Description: Feature article discussing the impact of health care reform on the direct insurance market and the reinsurance market.

Description: Medical stop-loss reinsurance continues to play a vital role in containing employers’ health care costs. Managing general underwriters [MGUs], who originally handled these programs, have lost market share to large direct writers. This article discusses how health care reform and highly disciplined underwriting tools offer growth opportunities to MGUs.

Description: An update on HMO market trends and reinsurance products, and services supporting them.

Description: Feature article focuses on the regulators who determine risk-based capital or RBC standards applicable to health plans.

Description: With the medical insurance market experiencing health care inflation of 10 to 13 percent and medical costs averaging above $8,000 per year per employee less for single employees and more for employees with families, employers are looking at alternative options. Politicians and regulators are as well.

Description: Employer stop loss is an insurance coverage offered to employers who self-fund their employee benefits program pursuant to an ERISA plan document. From Reinsurance Section News, November 2007, Issue No. 61.

Description: This article discusses the closed nature of the Brazilian reinsurance market due to the IRB. The Instituto de Resseguros do Brasil is owned 50% by the 15 insurance companies that are licensed to do business in Brazil and 50% by the Government of Brazil, but the Government owns 100% of the voting shares. All reinsurance business must be transacted with and via the IRB. The process, opportunities and risks associated with this scheme are explored.

Description: Specific and aggregate stop loss insurance reinsurance is a product that has unique characteristics. The product is a special type of policy that covers employers or their self-funded employee benefit plans for larger health claims. The product has some unique reserving challenges for the health/reinsurance actuary.

Description: Each health plan is unique, and different factors must be considered when making a decision regarding reinsurance deductibles. This overview offers considerations when selecting a medical excess deductible for commercial, Medicare and Medicaid programs. It is more applicable for large payers, such as HMOs, rather than self-funded employers because there’s usually not enough claims data to warrant such analysis on any given employer group. From Reinsurance Section News, May 2005, Issue No. 55.

Description: Book review of the latest edition (4th) of Life, Health, and Annuity Reinsurance by John Tiller, Jr and Denise Fagerberg Tiller