Description: The aftershocks of the COVID pandemic will pass --- eventually. Government subsidies and spending soared in 2020 to meet the challenges of the pandemic. Health expenditures leapt from 17.6% of GDP to 19.7%, and then dropped to 18.8% in 2021, and will fall again to 18.2% (projected) in 2022, but are expected to return to the long-run trend by 2024 and gradually rise thereafter. However, during the next few years most attention will be paid to dealing with complex aftershocks from the flood of Covid funding in 2020 and 2021, a surge of inflation in 2022, and a looming recession in 2023.

Description: On March 6, 2023, The Wall Street Journal hosted its Health Forum, a hybrid all-day event. The virtual meeting featured 11 different events. This white paper focuses on those events. The sessions were informative and fast-paced, with each one providing a quick hit of relevant and cutting-edge information around health care.

Description: The Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) recently released their annual health care cost and utilization report on February 13, 2020. This report illustrates employer group commercial health care costs and trends from 2014 – 2018.

Description: Society of Actuaries Research Brief Impact of COVID-19, May 15, 2020

Description: This report provides highlights of a weekly survey of practices regarding the mitigation of the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. during the second half of February 2021 along with comparisons to prior half-month time periods. The survey asks about the degree to which the respondents perceive that people in their community are following 21 common mitigation practices. The responses are separated by state and compared to state level statistics regarding the level of COVID-19 infections from the Johns Hopkins COVID database for the same time period.

Description: The following report is the first iteration of a project to illustrate international models of health care funding.

Description: Inflation and the possibility of recession are major factors affecting health care cost increases over the next five years. Insurance and medical organization will continue to evolve but are unlikely to create major shifts in the short run. However, over the long run structural changes in providers and payment mechanisms will determine future trends – raising or lowering the health share of GDP depending upon public choices and private decisions.

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: This report summarizes thoughts and questions about the impact of COVID-19 on working in retirement, phased retirement and how the definition and timing of retirement may change. It provides a synthesis of the expert input mentioned above and offers background on related research results. It also describes other issues for further consideration. T

Description: This paper develops a formal framework to model the behavior of individual and small group health insurance policies in a competitive market. In this framework, anti-selective lapse is not assumed, but arises as a result of rational consumers seeking the best value in a competitive market where the premium rates are restricted by law. The authors obtain a model that addresses a number of fundamental questions which have not been fully answered previously, including the effect of price-induced anti-selective lapse on the mix of insureds in a block and the optimal renewal price to maximize the aggregate profit of a block.