Health

The Health Practice Council submitted a letter to the U.S. House Committee on the Budget regarding its May 22 hearing, "Key Design Components and Considerations for Establishing a Single-Payer Health Care System."

The Health Practice Council submitted a comment letter to the Actuarial Standards Board on the fourth exposure draft of a proposed new actuarial standard of practice for modeling.

The Academy updated its Essential Elements reports on Medicare’s Long-Term Sustainability Challenge and Securing Social Security with information from the newly released 2019 Medicare and Social Security trustees reports. The Essential Elements series is designed to make actuarial analyses of public policy issues clearer to general audiences.

The Individual and Small Group Markets Committee sent comments in response to the Department of Health and Human Services’ request for information on selling insurance across state lines through Health Care Choice Compacts.

The Medicare Subcommittee has released a new issue brief, Medicare’s Financial Condition: Beyond Actuarial Balance. The brief highlights the findings of the annual report to Congress by the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance (HI) and Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) trust funds on Medicare’s financial condition.

The Medicare Subcommittee sent a comment letter to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General on a proposed rule on safe harbor protection for rebates involving prescription pharmaceuticals and the creation of new safe harbor protections.

The Premium Review Work Group sent comments on the recently released final Unified Rate Review Template (URRT) and Instructions.

Proposals to expand access to public health insurance plans are being put forward as a way to supplement efforts to strengthen insurance markets under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or to replace the ACA marketplaces and/or other health insurance programs altogether. Goals of these proposals vary and include increasing access to affordable coverage, exerting downward pressure on provider prices, increasing plan availability, and reducing the number of uninsured. This issue paper from the American Academy of Actuaries Health Practice Council briefly outlines four approaches aiming to achieve such goals and highlights the key design elements that would need to be specified for an approach to be fully evaluated and implemented. Read the news release.

The Medicaid and Long-Term Care Insurance Work Group published an issue brief exploring the potential for catastrophic long-term care costs as a major financial risk especially facing older Americans and to help clarify the options currently available for dealing with it.

The Individual and Small Group Markets Committee and the Risk Sharing Subcommittee submitted comments on the proposed rule for the 2020 notice of benefit and payment parameters (NBPP).

The LTC Practice Note Work Group published an exposure draft of a practice note to provide a source of information to practicing long-term care (LTC) actuaries seeking to better understand the considerations in evaluating experience, setting assumptions, valuation, and financial reporting.

The Medicaid Subcommittee submitted comments to CMS regarding a proposed rule that would make changes to the Medicaid and CHIP managed care programs.

The Individual and Small Group Markets Committee submitted comments on the October guidance from the Department of the Treasury and the Department of Health and Human Services on State Relief and Empowerment Waivers under Section 1332 of the Affordable Care Act, focusing on three areas: evaluation of coverage comprehensiveness and affordability, evaluation of coverage, and waiver funding.

The Health Practice Council submitted a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in response to its request for comments on proposed rules pertaining to the Medicare Advantage (MA) program, including provisions to revise the risk adjustment data validation (RADV) payment error calculation methodology and process.

The Health Practice Employee Benefits Committee and Individual and Small Group Market Committee submitted comments on the proposed rule regarding Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs), that would create two new types of HRAs—Integrated HRAs and Excepted Benefit HRAs—which would allow employers to provide HRAs that could be used to pay for individual plan premiums and out-of-pocket health costs.