Description: Report on the proceedings of the 2010 Long Term Care Think Tank Session, whose goals were to discuss the major issues and challenges facing the LTC insurance industry, and to formulate action items and initiatives to help the industry move ahead. Focus was on understanding the needs & affordability capabilities of different market segments, the limited variety of product designs, shrinking distribution force, regulation and public policy, implications of the CLASS Act, and ideas for educating consumers and marketing products.

Description: Disease management DM is increasingly encountered in health plans and employer groups as a health care intervention targeted to individuals with chronic diseases chronics. The untested assumption is that without DM, the chronic and non-chronic trends are identical. From Financing Chronic Care Monograph, M-HB05-1.

Description: Employers who offer financial wellness programs that help younger employees plan for major life events could see improved employee retirement preparedness.

Description: A follow-up to the 2012 article “A Global Perspective of the Health Insurance Market” about teaching a course at the Columbia University Masters in Actuarial Science program. The course provided an overview of the health care insurance industry.

Description: Actuaries of the future have to embrace the ideas and technologies that lie ahead.

Description: An account of the trials of work ethic issues and college difficulties, and the triumphant story of overcoming obstacles through careful self-improvement.

Description: Chairperson’s column discussing a few of the important initiatives of the Financial Reporting Section

Description: This article examines potential approaches to the calculation of the risk adjustment component, with a focus on a case study related to a UL product.

Description: A proposal to reform current health care market, from a 'preferred payer' system, in which Medicare and Medicaid pay less than the true cost while others must then pay more, to a 'value for money' system. This would be achieved by requiring providers to bill all patients the same rate for the same services, with a standard bundling format to make all providers' rate differences transparent. Differences between billed charges and what Medicare pays would be made up by the Medicare patient, rather than subsidized by those outside of Medicare.

Description: A proposal to address provider payment issues by gradually moving to accountable care organizations. Capitations would be risk-adjusted, non-capitated costs would be covered by hospitalization fund and stoploss, incentives for quality & effective preventive care would be tied to the amount remaining in the fund, and government involvement would be through incentives rather than mandate.