Risk Adjustment-Lessons Learned

Dear IAAHS members,

I am pleased to announce that we will offer a webcast on Risk Adjustment-Lessons Learned to IAAHS members on 30-31 March 2011. The webcast will be of interest to health actuaries in countries that have or will soon be implementing risk adjustment (or risk equalisation) in a mandatory or voluntary health insurance market.  In particular, in addition to the historically wealthier countries of Western Europe which have mandatory health insurance markets (e.g., Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland), this includes countries that have moved or are moving from a centralized economic model to a more market driven model of the financing of healthcare (e.g., China, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Slovakia).  Furthermore, the topic is becoming increasingly important in countries with a large voluntary health insurance market where health reforms have been proposed to reduce incentives for risk-rating and risk-selection (e.g., United States).  The webcast will include a general review of risk adjustment and its uses around the globe, and review of the experience in three countries from recent publication in the November 2010 Health Policy journal of a paper entitled "Risk equalisation in voluntary health insurance markets: A three country comparison", and three additional papers on the experiences with risk equalisation in Australia, Ireland, and South Africa.  Three of the authors, John Armstrong, Heather McLeod and Francesco Paolucci, will be speakers on the webcast. Further information about the papers is available at: http://bit.ly/gWtdwT  The webcast will be offered free of charge to IAAHS members. If you have not yet renewed your membership for 2011, please contact your local actuarial association or join via the IAA website.

Registration: Please go to: www.actuaries.org/IAAHS/Webcast/RiskAdjustment/webcast_registration.cfm

All that you need to follow the webcast is an internet connection (with appropriate firewall access for audio streaming), Windows Media Player, Adobe Flash and the Java plug-in. Prior to the webcast, we will send you an internet link to access the event. The link will allow you to access the audio and slide presentation.

Please also encourage your colleagues who may not be members of the IAAHS to join the webcast. However, non-members would have to pay a registration fee for the webcast. This fee will also give them access to the webcast offered by the IAAHS in 2011 - we plan to have at least one more webcast during the year, which will also be provided free of charge to all IAAHS members. The webcast registration fee is equivalent to the IAAHS annual membership fee (i.e. $50 Canadian).

I hope that you will be able to join this webcast!

Emile Stipp

IAAHS Chairman