Month: October 2021

Insurers Continue To Flirt With Electronic Health Records

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.thewealthadvisor.com/article/insurers-continue-flirt-electronic-health-records

Excerpt:

The use of electronic health records in insurance underwriting has long held terrific potential to boost the industry. Progress has been slow to date, but that is about to change.

By late-2022, EHR will be standard at 50% of the top 20 carriers, said Nicholas Irwin, director of life underwriting at Verisk.

“I think once we get to that 50% hit rate threshold and same-day turnaround time, I’d be very surprised it didn’t become a standard at that point,” Irwin said Tuesday during the Society of Insurance Research annual conference.

The acquisition of a medical record, a crucial part of life underwriting risk-assessment, largely remains largely an inefficient paper process. The availability of healthcare information as a data stream is a critical advantage for insurers using rules-based decision engines for accelerated underwriting.

Author(s): John Hilton, InsuranceNewsNet

Publication Date: 24 Oct 2021

Publication Site: The Wealth Advisor

“Ending Jim Crow Life Insurance Rates”: A Professionalism Case Study Webcast

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.soa.org/prof-dev/webcasts/2021-ending-jim-crow/

Description:

This session will introduce a late 19th century article by actuary FL Hoffman. This article provided a justification for racially discriminatory life insurance premiums – a practice that existed well into the 20th century and was consistent with “Jim Crow” thinking. Join the presenters as they discuss the reasons that Hoffman’s article was actuarially unsound using commentaries at the time it was written as well as recent publications that include important reflections on the actuarial profession that apply both historically and in the present. The session will discuss thoughts about how Hoffman’s work would be received and handled today, including the role of the ABCD in such matters, several rules and regulations that now guide actuarial conduct and are designed to prevent discriminatory practices, and actuarial ethical responsibilities. The session will conclude with an observation that one of the best ways for the actuarial profession to prevent the use of racially discriminatory practices in our work is by having a diverse actuarial profession with members who will provide first-hand perspectives about inappropriate actuarial practices.

Author(s):

Jay M. Jaffe, FSA, MAAA

Reinsurance Administration, Ltd.

Webcast Date (to come): 10 November 2021

Publication Site: SOA

The Billionaire Tax: The Worst Tax Idea Ever?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-billionaire-tax-worst-tax-idea-ever.html

Graphic:

Excerpt:

The pushback from progressives is that this graph misses key components, including other taxes collected by the government (payroll taxes, Medicare taxes, estate taxes etc.), and that it is the tax rate that is paid, not dollar taxes, that better measures fairness. In 2018, for instance, the federal effective tax rates paid by different income groups were as follows: [above]

Author(s): Aswath Damodaran

Publication Date: 25 Oct 2021

Publication Site: Musings on Markets

Who Had Covid-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Cases?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/28/us/covid-breakthrough-cases.html

Graphics:

Excerpt:

Compared with the unvaccinated, fully vaccinated people overall had a much lower chance of testing positive for the virus or dying from it, even through the summer’s Delta surge and the relaxation of pandemic restrictions in many parts of the country. But the data indicates that immunity against infection may be slowly waning for vaccinated people, even as the vaccines continue to be strongly protective against severe illness and death.

“The No. 1 take-home message is that these vaccines are still working,” said Dr. David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “If you saw these data for any disease other than Covid, what everyone’s eyes would be drawn to is the difference between the unvaccinated and fully vaccinated lines.”

The data shows notable differences in breakthrough death rates by age and slight differences in both case and death rates by vaccine brand, trends that experts say are important to consider as tens of millions of Americans weigh whether to get a booster shot.

Author(s): Aliza Aufrichtig, Amy Schoenfeld Walker

Publication Date: 28 Oct 2021

Publication Site: NYT

Ohio Teachers Pension Faces Special Audit Over Scathing Report

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.ai-cio.com/news/ohio-teachers-pension-faces-special-audit-over-scathing-report/

Excerpt:

The $95 billion Ohio State Teachers Retirement System (STRS) is facing a special state audit over a report that accuses the pension fund of secretly collaborating with Wall Street firms, lacking transparency, and wasting billions of dollars.

In June, Benchmark Financial Services released preliminary findings of a forensic investigation of Ohio STRS titled “The High Cost of Secrecy.” The report ripped into the retirement system, saying it “has long abandoned transparency, choosing instead to collaborate with Wall Street firms to eviscerate Ohio public records laws and avoid accountability.”

The Ohio Auditor of State’s Office recently sent a letter to Ohio STRS Executive Director William Neville saying it has received “numerous complaints” regarding the report and that it had conducted a preliminary examination into the matter.

