse on the mix of insureds in a block and the optimal renewal price to maximize the aggregate profit of a block.