Description: This report has been written to provide a primer on the measurement known as R0 (pronounced “R-naught”), which is commonly used in epidemiology. The R0 metric has received extensive press coverage since the outbreak due to its importance in the measurement of the spread of COVID-19.

Description: This study estimates the number of COVID-19 confirmed cases and reported deaths by hospital referral regions (HRR) using Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 data by U.S. county and the Dartmouth Atlas Project division of counties into HRRs.

Description: Inflation and the possibility of recession are major factors affecting health care cost increases over the next five years. Insurance and medical organization will continue to evolve but are unlikely to create major shifts in the short run. However, over the long run structural changes in providers and payment mechanisms will determine future trends – raising or lowering the health share of GDP depending upon public choices and private decisions.

Description: Patients with chronic conditions such as musculoskeletal pain, diabetes, and hypertension impact 50% of the US healthcare population, consume more than 85% of healthcare costs, and often require a higher volume of care, expensive imaging, testing, and emergency procedures, and long-term high-cost drugs. Managing these conditions through innovative digital health interventions provides a significant opportunity for higher-touch and more-effective management that will result in lower costs.

Description: This will be the most fun you'll ever have learning about applying health status based risk adjustment methodologies in the real world! Quantifying relative differences in the use of finite healthcare resources – due to differences in health status – isn't just fun, it's the very heart and soul of ASOP 45! Get ready for a rollercoaster of statistics, probability, and a few puns that might just make you laugh harder than a data outlier!

Description: America’s healthcare results are lackluster and worsening despite enormous effort and investment over many decades. Spending, affordability, health, coverage, access, quality, and healthcare workforce results are suboptimal or poor. Too many are suffering, and the system is financially unsustainable. We need a new approach, a new way of thinking about healthcare financing and delivery.

Description: If you are a pricing actuary, you have probably been there. A new blockbuster drug has been introduced and the manufacturer is claiming that the value of the drug will offset the higher cost of the drug. But how do you know? In this session, presenters will discuss techniques for measuring the impact of a prescription drug on the total cost of care, including the benefits and limitations of each method.

Description: This presentation seeks to educate SOA attendees on how Medicare provides care for HIV-positive members. HIV is a disease that has occupied a prominent place in the public's view since its initial discovery. Initially a terminal condition for the afflicted population, advances in anti-retroviral pharmaceutical therapies transformed HIV into a chronic condition in the 1990s.

Description: This presentation will explore innovative approaches to high performance networks (HPN). The session will compare the more traditional narrow network solutions offered by national carriers vs. different models established by newer vendors that focus on a different value proposition and/or does not involve narrowing the network at all.

Description: The Medicare Advantage (MA) program is facing challenges in the coming years due to a number of headwinds: Star rating program changes, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), revenue pressures, mergers/acquisitions, and risk score model changes, just to name a few.