Description: This analysis will primarily focus on the individual, non-group market. In order to plan for the impact that these currently uninsured individuals will have on the health insurance markets, it will be important to understand their costs relative to the costs for people already enrolled, for whom many health insurers have experience and data.

Description: One of the many resources that the SOA offers for download are research projects and reports that focus on health.

Description: Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) affects many lives and has a large impact on health systems around the world. To better understand and predict costs for insurance plan members with CKD in the United States, we built a new model of their individual costs. Our model is the first to explicitly model both the CKD stage transition process and the distribution of costs given those stages.

Description: This paper helps the audience understand the actuary’s role in estimating the financial impact of primary care programs. In addition, the paper can be used by actuaries to think about key issues when estimating the financial impact of their employers’ and clients’ own primary care programs.

Description: The SOA Research Institute is pleased to make available material for Primer on Retirement Income Strategy Design and Evaluation, a primer that addresses strategies to generate income during retirement from the perspectives of their design and evaluation. Design involves specifying a joint investment and withdrawal strategy, which entails deciding how to invest available assets and setting a plan for withdrawing income. Evaluation involves analyzing how well the potential outcomes arising from a strategy satisfy objectives, which provides the foundation for strategy selection. The main focus of this Primer is investment strategy rather than withdrawal strategy. However, investment strategy cannot be examined independently from withdrawal strategy. Income generation is the focal point of a retirement income strategy, and this in turn depends on the rules under which income is drawn. In addition to the primer, the authors have created two Excel models for illustrative purposes.

Description: This research report educates the actuarial community about the various shades of the flood risk as well as the state of the art in quantitative flood risk modeling.

Description: This research report is sponsored by The Society of Actuaries and the Canadian Institute of Actuaries on the Canadian health care system. Performed by Stéphane Levert, FSA, FCIA, the study (available in French and English) estimated the future costs of the Canadian health care system, assessed the sustainability of the system over a 25-year horizon, and analyzed the implications of the changes to the Canada Health Transfer proposed on Dec. 19, 2011 by the federal government. The report summarizing the findings indicates that, without significant government intervention, the Canadian health care system in its current form is not sustainable.

Description: The Mortality and Longevity Strategic Research Program Steering Committee (MLPSC) released this report, which examined the latest trends in obesity and developed an estimate of the impact of obesity on mortality and morbidity costs in the U.S. and Canada.

Description: As carriers have learned over the last two decades, Long-Term Care insurance (LTCi) is a risky business. The intent of this paper is to illustrate how these risks can be better understood through modeling the liabilities using a Monte Carlo simulation approach.

Description: This report provides a thorough educational resource that can be used by health actuaries and others to help explain various types of provider payment and risk arrangements.