Author(s): Michael Katz

Publication Date: 25 Oct 2021

Publication Site: ai-CIO

Jerry Theodorou on Natural Disasters and Insurance

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.c-span.org/video/?514314-3/washington-journal-jerry-theodorou-discusses-natural-disasters-insurance

Excerpt: [transcript from closed captioning]

Jerry Theodorou
IT IS HARD TO CALCULATE. THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY WAS FACED WITH MASSIVE FLOOD LOSSES BUT FOUND THAT IT DID NOT HAVE THE DATA TO PRICE IT ACCURATELY. IT STARTED REDUCING AND EXCLUDING FLOOD FROM STANDARD INSURANCE POLICIES AND THE GOVERNMENT STEPPED IN TO CREATE THE PROGRAM. TO PROVIDE SOME LEVEL OF FLOOD INSURANCE. THERE IS AN INHERENT TENSION IN THE PROGRAM BECAUSE IT HAS TWO GOALS IN CONTENTION WITH EACH OTHER. THE GOAL TO PROVIDE AFFORDABLE FLOOD INSURANCE AND SOME DEGREE OF FISCAL SOUNDNESS. THEY ARE PAYING ABOUT $400 BILLION IN INTEREST, WHICH IS A BURDEN, SO IF WE FOCUS STRICTLY ON AFFORDABILITY, YOU WILL HAVE UNDERPRICED INSURANCE, NOT PRICED ACCORDING TO THE ACTUAL VOLUME. THIS IS WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW WITH LARGELY IMPACT — OVERPRICED INSURANCE. FOCUSING ON FISCAL SOUNDNESS, YOU WILL HAVE THOSE EXPOSED. IT IS A LITTLE BIT OF A BALANCE. DO YOU WANT FISCAL SOUNDNESS? PROBABLY A LITTLE BIT OF BOTH, WHICH IS MY NEXT MONTH, OCTOBER 1, THE NEW BEATING WILL BE INTRODUCED TO MAKE IT MAKE THE PRICING AND THE COST OF FLOOD INSURANCE MORE APPROPRIATE FOR THE LEVEL OF RISK. IT IS EITHER OR. IF YOU LIVE IN A FLOOD ZONE, YOU PAY HIGHER PREMIUMS. IT IS NOT BLACK-AND-WHITE BECAUSE THERE IS A SPECTRUM FOR THE DEGREE OF RISK. IT WILL INTRODUCE MORE VARIABLES SO THAT IT IS MORE APPROPRIATELY CORRELATED WITH THE LEVEL OF RISK.

Author(s): Jerry Theodorou, John McArdle

Publication Date: 5 Sept 2021

Publication Site: C-SPAN, Washington Journal

High Inflation Creates Tax Winners and Losers. What Are You?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.wsj.com/articles/high-inflation-creates-tax-winners-and-losers-what-are-you-11634981401

Excerpt:

As inflation trends near a 13-year high, middle-income workers will benefit from automatic annual adjustments to tax provisions such as the standard deduction for income taxes. Some other provisions are frozen in time, stuck to specific dollar amounts from decades ago. Those provisions tend to pinch higher-income households.

For example, the standard deduction for married couples is likely to rise to $25,900 from $25,100, according to Wolters Kluwer NV, which provides tax services to accountants and others. As nominal wages and prices rise, that adjustment will shield more money from taxation and block inflation — currently above 5% on an unadjusted annual rate — from causing a sharp tax increase.

Some home sellers, however, will be squeezed because married couples can exclude up to $500,000 in gains from capital-gains taxes. That figure hasn’t changed since a 1997 law, while the median home sale price has more than doubled since then.

Author(s):Richard Rubin

Publication Date:23 Oct 2021

Publication Site:WSJ

Revisiting the Beveridge Curve: Why Has It Shifted so Dramatically?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/economic_brief/2021/eb_21-36

Graphic:

Excerpt:

The Beveridge curve is one of the most robust regularities in economics, as it holds in different time periods, across countries2 and at the aggregate and disaggregated (or sectoral) level. When shown in a graph, it plots the job-vacancy rate (on the x-axis) against the unemployment rate (on the y-axis). The curve generally slopes downward, indicating that vacancies tend to be higher when the unemployment rate is lower, and vice versa.

Figure 1 shows the Beveridge curve for the monthly data collected in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) from December 2000 until August 2021 (the most recent data point). Each dot represents a combination of the unemployment rate and the job opening rate.3 The sample is divided into four distinct periods, which correspond to the period up to the financial crisis, the ensuing recession and recovery up until 2017, and the period between January 2018 and March 2020, during which the unemployment rate was persistently below 4.5 percent. The fourth period — April 2020 through August 2021 — captures the COVID-19 months.

Author(s): Thomas A. Lubik

Publication Date: October 2021

Publication Site: Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond

How Jefferson and Franklin Helped End Smallpox in America

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.governing.com/context/how-jefferson-and-franklin-helped-end-smallpox-in-america.html

Excerpt:

In the new world, inoculation had a very rough reception. When John Dalgleish and Archibald Campbell began inoculating individuals in Norfolk, Virginia, an angry mob burned down Campbell’s house. Similar incidents occurred in Salem and Marblehead, Mass. In Charleston, S.C., an inoculation control law of 1738 imposed a fine of £500 on anyone providing or receiving inoculation within two miles of the city. A similar law was passed in New York City in 1747. 

