Description: Research report sponsored by SOA to model and compare projected costs of different proposals for a Medicare prescription drug coverage plan. 3 types of costs are studied: net benefit cost estimates per member per month, continuance table data, and projected annual costs to the government over 10 years for two selected plan designs.

Description: A supplemental report conducted in 2009 to contrast results of the 2008 study, 'Will Retirement Assets Last a Lifetime'? It discusses retirees confidence in having sufficient assets to fully fund their retirement, their willingness to take risk, efforts to control spending and their use of financial advisers.

Description: This actually is a copy of an appendix of a research paper sponsored by the SOA Committee on Finance Research. You can read the entire research paper: “Lapse Modeling for the Post-Level Period—a Practical Application of Predictive Modeling” at the SOA site https://www.soa.org/Research/Research-Projects/Finance-Investment/lapse-2015-modeling-post-level/#sthash.W9lERSls.dpbs, but you can read this valuable appendix copied here in this issue to see how to build a PM step-by-step using your data and the R programming language. We thank Richard Xu, Dihui Lai, Minyu Cao, Scott Rushing, and Tim Rozar for their excellent paper and the Society of Actuaries, for the permission to reprint this portion of the paper.

Description: Rising drug—and, to a lesser extent, health care—costs in Canada are creating long-term challenges for not only governments and employers across Canada but for individuals as well, with no easy answers.

Description: This article summarizes a series of surveys that explore how the public perceives retirement risks and manages related financial resources. It also provides examples of conflicting perceptions and behavior related to retirement and how retirees manage assets in retirement.

Description: Read the November 2016 issue of Health Watch published by the Health Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Article explores two very different approaches that are currently being considered for use in projecting credited rates on interest sensitive products and show how they can be reconciled with one another.

Description: This paper examines the impact at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care of the introduction of specialty networks, shift to mail-order prescriptions, shifts to generic prescriptions, and product mix shifts to overall pharmacy trend. From Prescription Drugs Monograph, M-HB04-1.

Description: How would a cure for Alzheimer's disease impact LTC insurance claims? How would the impact vary for in-force business versus new business?

Description: A recent study sheds light on the measurement and implications of the relationship between increased morbidity and declining disability. The results were not consistent across all populations. This study of the compression of morbidity is part of a wider project called the M-project, led by the four authors, which aims to explore the demographic factors leading to an increase in the adult longevity, investigate the phenomenon called the compression of mortality and develop a new methodological approach to longevity analysis with focus on the modal age at death M.