Description: We ask whether we can find support for the previously reported upper limit of the force of mortality of 0.7, i.e. about the probability of tossing a fair coin.

Description: Most health care delivered in the United States is based on the acute care model: it is episodic has a beginning, middle and end usually the patient recovers and interventions are designed to target a specific pathophysiologic abnormality. Chronic disease care, in contrast, often has no clear beginning and no end the focus is on managing over the long term with prevention of progression and complications. Further, many chronic diseases “travel together” comorbidities: for example, diabetes, hypertension, coronary artery disease CAD, heart failure, cerebrovascular disease, peripheral arterial disease and renal dysfunction are often found together.

Description: Essay states a competing American ideals for the U.S. Health care system include free markets which foster competition, cost effectiveness and quality health care vs.public and private assistance which provides health care independent of a person’s financial means.

Description: With so many different models and ways of building them, the task of organizing our thinking about models can seem overwhelming. The paper proposes a framework of four categories of models and seven attributes. By comparing each model category across these attributes, it provides insight into practical questions like, "are some modeling approaches inherently better than others?" and "how should the level and type of model risk management effort depend on model category?"

Description: We develop a model based on causal mortality in order to better understand inequalities in life expectancy across socioeconomic circumstances.

Description: This is the abstract for the paper, The Need for Coordinated Care for Depression, and the Need for Creative Innovation by Stephen P. Melek, FSA.

Description: With so many different models and ways of building them, the task of organizing our thinking about models can seem overwhelming. The paper proposes a framework of four categories of models and seven attributes. By comparing each model category across these attributes, it provides insight into practical questions like, "are some modeling approaches inherently better than others?" and "how should the level and type of model risk management effort depend on model category?"

Description: This is the abstract for the paper, The Cost and Benefits of Treating Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus as a Chronic Condition by Robert D. Lieberthal.

Description: Risk management and capital budgeting are two critical components of the corporate decision process. They often need to be considered jointly at the corporate level because of their natural interaction through the dependent risk exposures and other synergetic relationships within an intricate corporate structure in a dynamic business environment. . This paper develops an integrated framework that aligns these two important corporate strategies across business divisions to optimize the streamlined enterprise strategic goal in a multi-period setting. The proposed integrated framework can serve as a practical guideline for corporate executives to optimally coordinate capital budgeting and risk management at the enterprise level.

Description: Reinsurance reduces the required capital of the primary insurer but increases that of the reinsurer. Capital is costly. All capital costs, including that of the insurer and the reinsurer, are ultimately borne by primary policyholders. Reducing the total capital of insurers and reinsurers brings down the total capital cost and the total primary policy premium. A reinsurance arrangement is considered optimal—if it minimizes the total required capital. This optimal reinsurance is an attracting equilibrium under price competition. Evidence suggests an inverse relationship between the total required capital and the correlation between the losses held by different insurers and reinsurers. Examples are constructed to examine this and other properties of the optimal reinsurance.