Description: The editors of Health Watch have made health care reform the focus of the Sepctember 2009 issue, and provide an introduction to the issue's contents.

Description: Summary of recent activity in the social insurance and public finance section and invitation to volunteers.

Description: The article discusses the sustainability of the ACA individual market from a public entitlement standpoint. A key point of measuring sustainability is the reliance on market forces rather than federal budget constraints. The article explains why an actuarial viewpoint of sustainability is necessary to a greater extent than other public assistance and social insurance programs. The article challenges actuaries to be a bold, objective voice in a space that is full of opinionated but often uninformed viewpoints.

Description: It summarizes the activities that took place on the “Day of reflection and evaluation of insurance in Argentina” held at the School of Economic Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires (FCE-UBA) on October 17th. The main objective of the Day was to present the progress achieved through the National Strategic Plan for the Insurance Industry (PlaNeS 2012-2020) launched in 2012. The audience included the Superintendent and Vice Superintendent of Insurance, Juan Bontempo and Santiago Fraschina, as well as the Dean of the FCE-UBA, Professor Alberto Barbieri, and authorities of all insurance chambers and industry trade bodies.

Description: This article provides a highlight of all the information and resources the predictive analytics and futurism section provides to its members.

Description: A discussion of the hidden costs of administering complex Products including operational inefficiency, product development constraints, increased time to market, inability to monitor experience, and lost cross selling opportunities among other things

Description: This article focuses on these Key Points - The Situation: Mortality Improvement assumption is not a simple equation. What Could Happen: Any mortality improvement assumption is a bit of a ‘bet’ relative to the ongoing penetration of known developments and the introduction of new developments, such as the appearance of the AIDS epidemic. What Needs to Happen: Better understanding of Mortality Improvement assumption, final assumption, and best estimate approach.

Description: With 48m Americans and 137m Chinese over the age of 65 the world faces a frail care rather than long term care crisis. What can insurers offer?

Description: Many top-performing businesses aren’t just risk aware, but rather risk intelligent. Such a posture helps prepare companies for a major event and can demonstrate to a regulator or auditor that an appropriately strong control framework is in place. Better still, companies gain real strategic value from a “risk adjusted” understanding not only of their threats and vulnerabilities, but also the upside opportunities associated with various risks. It starts with having both qualitative and quantitative information to identify, assess and manage risks. Strategic risk management, at its core, is about creating value by increasing transparency and accountability, and quality of information. More than a mere compliance exercise, effective risk management enables more informed strategic decision making, increased accountability and transparency, a greater likelihood of organizational success, and – ultimately – competitive advantage, as borne out by many studies that correlate risk management and financial results.

Description: This article reviews studies find that the mortality gap has significantly reduced – though not eliminated – the overall progressivity of Social Security.