Description: A discussion of the Open Transaction Doctrine and how it was applied to prevent current inclusion of taxable gains resulting from the sale of stock acquired in a demutualization.

Description: In March 2010, Congress codified the judicial economic substance doctrine in an effort to raise revenue as part of the health care reform legislation.1 The law provides for strict liability penalties of 20 percent for understated taxes and refund claims that result from transactions that lack economic substance. In July 2011, the commissioner of the Large Businessand International Division LB&I of the IRS evidently recognized this state of uncertainty and issued very helpful guidance to all LB&I examiners to fill the void on guidance for economic substance..

Description: This article provides an update on various legislative and regulatory activities including, allowing individual variable annuities, federal standard for fiductiary responsibitlity with respect to pensions, policy loan interest rate and credit insurance issues.

Description: The article gives actuaries an introduction to Academy Health, the notable health policy research organization.

Description: The October/November 2015 edition of The Actuary magazine—the Society of Actuaries’ flagship publication.

Description: In this article, the author discusses the need to create a systemic risk regulator.

Description: Author discusses issues related to federal regulation of insurance.

Description: This article is about the very rapid pace of Health care reform on both the national and state level. The challenge is to ensure that viable financing vehicles are developed for cost effective health care delivery.

Description: This article is about the comprehensive health care reform proposal from the Clinton Administration.

Description: This study was sponsored by the Society of Actuaries Health Section. This paper explores the relative significance of aging as a determinant of financial cost of health care beyond age 50, with particular attention to the effect for ages 65 and older. The paper presents concepts of aging factors and aging curves, which define relative values between ages for utilization or cost of health care services. General conclusions are drawn from Medicare data that utilization and cost differ by age, but that aging factors vary across services and may be less significant at very old ages. The author then turns to the question of measuring the significance of an aging curve assumption and what accuracy is lost in the simpler alternative of a single value across an age range.