Description: This article contains a condensed summary and excerpts from a recent white paper regarding the Individual Mandate.

Description: Summary of House of Representatives Tri-Committee Bill – H.R. 3200.

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: Mental health spending has reached $147 billion in the United States with demand only increasing greatly impacting society as nearly 1 in 5 experience these issues. There are even more indirect costs associated with mental health causing a national crisis surpassing 1 percent of the GDP. These costs coupled with the severe lack of licensed clinicians calls for an innovative solution. Through years of development and completion of a randomized controlled trial, Prevail has built and validated a low-cost, scalable solution. Prevail's clinically proven digital mental health treatment provides increased access to care while reducing overall health costs. Private and public payors should being reimbursing this model and offering it to their members.

Description: Letters to the editor of In The Public Interest discussing social insurance articles from the previous issue.

Description: This essay, submitted for the Society of Actuaries' Entrepreneurial Actuaries Section 2010 Papers Competition, proposes an entrepreneurial solution to address the continued, unsustainable increases in health care costs. Under the author’s plan, entrepreneurs will “develop systems providing clear financial motivation for consumers to make decisions that minimize health care spending and maximize positive health outcomes. In so doing, health care providers must necessarily compete to offer the highest quality services at the lowest cost. By relying on the financial self-interest of consumers and free-market competition among health care providers, effective and sustainable systems to bend the health care cost curve can be achieved.”

Description: Feature article discussing actuaries’ view of the perfect health care reform package with an emphasis on funding/financing. Part 4 of a 4-part series.

Description: Savings from biosimilars have accelerated significantly in the past few years. There has been a number of relatively recent biosimilar launches that can help to shape our expectations of the financial impact that could result from this year’s big event. Savings from biosimilars have accelerated significantly in the past few years. There has been a number of relatively recent biosimilar launches that can help to shape our expectations of the financial impact that could result from this year’s big event.

Description: Shannon Brownlee shares her perspectives on the current health care crisis, including: inconsistent treatment patterns across providers and geographic regions, providers lacking evidence-based guidelines, the need for better independent clinical research to establish those guidelines, and the limits to consumerism's potential to fix the crisis.