The measures in New England were so draconian that Benjamin Waterhouse noted the paradox: “New England, the most democratical region on the face of the earth voluntarily submitted to more restrictions and abridgements of liberty, to secure themselves against that terrific scourge, than any absolute monarch could have enforced.” (This, strangely prescient, anticipates the current debate about liberty versus public health). It was in the middle colonies — Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey — that inoculation was most tolerated in the second half of the 18th century. That’s why Jefferson made the long journey to Philadelphia to be inoculated in 1766. 

Jefferson first became aware of the discovery of a true smallpox vaccine from the newspapers he read in Philadelphia and the new capitol in Washington, D.C. Then, on Dec. 1, 1800, just after Jefferson’s election to the presidency, Benjamin Waterhouse sent him his pamphlet on the vaccine with a lovely cover letter saying that he regarded Jefferson as “one of our most distinguished patriots and philosophers.” Jefferson responded immediately, thanking Waterhouse for the publication and declaring, with his usual grace, that “every friend of humanity must look with pleasure on this discovery, by which one evil the [more] is withdrawn from the condition of man: and contemplating the possibility that future improvements & discoveries, may still more & more lessen the catalogue of evils. in this line of proceeding you deserve well of your [country?] and I pray you to accept my portion of the tribute due you.” 

Author(s): Clay Jenkinson, Editor-at-Large

Publication Date: 29 April 2020

Publication Site: Governing

SFA Application: Through the Forest and Into the Weeds

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://burypensions.wordpress.com/2021/10/25/sfa-application-through-the-forest-and-into-the-weeds/

Excerpt:

The Road Carriers Local 707 Pension Fund , which was the first plan to seek bailout money under the PBGC Special Financial Assistance (SFA) program for troubled multiemployer plans, has their 425-page application uploaded on the SFA website.

…..

412-425) SFA calculations which is a fairly simple spreadsheet calculating the present value of the liabilities of all current participants (pages 419-420) and coming up with one amount ($706,400,534) to cover all their liabilities through 2051. New entrants presumably will be covered by new negotiated contributions and, after 30 years though if any of the current participants survive until 2051 they will presumably need another bailout.

The problem PBGC has with this filing appears to be that an interest rate of 5.32% was used for valuing liabilities which happens to be 2% plus the first HATFA Segment Rate when it is the third PPA Segment Rate to which the 2% should have been added. Per the IRS website (scroll down a little to Funding Table 3), that rate would likely have been the April, 2021 rate of 3.52% which would have made 5.52% the rate to be used for valuing liabilities (thus lowering the liability value as the higher the interest rate the lower the value). The tricky part is that the PPA third Segment Rate has been going down and is now 3.34% as of October, 2021.

Author(s): John Bury

Publication Date: 25 Oct 2021

Publication Site: burypensions

Retirement Debt Eating Up State Funding to Louisiana Schools

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.bizneworleans.com/retirement-debt-eating-up-state-funding-to-louisiana-schools/

Excerpt:

Nearly $1 of every $4 in state aid sent annually to Louisiana’s public schools disappears before it reaches classrooms, siphoned away to pay retirement obligations that cost $853 million a year, according to a new report from the legislative auditor.

The retirement debt payment amounts to $1,302 per student and swallows an average of 10% in the total funding available for schools from state, local and other sources, according to the 44-page review from Legislative Auditor Mike Waguespack’s office.

The Advocate reports the audit said the Louisiana Legislature might want to consider revamping how the retirement debt for former teachers is handled in a way “that could be less burdensome for participating schools.”

State aid for public schools totaled $3.9 billion for the 2019-20 budget year reviewed by auditors. The teacher debt obligation grabbed 24% of that allocation, the report says. A total of 1,355 traditional and charter schools take part in the retirement system.

Author(s): Associated Press

Publication Date: 24 Oct 2021

Publication Site: Biz New Orleans

What Pension Funds’ Riskier Strategies Mean for Future Retirees

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/google-news-update/what-pension-funds-riskier-strategies-mean-for-future-retirees/439e4dbc-86f1-4431-8ada-14345feb42fd

Excerpt:

Heather Gillers : So alternative investments are typically not assets that can be traded on the public market like stocks and bonds, where you know the price, you can buy them and sell them any time. They’re fairly liquid, very liquid. Alternative assets. On the other hand, are private market assets, they’re typically illiquid. So examples would be like private equity where you’re investing in private companies, not in publicly traded stocks, or infrastructure like roads and bridges, or real estate, apartment buildings, hedge funds was a long time popular alternative asset that’s lost some of its favor with public pensions. Private credit is one that’s gaining steam. That’s private loans to companies. Not bonds that are traded on the public markets, but private loans.

J.R. Whalen : So from an investment perspective, how are these alternatives different from traditional things like stocks and bonds?

Heather Gillers : So stocks and bonds are traded on public markets. You can pretty much always find a buyer. You can always find out how much it costs. And most importantly, like you can pretty much cash out any time. Whereas an alternative investment, you’re probably planning to hold it for 5 or 10 years at the minimum. And if you do have to sell it in an emergency, you could end up getting a lot less than you hoped.

Author(s): Heather Gillers, J.R. Whalen

Publication Date: 20 Oct 2021

Publication Site: WSJ podcasts