GH-Specialty Fall 2022

Who is studying for this one, and how is everyone doing? I’ve been through all the source material and created 557 flash cards I’m working on memorizing - but it’s been slow going.

yeah - i am working on this one

I worked through a bunch of material yesterday and found my cards were very lacking, I now have a total of 661. I struggle with the “minimum information principle” for these exams - so often what we need to know really is a long detailed list, and I’m not always great at figuring out how to break it down into more manageable chunks.

I’m working on this too. 661 notecards is insane, but I’m on my fourth attempt so don’t take my advice :slight_smile:

4th attempt here as well :upside_down_face:. Getting real tired of this material

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Second attempt for me. I keep making more and more cards because I need to break everything down into tiny chunks - if that’s all I do I’m not going to be in good shape for the exam, hopefully in the next few weeks I’ll start to put it all back together in my head. The worst thing is when I know all the information but can’t figure out what they are asking.

This is definitely one of my struggles with this exam. I know all the lists, but I’m always afraid I’m putting down the wrong list. Luckily you can just brain dump on the exam and put down all the lists!

Hello everyone,
have you seen this on the SOA website:
"
2023 EXAM CHANGE NOTICE:

The Group and Health Specialty Exam will be offered for the last time in fall 2022. Beginning with the spring 2023 exam administration, the new Risk Mitigation (RM) Exam replaces the Specialty Exam in the Group and Health Track."

The RM Exam will be a 3 hours exam in place of the 2 hours exam.

I’m a bit disappointed, especially given it’s the first time I heard about this change.

We knew it was changing, but that name does not sound promising. Hope I can pass before I have to take RM.

Maybe they’ll get rid of the article on what some consultants thought would happen with COVID in May 2020 at least.

Good luck today everyone! I’m sure by this point we all know this, but just a reminder that we aren’t supposed to talk about the exam until tomorrow. At least, not specifics. Comments like “that sucked where’s the bourbon” are probably OK.

Oh, and they are dropping that Covid reading from the next sitting because they’re dropping the entire ERM topic. They’re adding Employee Benefit Strategy and Provider Reimbursement, which all of us have already been tested on in Core/DP.

delightful

Third attempt for me today

How do you all feel? I thought this was the most fair sitting in several years - there weren’t any questions that were so vague I couldn’t figure out what they were asking. I don’t necessarily think I passed, it just didn’t feel like the complete train wreck I was expecting.

I answered the ASOP 47 question with the list from the wrong section - got the qualitiative parts, but the second part I listed the considerations for risk limits/tolerances/etc. facepalm

I’d lucked out and read the one HealthWatch article they asked about the morning of the exam, so I nailed that one. But I hadn’t read the palliative care article in a while and didn’t remember what they asked about it. You win some you lose some I guess.

fourth attempt for me. Left the exam feeling pretty good, but I guess we’ll see. As always, I hope everyone else did awful so that my answers will seem better :slight_smile:

A few problems I may have done worse than average

ASOP 47. I wasn’t sure whether they wanted the long almost non-sensical list or the one that was more of a paragraph.

Something on Medicare risk scores that seemed to be mostly answerable by looking at the risk score calculation problem? Was that most of what there was to it or were there several other adjustments somewhere that I didn’t learn/memorize

I noticed something about a 3% operational risks adjustment to that H_0 formula only after the exam. Did other people include that? I don’t think it showed up in any of the recent first exams.

Good topics:

Palliative, LTC were topics I had reviewed day before. ACA risk adjustment always seemed pretty easy, hopefully I didn’t guess list wrong and/or forget things. I probably nailed the long calculation problem, though fumbled around with the sumifs in Excel longer than I should have (don’t know why an exam for actuaries in Excel doesn’t allow pivot tables).

I’m one of the few who actually did work in objective 1 so pretty much anything in that topic seems easy once prepared. Of course Medicare/Medicaid/risk adjustment people may have an advantage on me in those topics.

I believe this was added to the RBC formula in Spring 2022 when they changed the chapter from the Group Insurance textbook from 39 to 41. You just multiply the entire formula by 1.03 to add on an operational risk charge.

So I’m the only one anxiously awaiting Friday? Got it.

I’m enjoying this time of not knowing. On Friday I have to either grind out modules, start studying again, or make the big decision to quit - not looking forward to any of those.

I am beyond frustrated that if we failed we have to take a much longer exam next time - including two entire topics we’ve already been tested on and passed. Am I the only one? Or are you all holding your ire until you find out whether it matters for you or not?

If I failed (for the 4th time) I’m not sure that I can continue. It’s a hard decision because I have finished everything but the FAC (including DMAC), but I don’t know that I can take this test again.