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: 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: 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: Social Security provides financial protection by annuitizing retirement. This is not enough for many. My idea creates an additional annuity via Social Security.

Description: This study is intended to educate insurance professionals on historical insurer impairments and insolvencies and possible future prevention indicators.

Description: China’s pension system has transformed from traditional retirement system based on command economy to modern pension system based on market economy .