Description: This essay highlights that the healthcare of the future should offer unversal coverage, preserve competitiveness, research cost and quality and offer free or low cost preventative services.

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: In this era of rising health care costs, numerous efforts have been made to link quality and cost through multiple approaches. This is a report of a study, conducted by MPRO under contract with the SOA, in which they evaluate whether quality pays or not in an inpatient setting by carefully selecting a few hospitals in Southeast Michigan and retrospectively calculating their return on investment [ROI] in quality improvement [QI] activities within their organization.

Description: Introduction and overview. From The Future of Pension Plan Funding and Disclosure Monograph, M-RS05-1.

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 article discusses the call for papers entitled Re-envisioning Work and Retirement in the 21st Century which eventually led to the Re-envisioning Retirement in the 21st Century symposium that was held in Washington, D.C. on May 3-4, 2006. From Pension Section News, September 2006, No. 62.

Description: Retirement Symposium overview. A session by session synopsis of the wide ranging topics presented.

Description: Realizing the impact of medical errors on the U.S. health care system, the Health Section commissioned a research project to measure the annual frequency of medical errors and their total measurable direct and indirect cost to the economy.

Description: This session discussion is about high cost claimants in medical benefit plans and how to control costs and anti-selection. From Record of the Society of Actuaries Vol. 15, No. 3B.

Description: This session takes a fresh look at the issues related to acute care focus and the challenges of providing coordinated care for chronic conditions in the United States and internationally. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 31, No. 2, Session 67