Description: Article from The Actuary, December 1975, Volume 9, No. 10, discusses medical expense insurance. This article addresses the following questions: Why have group claim frequency rates remained high? What can be expected for the future? What management actions are appropriate? This presentation is one actuary's attempt to answer these questions.

Description: The Phase 3 tax is the description given to the federal income tax imputable to amounts withdrawn from the Policyholders Surplus Account maintained under the federal income tax law. This article discusses certain facets of the federal income Phase 3 tax as it relates to these withdrawals. Still significant for a large health insurer that has been in existence since before 1984 should health care become nationalized.

Description: Article from The Actuary, June 1972 – volume 6 - Issue 6 that sets forth the writer’s opinion of that which constitutes a proper insurance reserve for a general purpose financial statement.

Description: In determining a company's general purpose financial statement earnings in conformity with the Audit Guide for Stock Life Insurance Companies the Audit Guide, it is necessary to consider what basis may be deemed appropriate for establishing claim reserves on health insurance policies. The bases for determining the other values taken into a general purpose financial statement have been considered elsewhere. This articel briefly considers the difference in reserves calculated for statutory reporting verses those same reserves calcualted for other purposes such as GAAP.

Description: Attempts to explain the need for premium increases on level-premium, guaranteed-renewable health-insurance policies. It presents a perspective on loss ratios for such policies that may be helpful to an insurer in reflecting a regulator's or consumer's viewpoint.

Description: The only indices set out in the Annual Statement are 1 the ratio of net investment income to mean assets in Exhibit 2, and 2 those ratios in Schedule H and the Accident and Health Policy Experience Exhibit the Exhibit. The impropriety of the Schedule H and Exhibit ratios as meaningful indicators is discussed below. It is assumed in the discussion that statutory accounting principles and considerations are operative, and the superiority of indices based on generally accepted accounting or economic value principles is not advanced. The statutory indices adjusted and unadjusted are used and referred to by regulators, industry groups, trade journals, and others. Thus, within the context of statutory accounting, the indices should be properly determined.

Description: The author notes that “many considerations enter into the determination of investment strategy. Important among these considerations is the maximization of investment income on an after-tax basis rather than on a before-tax basis.” The article then discusses how starting in the early 1960’s insurers, using a marginal tax rate approach, invested heavily in tax exempt bonds. The author, expressing his belief that a major depression is likely to occur in the next 10 years, recommends insurance companies divest of their holding in tax exempt instruments, based on the macroeconomic analysis he presents.

Description: A discussion of some criticisms of the feasibility of companies converting to GAAP, in addition to pros and cons of the GAAP system.

Description: Discusses management principles for the successful application of the underwriting processes of selecting and classifying risks and the actuarial pricing process of establishing adequate and equitable premiums for the risks to be underwritten within group medical business. Has some nice representative data for what a book of business might look like by case size.