And Now, a Word from the American Academy of Actuaries
InsNerds,
A quick one today since you’ve probably all already leafed through the November/December edition of Contingencies, the Academy’s answer to Maxim.
At first, I was a bit offended by this rather flip commentary:
“Why Bother With Going-Concern Pension Plan Valuations? ”
But when you think about: it’s true: Why bother?
Plus I liked the yarn about principles-based reserves up North
“PBR: The Canadian Experience.“
And, I appreciated the opportunity to buy the Irwin Vanderhoof collection:
“Through an Actuarial Looking Glass.” It is indeed a “ Treasury of Vanderhoof,” for only $16.
But the magazine isn’t bad, in fact. Check out this paragraph on medical malpractice insurance:
The current system is incredibly inefficient. For purposes of
this article, inefficient means that the insurance mechanism
doesn’t deliver a large enough portion of the insurance carriers’
expenditures to the injured patient. As Figure 1 shows,
medical malpractice insurance currently delivers less than
40 cents per dollar of insurance company expenditures to
injured patients. This is a much lower percentage than the
60 cents per dollar delivered to injured workers by workers’
compensation insurance or the almost 80 cents delivered to
group health insurance claimants.
You know it’s bad when “almost” 80 cents per dollar going to pay claims looks good. We are talking about “more than” 20 percent of trillions, for what?
And find:
“Having to Say You’re Sorry: A More Efficient Medical Malpractice Insurance Model”
Robert J. Walling and Shawna S. Ackerman
Thanks to Cool Texan.
–