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: Updates on the efforts of the Academy’s health practice council. its work groups and task forces, to educate and influence health care policymakers on issues including principles for health care reform, Medicare, wellness programs, and solvency.

Description: The paper addresses the issue of cost-sharing reductions under the Affordable Care Act.

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: Drivers for mortality are apparently linked to socio-economic differentials within different societal groups. Actuaries are not the only profession interested in unravelling the mystery of why different groups within society experience such different mortality rates. The author gives examples from occupational pension plans in Canada, the UK and Germany.

Description: Part I of a four-part series on insurance product regulations around the world. Provides a good high-level summary of the regulations as of 2002.

Description: This article discusses the details of being classified as cognitively impaired, particularly the relationship between being classified as cognitively impaired and subsequent mortality experience and the effect of cognitive impairment on mortality rates.

Description: contribution indices: analysis of the funding progress made by contributions to the multiemployer pension plan system

Description: Report of findings for Society of Actuaries research project on the financial reporting for insurance contracts under possible future international accounting standards. This project studies the modeling of Certain Life and Health Insurance and Annuity Products Offered by U.S. and Other Insurers for the Purpose of Measurement of Liabilities under the International Accounting Standards Board’s Exposure Draft on Insurance Contracts and U.S. GAAP

Description: E-book contains 16 topical essays that express the opinions and thoughts of a number of authors on the subject of Investment Fallacies.