Description: Prescription drug affordability remains a critical concern for consumers, payers and policymakers alike. This paper discusses an alternative to policy solutions: reimagining commercial pharmacy financing using a value-based reimbursement model to increase transparency, encourage pharmaceutical competition, align stakeholder incentives and mitigate total cost of care (TCOC) increases.

Description: An in-depth analysis of the insurance landscape in China and seven key Asia Pacific Markets, focusing on the rapid development of critical illness products and the impact of technology on insurance purchasing behaviors.

Description: An update of selected key graphs from the Key Statistics section of previous COVID-19 briefs.

Description: In this Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute report, authored by consultants from Milliman, Inc. (Milliman) we aim to study the effects of hurricanes on human health: whether there is a relationship between hurricanes and the observed prevalence of healthcare utilization or certain health conditions among the affected population, whether this relationship can be observed through a healthcare utilization dataset, and whether there is an interaction between this observation and metrics of socioeconomic vulnerability.

Description: Dealing with more known unknowns? More scary knowns? Or unknown unknowns? What is the next unthinkable? What future events should actuaries actively be modelling and keep us up at night? The Catastrophe & Climate Strategic Research Program of the Society of Actuaries Research Institute (SOA) put forth a call for essays exploring these risks. The Program Steering Committee selected these essays submitted by Sam Gutterman and Max Rudolph to publish, and are awarding them each a prize of $500. The Catastrophe & Climate Strategic Research Program Steering Committee congratulates the authors and is happy to publish the winning essays on the SOA website.

Description: This report presents Phase 2 of the 2024 IDEC Study, analyzing individual disability income (IDI) claim recovery and mortality rates from 2006-2014. It expands Phase 1's scope—previously limited to 90-day elimination and To Age 65-70 benefit periods—to include additional elimination and benefit periods, examining variations by diagnosis, occupation class, claim year, and gender.

Description: The SOA has translated four of its AIT report summaries into both Traditional and Simplified Chinese. They are “Behavioral Science”, “Big Data and the Future Actuary”, “Cancer Genomics”, and “Cloud Computing and Machine Learning Uses in the Actuarial Profession.

Description: In this report, we explore the impact of clustering using the Medical Expenditure Panel Study (MEPS) data for children (aged 5 to 17) to build a bridge between oral health and overall health using dental and medical expenditures. We include social determinants of health as cluster input variables using the Partitioning around Medoids (PAM) method to identify children and their families who could potentially benefit from population health management related to oral health.

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: As part of an upcoming Society of Actuaries (SOA) research release to model health care costs in 2020 and 2021, a set of “Return Stages” were created in order to define the various level of activities being observed, as well as to contemplate the ways these stages may progress as various cities, counties and states release their own phasing processes for returning their jurisdictions to normal.