Description: Medicare and Medicaid finance more than half of American health care. Medicare and Medicaid are at the forefront of nearly every major change in U.S. health care payments, from DRGs in the 1980s to today’s value-based care. Listen to a conversation with Bruce Pyenson, FSA, MAAA, who recently completed six years as a Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) commissioner and Stacey Lampkin, FSA, MAAA, who recently completed six years as a Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC) commissioner. Hear about programs’ current challenges, what changes the ex-Commissioners anticipate over the next few years, and how these changes might impact Medicare and Medicaid managed care plans, and spillover into employer-sponsored and individual commercial insurance. By attending this session, you will be able to appreciate the role of Medicare and Medicaid as health care payment change agents and foresee future health care payment changes.

Description: The U.S. health care system continues to have its problems. It costs too much and even with public policy developments we are not meeting the desired objectives. What's next? What else can we do? Discuss some of the emerging ideas that are being pursued and the likelihood of their success at solving our collective problem.

Description: Currently there are ten states in the U.S. —Rhode Island, California, New Jersey, New York, Washington, DC; Washington, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon and Colorado —that have enacted Paid Family Leave. Paid Family leave is an employee funded state insurance program that provides wage replacement to eligible workers when they take time off of work to care for a seriously ill family member or to bond with a new child. Who pays the taxes? The employer or the employee? How will this effect short term disability benefit offerings in the work place? How does a Paid Family Leave plan get implemented? Is it up to the employee to file for the benefit through the unemployment office or does the employer file? At the state level, how is paid family leave reserved for? How is it administered? What job protections are there? How does this work with the Family Medical Leave Act? Get these and more questions answered. By attending this session, you should have an understanding of the state Paid Family Leave programs, what it means to future short term disability plans, and how the state accounts for this program.