If people with serious health problems could get affordable, subsidized guaranteed-issue individual health coverage — without qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) — what might that do to disability insurance claims?
If newly insured people pour into doctors’ offices, diagnostic clinics and hospitals, and make it hard for people with plain old group coverage to get timely appointments, what might that do to disability claims?
My brain is too small to figure that out. I’m not an actuary or futurologist. Just a reporter on deadline.
But, anyhow: Gen Re, the company that acquired the organizer of the wonderful old JHA disability insurance conference series, has sent out the flier for the company’s 2013 group benefits conference (which will cover the group life market along with the disability market).
The conference (which, I have now been told by Gen Re staffers is, sorry, folks, invitation-only) is set to take place in March, in Naples, Fla. The workshop list itself is full of food for strategic thought.
Winthrop Cashdollar and Steve Clayburn will talk about whether SSDI will survive.
Petar Peric of Gen Re’s unit in Australia will talk about whether automated underwriting can work.
And Brian Dunham will talk about what PPACA might mean for disability insurance claims by talking about what the Massachusetts health system changes that took effect in 2006 have done to the Bay State short-term disability (STD) market.