Description: A review of the 2009 Health Spring Meeting, which included speakers & sessions on the future of the SOA, U.S. health care reform, claims data issues & improvements, predictive modeling, underwriting principles, employer stoploss, cost trends, LTD & disability, and mental health parity regulations.

Description: A report on the proceedings of the June 2010 SOA health meeting. Leading topics included health care reform, opportunities to expand actuaries' roles, the global financial crisis, and collaboration with other organizations.

Description: After three decades of relatively stable overall inflation trends, the United States has seen significant increases over the last twelve months. What could this mean for inflation in the medical sector? Explore past patterns between the two phenomena, and what drivers stakeholders can monitor to be best aware of what could be coming.

Description: The Affordable Act's risk corridor program is a temporary feature that applies to individual and small group QHPs from 2014 through 2016. Designed to protect insurers against pricing uncertainty, the program appears straightforward but has many subtle consequences. In this article, we review the need for risk corridors, the calculation itself, and the implications that result.

Description: This article provides an overview of the Own Risk and Solvency Assessment (ORSA) model act, and of enterprise risk management (ERM). Compared to other actuarial disciplines, health actuaries have not historically focused as much on ERM. But health coverages do have risks that can threaten an insurer's solvency, and ORSA (now in force in most states) will force health insurers to beef up their ERM capabilities.

Description: Simple Rating Systems: Entry-level sports forecasting

Description: Interview with Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change.

Description: Rick Foster, chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services discusses public policy

Description: An economics professor and a health care consumer advocate weigh in on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, including implementation issues, directions for the future and what role actuaries shoudl take.

Description: In this continuation of our July 2013 article we explore an algorithm for evaluating Hidden Markov Models in detail. A preferred method in speech recognition technology, Hidden Markov Models are a promising technique when dealing with data you suspect may be driven by a change in a unobservable state. The example in the article is provided in an Excel workbook for the reader to follow along with.