Description: Health Watch, Issue 79, December 2015, Health Watch

Description: Influenza overview (virus types, health impacts, vaccination process/efficacy) and how actuaries can incorporate basic flu knowledge into their work.

Description: This article describes a method that can be useful when re-fitting a risk score model to a population of only moderate size. Learn how to use concepts like ridge regression to train a model with partial credibility.

Description: This article describes methodologies for detection and deterrence of Medicare fraud. It also describes the validation of PRIDIT for fraud detection in Medicare.

Description: In 2007 the International Accounting Standards Board IASB released a discussion paper proposing a new accounting model for insurance contracts, known as the current exit value model. One aspect of the proposed accounting model is that claim liabilities would need to include explicit margins satisfying certain criteria. Currently it is common for U.S. medical insurers to include explicit margins in their claim liabilities. However, we demonstrate that the margin approach most commonly used today by U.S. medical insurers does not satisfy the objectives articulated in the IASB discussion paper regarding the role of margins. We then propose a new formula for including explicit margins in U.S. medical insurance claim liabilities in a manner that is more compatible with the principles articulated in the IASB discussion paper. Finally, we illustrate our proposed claim liability formula using an example drawn from real-life data.

Description: This article will consider several issues arising from ACO budgeting and pricing of stoploss coverage, including: 1) attribution of members; 2) claim carve outs; 3) ambiguous stoploss terms; 4) providers gaming the system and 5) credibility of data.

Description: We highlight a new approach leveraging predictive analytics to identify high risk and rising risk opioid users for more effective screening and follow-up care.