Consumers Lose when Agents/brokers Lose Commissions

Truth be told, if it were up to me our entire agency would stop selling IFP completely. Why flush cash down the drain, when at any point the carriers can drop commissions to 0. As far as servicing your book? Tell em they can pay $500 year, paid up front via money order for consulting or call 800 gov and talk to Elmer Fudd or Shanikqua with a mouth full of manure. Add in the continual NPN thievery from hcgov and the carriers and WBE's.....screw it.
 
This really is little different than when the airlines stopped paying travel agents. People must buy tickets if they want to fly just as they are (illegally) mandated to buy insurance.

Even if profitable, why would insurance companies want to pay us to sell something people are required to buy?

I stopped soliciting IFP and group insurance when Obastard was elected in 2008. He promised change and I believed him.

I can temporarily sell Medicare plans until that too is swallowed by a true single payer system.

Rick
 
As I've said, I'll do IFP as long as I break even. They generate a huge lead flow and community branding that has helped my agency grow unbelievably, but I'll not take a loss. If it even gets close to breaking even then my services might be limited to "enrollment" and that is it, all other service issues, payments, document submissions, etc will be on them or have a fee for my staff's time.
 
I foresee the lack of agent involvement increasing losses to all carriers.

Clients will not supply documentation, miss payments and loose the APTC then opt to just drop coverage altogether. Not that this has ever happened:no:

But hey, what do I know...I'm just an agent.
 
As I've said, I'll do IFP as long as I break even. They generate a huge lead flow and community branding that has helped my agency grow unbelievably, but I'll not take a loss. If it even gets close to breaking even then my services might be limited to "enrollment" and that is it, all other service issues, payments, document submissions, etc will be on them or have a fee for my staff's time.

All the other service issues have been especially terrible this year due to their inability to have a system for a new enrollment cancelling out other 2016 "auto-generated" renewals and having to manually terminate previous years plans. Now I'm fielding a bunch of calls from people who have already made payment, but are now receiving random "remember to pay!" e-mails from Healthcare.gov and bills from providers that went out before we paid.

What a mess, I feel like this is "Grounhog Day" where I do the same things over & over again . . . .:no:
 
Agents are loss leaders for insurance companies (at least the good ones) because we steer clients into plans that provide them with the best coverage for their situation, where they get the best value for their premium. This means the insurance company will pay more, on the average, in claims per dollar of premium for an agent based policy than a consumer driven policy.

This works two ways, (1) the healthy client who gets a high level plan by themselves and never uses it so it's 100% profit for the carrier and (2) an unhealthy client who is advised to get the high level plan because it will lower their Max OOP when they would have done a Bronze plan that covers far less in benefits.

Add that to even minimal agent compensation and it's evident why we aren't wanted.

I'm done with this market after 2016, it's a waste of my time-I will keep my Off Exchange business but the rest of you can deal with the Marketplace crapola.
 
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