Description: Health care has changed rapidly over the past couple of years. The pandemic has shifted consumer behavior in how and where they receive health care as well as consumer attitudes toward health care. Payers continue to design innovative solutions in responses to their patient’s needs and expectations. These changes in consumer behaviors and the responses by payers are expected to impact both health care cost and utilization. Discuss changes in health care that have emerged due to the pandemic and how they are expected to influence actuarial assumptions. Explore epidemiological models commonly used in the industry, the considerations when using these models, as well as the challenges with regards to gathering and interpreting relevant experience data. By attending this session, you will be able to: Identify shifts in consumer behavior that have emerged from the pandemic and describe how payers are responding to new patient expectations. Discuss how these post-pandemic changes by consumers and payers influence medical spending. Determine which actuarial assumptions are impacted and how and if the impact is expected to be temporary or permanent. Discuss considerations taken by actuaries and challenges faced when modelling actuarial assumptions post pandemic.

Description: Level funded products often target the small group market (2-50) and can result in many manual and tedious processes for underwriting to perform risk assessment. Learn how a carrier used technology to help automate risk assessment without the need for paper medical questionnaires, and exposed a risk engine for broker quoting to enable near real-time of pricing for risk-based products. The approach reduced labor and allowed underwriting to focus solely on fallout cases while also improving pricing consistency. Discuss broader trends in the health market for risk assessment, including new machine learning cost predictions that can be used for automation and better predictions of future costs. Discussion topics will include underwriting guidelines, business rules, risk scores, and machine learning. By attending this session, you will have a better idea of new trends in risk assessment for small groups where no claims experience is available. And, better understand business rules that are common in underwriting for flags for review as well as how risk scores and machine learning can be used during the underwriting process.

Description: The introduction of new gene and cell treatments is not without scrutiny. Although these treatments are often curative, they come with a significant price tag. Health plan actuaries find themselves wondering if the intended outcome supports the cost and whether the potential medical cost savings will offset the high drug cost. The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) reviews results from clinical trials to produce a report evaluating the cost-effectiveness of new therapies. Depending on the results, the ICER report can be used by pharmaceutical companies to justify the high cost or by the health plan to do the opposite. Go beyond the ICER report and discuss an alternative method for valuing new drugs using nonmedical revenue streams, such as disability and nutrition benefits, and return-on-investment modeling. By attending this session, you will have a better understanding of the nonmedical revenue streams, such as disability and nutrition assistance benefits, that may offset the cost of a drug and how those revenue streams can be incorporated into return-on-investment modeling.