Description: Anti-obesity medications have been met with reluctance from payers and employee benefits consultants who often lack analogs or empirical data to estimate the cost impact of new therapies coverage. Health plans considering coverage of anti-obesity medications will need to assess and manage the potential costs of covering these new therapies in context of their overall obesity management strategy, including coverage of nutrition counseling, weight management, and bariatric surgery.

Description: This session will bring together public health care leaders in COVID-10 vaccine delivery from both the U.S. and the UK to discuss and compare operational implications of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in their countries, and how those programs ultimately affected hospitalization utilization and mortality rates for members of their communities.

Description: CMS has required hospitals to publish their chargemaster rates, cash discounts and negotiated rates as of January 1, 2021. Our panel is comprised of a data strategist, an executive from a large hospital system and an actuary.

Description: This session will explore the evolving landscape of accident and health valuation, with a special focus on GAAP Long Duration Targeted Improvements. Discussion will delve into the intricacies of change brought by GAAP LDTI for calculation of both Lifetime Future Policy Benefits (LFPB) and Deferred Acquisition Costs, as well as potential downstream impacts to other activities related to general GAAP and STAT reserving such as experience analysis, model system conversion, financial planning and analysis, and statutory margin analysis. Attendees should be able to connect accounting and financial reporting concepts under GAAP LDTI to opportunities for technology modernization, improved transparency of financial analytics, and important considerations unique to Accident and Health products.

Description: Behavioral health is a leading concern for employers and employees, especially with increased needs and awareness in recent years. Expect to dive into the following questions: - How are disability carriers refining their offerings and approaches to meet this need for their clients? - How are carriers thinking about the psychosocial determinants of claim experience? - Where may there be linkages between mental health and physical disabilities? - How might new digital innovations in behavioral health care impact claims experience for disability insurance? - How can actuaries make a societal impact in helping to bring solutions to the mental health crisis? Join us for a panel discussion with group benefits carriers and industry experts to explore these and other questions on this important topic. You'll gain knowledge on the intersection of behavioral health and disability insurance and learn how carriers are exploring new approaches to improve outcomes for employers and employees.

Description: Through the sponsorship of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Society of Actuaries partnered with Wakely to use their health care data to study the effects of COVID-19 on overall health care claims for individuals with a COVID-19 diagnosis. The conclusion of the study is that individuals with COVID-19 claims had significant increases in health care costs leading up to their months of diagnosis, as well as in the months following their diagnosis. These effects were more pronounced for individuals who were hospitalized due to COVID-19 as well as for individuals with prior co-morbidities. Finally, the overall health care costs of these members plateaued at significantly higher levels than their pre-COVID baselines. In fact, all the main membership cohorts experienced claim levels that were at least 20% higher than their pre-COVID starting points.

Description: Get highlights from recently published and upcoming research from the SOA Research Institute, including work on specialty pharmacy and the long-term impacts of COVID-19. Presenters will focus on the financial impacts of these issues as well as trends and other actuarial considerations.

Description: In this session, we will delve into the application of survey data analytics to extract valuable insights from public survey datasets. The discussion will start with the basics of survey design, sampling practices, and estimation of key statistics. Three case studies will be presented: one in the realm of population health and another in medical economics, both demonstrating the use of either SAS or R to perform the survey analytics.

Description: The SOA has been continuing to highlight the importance of societal purpose across the global actuarial profession, and as a way to attract and retain the next generation of amazing exam candidates and young members. This session will highlight the variety of activities that the SOA and actuaries of all ages are involved in to further drive the profession's societal purpose.

Description: Reference Based Pricing (RBP) efforts have increased in popularity as tools to reduce the cost of care. Now with the ability to use CMS health plan transparency information, organizations can estimate the impact of savings from the use of RBP. This session will share the results of an analysis of this in the form of a case study.