Description: Presented at October 2001 Annual Meeting. Panelists provide insight into the factors driving the cost increase of prescription drugs and how these factors are being addressed. Strategies include drug utilization review, manufacturer contracting, benefit design, formularies, pharmaceutical pricing, therapeutic substitution, physical education, and introduction of new pharmaceuticals. Also discussed are pharmacoeconomic benefit considerations when studying integrated medical and pharmacy expenses.

Description: Presented at May 2005 Spring Meeting. Discusses 'state of the art' of international mergers and acquisitions in Asia, Latin America and other fast-growing regions.

Description: We apply decision theory to develop a credibility formula that minimizes a loss function that is a linear combination of a squared-error term and a second-derivative term. The squared-error term measures the accuracy of the estimator, while the second-derivative term constrains the estimator to be close to linear.

Description: Panel dicussion on the need for information to keep a block of long-term care insurance profitable: what the business risks are, what is being done to mitigate them, what kind of reports are needed, and how these differ from reporting on other types of health insurance.

Description: Discusses cost-benefit decision-making for acquiring electronic data-processing equipment and installation issues, ability of small companies to compete in pension trust arena, effectiveness of various agency compensation programs in stimulating sales and improving persistency, success of sales to substandard risks and rating methods, and pricing, reinsurance and experience with individual hospital and medical policies.

Description: This discussion examines the relationship of Operations Research to the actuarial profession, the extent traditional actuarial work can be regarded as Operations Research, types of life insurance company problems lending themselves to Operations Research study, and the relationship of electronic data processing field to Operations Research.

Description: This session is about meeting the needs for financial information in managing an insurance company. Topics include: 1. What are management's basic needs how are they met can financial systems continue to meet the challenge? 2. Are fundamental changes ahead for GAAP reporting? 3. Is it time for mutual companies to provide more meaningful financial information? 4. Can current regulatory reporting meet the needs of the 21st century? 5. Can separate statutory and GAAP systems continue to coexist? 6. Will the United States regulatory environment reduce our global competitiveness? 7. Variance analysis - Why your predictions were wrong - Which variances are acts of God? - Which variances should be blamed on somebody? - How to deal with interest rate fluctuations 8. Market valuation, why? - What questions are being addressed with market valuation

Description: Presented at October 1985 Annual Meeting. This session discussion is about trends in utilization review 'UR', preadmission certification, concurrent review, discharge planning, retrospective review, considerations in the design or purchase of UR services, normative data and monitoring UR, recent experience of UR programs and future expectations.

Description: Panel discussion about ways can insurance carriers and health care coalitions work together, what data are coalitions requesting from health carriers, how health carriers respond to those requests, and implications for health carriers.

Description: Noted author and speaker talks about risk and the nature of risk, drawing from his extensive knowledge and experience in economics and finance. From the 2002 Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 28, No. 3. Session 1GS of the Boston Annual Meeting.