In this episode, Dale Hall, FSA, MAAA, CERA, CFA, Managing Director of Research discusses the Living to 100 Monograph topic, Senior Citizen in 2050, with Ronora Stryker, ASA, MAAA, Research Actuary.

The passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010 caused sweeping changes in the dental insurance industry, affecting the construct of dental benefits, the pricing of those benefits, and the availability of dental coverage. Now, as changes to the ACA or elimination of some of its provisions could potentially be enacted in the coming months, the dental benefits industry again must determine how to succeed in this evolving environment. In this podcast we explore the impact of the ACA on dental and the potential ramifications of any changes to the dental related components of the law.

This podcasts discusses the following:

The Society of Actuaries Committee on Post Retirement Needs and Risks and Financial Finesse are pleased to make available the first of five briefs focused on retirement literacy issues. This first brief in the series explores retirement from a holistic perspective looking at non-financial issues. Subsequent briefs will address a number of financial issues such as the cost of retirement and managing risk. The brief was developed by a team lead by Greg Ward of Financial Finesse.

There are roughly 46 million Americans are living with serious illness and functional impairment, and that number will soon swell, given demographic trends.  Palliative care is an added layer of support that relieves the pain, symptoms and stresses of serious illness, appropriate at any age and any stage of illness, ideally concurrent with treatment. Multiple studies demonstrate that the resulting improvements in quality of life translate directly into reductions in avoidable ED and hospital utilization.  SOA sat down with Dr. Diane Meier, founder and director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) to learn more about what palliative care is, who benefits, and what health plans and population health managers can do to improve care for those facing serious illness.

Learn about the potential impacts of selling health insurance across state lines as it relates to the individual and small group markets.

Senior SOA Research staff discuss the upcoming SOA Annual Meeting, highlighting meeting sessions and their favorite things to do in Boston.

This podcast discusses the recent release of historical U.S. population mortality rates by gender and single year of age for calendar years 2000-2015. To develop these rates, the SOA relied upon data furnished by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Social Security Administration. A document summarizing key observations and the process used to develop the rates, along with a table of the rates themselves, can be found here.

The Medicare Advantage market is currently in the middle of a multi-year transition from the existing Risk Adjustment Processing System (RAPS) to the new Encounter Data System (EDS) for calculating risk scores. CMS has stated that ultimately EDS will be the sole diagnosis data source for Medicare Advantage organizations’ risk scores and revenue. Dave Dillon, FSA, MAAA, interviews Deana Bell, FSA, MAAA, on the topic and they discuss how the transition has shown to have a financial impact on Medicare Advantage revenue and how actuaries are well equipped to help.

During this podcast, Dave Dillon interviews Andrew Sykes about his non-traditional path to actuarial work and helping actuaries to develop the skills to influence other people to take specific actions based on their work.

In this episode the winning Financial Wellness essays in the Individual Strategies category are discussed.