Description: Presenter discusses the results published in Dr. David Eisenberg's paper entitled, Integrative Medicine, and offers an update on the data collection effort of the SOA Task Force on Alternative Care. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 25, No. 2.

Description: This session summarizes recent trends in behavioral health parity, pros and cons of parity, the impact of mandated benefits on near-term medical costs and methods to effectively manage mental health utilization. From Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 30, No. 1, Session 81

Description: This table shows the results of an attribution of the major contributing factors to the rate of mortality improvement in cardiovascular disease between 1980 and 2000.

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.

Description: This project shows how to use agent-based models to simulate the behaviors of agents in complex health systems.

Description: Diabetes mellitus type 2 is an excellent model for assessing the setup of medical coverage in the U.S. health care system. It is a chronic disease that has genetic, behavioral and other medical causes, and causes many complications over the long term. From Financing Chronic Care Monograph, M-HB05-1.

Description: This paper discussed providing consumers of medical care with transparent and comparable price and quality information to enable them to make economically optimal decisions.

Description: News release on Health Care Costs Institute and it's mission to promote research on the causes of rising U.S health spending.

Description: Susan Dentzer, editor-in-chief of Health Affairs, discusses health care and health policy.

Description: Article describes enhanced primary care models and provides citations on whether or not health care savings have been achieved.