Description: Discussion regarding who's to blame for cost increase, Government's role to ensure coverage and keep costs down, steps to control costs, plan design changes. Issue No. 47.

Description: The Health Section Council Chairperson looks back at a historic year for the health care industry, and what it means for health actuaries.

Description: Article about the future roles in health insurance.

Description: Delinquency rates are closely related to the economic conditions and can be analyzed using measures of economic growth and stability. In an attempt to predict the delinquency rate for the health care equipment financial industry, we investigated the relationship between delinquency rate and key macroeconomic variables for the period from 1998 to 2008. The study reveals that the tightening credit standards and unemployment rate are the key macroeconomic indicators influencing the delinquency rate. The analysis further helps in arriving at a trigger to monitor the delinquency rate based on the macroeconomic indicators, thus enabling proactive portfolio management. Presented at 2010 Enterprise Risk Management Symposium, Society of Actuaries, April 12-15, 2010.

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: Discussion of direct primary care and how it helps with several challenges in health care today. DPC improves care coordination, improves outcomes, improves doctor and patient satisfaction, and reduces spending. DPC successes promote the view that primary care should not be covered by insurance; rather, it should be paid for directly.

Description: An economics professor and a health care consumer advocate weigh in on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, including implementation issues, directions for the future and what role actuaries shoudl take.

Description: Overview on current trends in medical practice impacting the LTC insurance business with a focus on dementia, risk stratification, and predictive modeling.

Description: This analysis provides an overview of the functional components of the managed care system. It discusses the market forces underlying the United States’ system for health care financing and delivery and suggests how market forces impact the health care industry. The analysis focuses on societal goals for health care delivery and on managed care’s effectiveness in enabling achievement of those goals. The analysis develops and uses an innovative model developed to summarize the complex interplay among the many stakeholders, or participants, in the health care system. The model provides a framework for analysis of the many relationships among stakeholders. The analysis also highlights current issues in managed care, particularly the barriers that impede collaboration among stakeholders.

Description: Responds to questions received during the webcast with regards to modeling long term medical trends for valuation purposes. Questions cover testing the model against publicly traded companies, the calculation of growth rate in the model, the income multiplier as the population ages, model relevance to Canada, factoring in of extra disease burdens, exclusion of aging in the model, and the effect of the globalization of health care.