Did You Enjoy Being a Health Insurance Broker?

[somarco]

I started moving away from U65 health to Medicare 4 yrs ago and got completely out of U65 in Dec 2014.

Not as in touch with the Obamacare market as others, but I believe CMS is putting the squeeze on WBE's which could have a huge negative impact on Stride.

 

[cadylou]

I started moving away from U65 health to Medicare 4 yrs ago and got completely out of U65 in Dec 2014. Not as in touch with the Obamacare market as others, but I believe CMS is putting the squeeze on WBE's which could have a huge negative impact on Stride.

I believe that the government really wants everyone to have to purchase through the federal and state exchanges on a self serve basis. The only reason agents and web brokers were utilized was to get enrollments up while they tried to fix their own systems. My opinion . . .

 

[somarco]

DC always wanted to bypass the agent. All the news conferences, media reports, etc said go to hc.gov. No one ever said go direct or by way of an agent.

I talked to long time clients towards the end of 2013 and many of them said they did not know I could still help them. The thought the only way was thru hc.gov.

Once carriers figured out the good agents would game the system to put the sickest people in the richest plans the carriers didn't want us either.

 

[FLM2]

DC always wanted to bypass the agent. All the news conferences, media reports, etc said go to hc.gov. No one ever said go direct or by way of an agent.

I talked to long time clients towards the end of 2013 and many of them said they did not know I could still help them. The thought the only way was thru hc.gov.

Once carriers figured out the good agents would game the system to put the sickest people in the richest plans the carriers didn't want us either.

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I don't consider putting my clients in the plan that is the best fit for their medical needs 'gaming', I consider it good advice.

The insurance companies, across the board, seriously mispriced the Gold and Platinum plans, the rates should have been much higher as they were, relative to the higher deductible plans, in the pre-ACA days. I can't remember a single time where I put a client on a low deductible ($500 or $1000) plan before 2014, now so many of them want these plans because of their needs it's made them loss leaders.

A big part of the problem, unfortunately, is that one of the best concepts of ACA plans (one MOOP that includes Rx) probably accounts for much of the losses suffered by insurance companies-I have clients who max out their plans with one fill of a high priced med like Humira where the drug manufacturer is paying for the med but the retail cost gets applied to the deductible, from that point forward the insurance company is paying for all of it.

Additionally, the whole 'actuarial value' structure needs to be reconsidered, there is an enormous difference in Gold plans with $0 deductible (allegedly 80% actuarial value) with Silver plans with $4K deductibles that are supposed to be 70% AV.