Health Equity and the Pricing of Insurance Premiums
The American Academy of Actuaries Health Practice Council created the Health Equity Work Group with a goal of contributing to efforts to reduce health disparities and improve health equity among groups that have been economically/socially marginalized. The work group is examining actuarial practices and methods in the health area to assess the extent to which they may affect health disparities and recommend changes when appropriate, educate actuaries and other stakeholders on health equity issues, and apply an equity lens to the Academy’s health policy work. Health Equity from an Actuarial Perspective: Questions to Explore introduced the first phase of the work group’s work—an identification of areas in which health actuaries are involved that may affect health equity and development of a list of questions and topics to explore further. Health Equity from an Actuarial Perspective: A Deeper Dive Into Health Plan Pricing Questions is part of a follow-up series and focuses on questions related to pricing health insurance products. Future briefs will focus on questions related to health insurance benefit design, provider contracting and network development, and population health.