Description: Session 4D: A Year of Change for Medicare Advantage

Description: Life insurance products have evolved over time from the early mutual aid societies paying benefits when members died to comprehensive products covering a range of financial needs over an individual’s lifecycle. While some life insurance benefit riders have been offered for decades and are well-established, recent years have seen a number of accelerated benefit riders being introduced by carriers for a growing range of covered triggers. Join us as we discuss these acceleration and extended benefit riders, trends and innovations in the space, and discuss challenges and actuarial considerations in designing, pricing, and modelling them. We will also explore issues carriers have experienced, how to consider the interactions between these benefits and the underlying mortality coverage, reinsurance considerations, and more!

Description: The article documents the efficacy of infra-low frequency neurofeedback regarding how it improves patient no show rates, decreases mental health symptoms by 40% or more, and self-harm and suicidal ideations.

Description: This article provides an overview of critical illness insurance: history, product description, and the three primary ways to offer critical illness coverage in the United States. This article also contains an illustration of an issue age premium rate calculation, as well as product features and rating applications specific to the various types of critical illness coverage.

Description: The Society of Actuaries' Pension Section and Health Section Research teams commissioned Professor Thomas E. Getzen of Temple University to construct a resource model for the projection of long term healthcare cost trends. The motivation for creation of the model was driven by its potential usage as a resource for the estimation of reportable liabilities for retiree healthcare benefits as specified under FAS 106 and GASB 45 accounting statements. This model, programmed in Microsoft Excel [xlsx format], projects per-person expenditures and growth rates through 2099 using a set of equations and assumptions developed by Professor Getzen with assistance from the Society of Actuaries Project Oversight Group appointed to oversee the effort. The model includes baseline assumptions as well as flexibility for user–inputted alternative assumptions.

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: Healthcare costs have been rising faster than general inflation for many years. Early models that predicted this past pattern projected healthcare expenditure growth that continued to outpace total expenditure growth leading to the fallacious position that the whole of the US economy would ultimately be consumed by healthcare. This paper presents a long term healthcare trends resource model, prepared for the Society of Actuaries by Professor Thomas Getzen, that includes capacity constraints to ensure the long-term projection is rational. The motivation for creation of the model was driven by its potential usage as a resource for the estimation of reportable liabilities for retiree healthcare benefits as specified under FAS 106 and GASB 45 accounting statements.

Description: Tree models have been found to provide a good fit to group long term disability recovery and mortality rates. This research paper provides an overview of tree models, and details how they have been used for developing these rates.

Description: This is a brief report that summarizes recent changes in the prevalent medical loss ratio methodologies and also looks at some of the more recent experience of health insurers that filed medical loss ratio reports.

Description: Technical report to accompany Fifty States, Fifty Stories: A Decade of Health Care Reform Under the Affordable Care Act.