Description: The article gives actuaries an introduction to Academy Health, the notable health policy research organization.

Description: Summary of results of a 2010 Health Section survey of actuaries and Medicare population, on ways to bend the cost trend curve downward. Issues included transparency, quality measures, fraud and abuse, provider payment, malpractice, medical errors, consumer education, and the pros and cons of employer-sponsored coverage.

Description: This article is based on a third party administrator study and explores the relationships between family structure, spare capacity and health care utilization.

Description: This article discusses new opportunities for states to waive certain marketplace requirements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The article focuses on specific opportunities for states and the role that actuaries will play.

Description: This study was sponsored by the Society of Actuaries Health Section. This paper explores the relative significance of aging as a determinant of financial cost of health care beyond age 50, with particular attention to the effect for ages 65 and older. The paper presents concepts of aging factors and aging curves, which define relative values between ages for utilization or cost of health care services. General conclusions are drawn from Medicare data that utilization and cost differ by age, but that aging factors vary across services and may be less significant at very old ages. The author then turns to the question of measuring the significance of an aging curve assumption and what accuracy is lost in the simpler alternative of a single value across an age range.

Description: Interviews with several actuaries who are subject matter experts in the health field to get their perspectives on implementing the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Description: Developing a formal strategy to guide the SOA’s activities with respect to public policy-related topics is underway. Recent experience shows that non-partisan contributions through the SOA’s research are already adding value to important public policy discussions.

Description: Updates on the efforts of the Academy’s health practice council. its work groups and task forces, to educate health care policymakers on issues including principles for reform, Medicare, the individual insurance market, and risk factors.

Description: This article contains a condensed summary and excerpt from the fourth white paper in the Commercial Health Care: What’s Next? series.

Description: This research report examines the potential implications of the risk mitigation programs – risk adjustment, reinsurance, and risk corridors – established under The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.