Description: Beginning with the 2019 Benefit Year, CMS (the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) has provided guidance that allows Medicare Advantage Plan Sponsors much greater flexibility in tailoring benefits to promote clinical, care management, and financial goals. The guidance allows for a broader menu of supplemental benefits and also enables plans to target benefit enhancements to beneficiaries afflicted with specific disease states. This session explores the ramifications of the policy changes on Plan Sponsors and beneficiaries, and discusses the different ways that Plan Sponsors are taking advantage of the additional flexibility.

Description: MHPAEA prohibits health plans from imposing financial requirements or treatment limitations on behavioral health benefits that are more restrictive than those applied to medical and surgical benefits. MHPAEA's regulations define treatment limitations to include nonquantitative treatment limitations (NQTLs), which are benefit design features that are not numerical, but otherwise limit the scope or duration of benefits.

Description: HIV is still a big public health concern, but there are therapies available to prevent infection before and immediately after exposure. As legislatures and the USPSTF considers adding these therapies to the list of preventive care covered without cost share, actuaries will need to estimate the impact on their care cost. The presenters will share an actuarial tool kit to estimate the impact of covering PrEP and PEP for different populations. Examples are provided and discussion is welcome.

Description: Dental care is an important component of everyone's health, and senior citizens are no exception. With no public dental coverage under traditional Medicare, seniors must seek other ways to obtain dental insurance, pay for services out of pocket, or go without care. In this session we will review the importance of oral care to overall health, the current state of public and private dental insurance for seniors, and innovative ways to reach this population. Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and other types of dental coverage will be discussed by three actuaries with different areas of expertise in the senior dental market.

Description: This session will review the challenges the Affordable Care Act has faced since its enactment in 2010 and will look forward to where it’s headed in the future. Panelists will discuss current ACA legislative and regulatory activities as well as ongoing ACA litigation.

Description: Statement of the American Council of Life Insurers on Pandemic Influenza Preparedness in the Financial Services Sector before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Financial Services Committee of the United States Congress, June 29, 2006

Description: "The always popular Medicaid Hot Topics session is back with discussions from an expert panelist on the most riveting Medicaid topics of the year. These could include the following: • ACA court battles - what are the potential impacts on Medicaid? • CMS continues to open the door for state flexibility - just what can states now do differently?• Where are we on Medicaid work requirements? • How will the changes to the mega-rule impact Medicaid?• High cost drugs and how states are sharing risk for them (carve-out, risk pools, risk sharing)• And more current topics of interest to Medicaid actuaries!Medicaid is dynamic and it is difficult to stay up to date on all of the changes. This session provides insightful discussion into the major changes that impact actuaries and their companies or state clients"

Description: On December 21, 2018, the Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the final rule for Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) in the Medicare Shared Savings Program. 'Pathways to Success' makes sweeping changes and will push ACOs to assume financial risk more quickly. This session will discuss the key changes in the final rule, reasons why providers would remain in the program while being forced to downside risk, and how actuaries can add value to providers who will be taking on millions of dollars of risk in the coming years.

Description: The presenters will cover the variation in risk adjustment approaches used across state Medicaid programs and compare them to other Federal programs. Additionally, recent developments, such as the use of OCR to extract data from medical charts for risk adjustment, will be discussed.