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The Analysis of a Sickness Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2016

Alfred W. Watson
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Extract

The vitality displayed by the English Friendly Societies in face of the competition of the compulsory system of National Health Insurance is such as to justify the allocation to the societies of a reasonable part of the time which the Institute devotes to the study of problems of professional interest; and their claim for a share of our attention is strengthened by the fact that the day of the unqualified “valuer” has nearly passed, and that the work of advising the societies on the actuarial aspects of their relatively complex undertakings is now almost everywhere entrusted to Fellows of the Institute or of the Faculty.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Institute of Actuaries , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , 1931 , pp. 12 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © Institute and Faculty of Actuaries 1931

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References

Page 15 note * Approved Societies' Handbook, edition of 1925 (published by H.M. Stationery Office), pp. 84–5.

Page 17 note * National Health Insurance. Report by the Government Actuary on an Examination of the Sickness and Disablement Experience of a Group of Approved Societies in the period 1921–27. (Cmd. 3548. Published by H.M. Stationery Office.)

Page 20 note * This form of tables was, so far as I am aware, first used by the late R. P. Hardy who employed it for many years to exhibit the characteristics, in geographical districts, of the sickness experience of the Hearts of Oak Benefit Society. I myself used it to some extent in analysing the Manchester Unity Experience, 1893–97, see Tables XV and XVI, p. 65, of the Report thereon.

Page 25 note * It is not to be inferred that the health of the population was declining over this long period. The true interpretation is that claims grew as it came to be generally realized that insurance and not benevolence was the basis of sickness benefit. This was an evolutionary process, fostered by the increase of contributions, and accumulation of substantial funds, resulting from the gradual acceptance of actuarial principles.

Page 27 note * When compiling the Manchester Unity Experience, 1893–97, I found it necessary to obtain these dates for the purpose of distributing the claims with reference to duration. The work involved was laborious, both for those who supplied the data and for those who analysed it, and while the labour was justified—and was indeed unavoidable—in that particular case where the purpose in view was the construction of a valuation standard intended to endure for a generation or longer I should not, save in special cases, advise the Actuary to trouble himself as to the dates of the beginning and ending of sickness, notwithstanding the fact that the records of the societies must contain them.

page 29 note * The figures in Tables 8 and 9 would be somewhat larger if cases returning to disablement benefit could be added. Data on this point are not, however, available.