Have SC BCBS Commissions Been Paid to You?

[aikenhealth]

I have a question - I have a large book of business I "partnered" with a BCBS Broker here in SC - as I was not appointed with BCBS for the 2016 enrollment we made a business agreement - with a written contract - that upon successful placement of any of my clients on the ACA BCBS policy I would be paid a flat fee per "referral" once BCBS paid the Broker the first commission check due from BCBS to them. My book of former ASSURANT clients were placed - all with begin dates of Jan 1 or Feb 1 - 70 placed applications. i understood that payment would not be to them in Jan but later - Feb or maybe March 01. Now I being told that BCBS in SC only paid Jan placement now and will not pay Feb placement until April and they want to split my commission into 12 months and I feel the BS coming. A different Broker in SC told me yesterday he has been paid 100% for the 189 polices he placed - and they are jerking me around - my question is this - how many SC agents out there have already been paid by BCBS for your ACA Jan and Feb effective clients? Do I understand that the commissions have already been paid?

 

[somarco]

So you are not technically the writing agent? Is this other broker who claims to be paid also working under a similar arrangement?

 

[aikenhealth]

I have a large book of business from other companies = not BCBS - and my clients trust me to lead them to what they need so in essence I was a "solid" lead provider to a writing BCBS Broker - he is appointed

 

[somarco]

If you are not the writing agent you are probably screwed. Who are you going to complain to? BX? They won't help you.

You ducked the question about the other broker that says he has been paid. If he is working under the same arrangement with the BX broker you might have an argument, but if he is appointed with BX as a writing agent it really doesn't help.

 

[aikenhealth]

I am simply asking if other Brokers have been already paid - that's all - if he is lying to me then I know his character - he directly enrolled them thru his HealthSherpa portal - did you write BCBS SC business? Have you been paid by BCBS for all your enrollments?

 

[pbbaseball]

I am simply asking if other Brokers have been already paid - that's all - if he is lying to me then I know his character - he directly enrolled them thru his HealthSherpa portal - did you write BCBS SC business? Have you been paid by BCBS for all your enrollments?

I won't say that they ve paid all of them, since every aca carrier seems to have issues, but they have paid most so far it appears. They do pay a month behind. January effectives get paid in february, etc... hope that helps

 

[aikenhealth]

Thank you - I was told they paid Jan in March and Feb in April - thought it did not sound correct

 

[pbbaseball]

Thank you - I was told they paid Jan in March and Feb in April - thought it did not sound correct

If the customer pays the premium late occasionally you will see two months payments on the following statement.

 

[aikenhealth]

95% of all my clients are Non-subsidized clients - I doubt there were many / any payment problems but thank you and I will be back in touch

 

[Post Quartermaster]

I won't say that they ve paid all of them, since every aca carrier seems to have issues, but they have paid most so far it appears. They do pay a month behind. January effectives get paid in february, etc... hope that helps

^^^this, plus, just to clarify, BCBS-SC pays "as earned on premium". No advances.

Another issue is that many brokers didn't get paid or had issues in January because BCBS-SC contracting didn't get carrier specific BCBS ACA certifications updated in the system prior to OEP for many agents. The certification meetings were in middle/late October, as I recall, which caused some issues. BCBS commissions internally track to agent # rather than NPN, so if an FFM app came in with an NPN tied to an agent ID that didn't have the certification updated, no broker info was attached initially. They were fixing this issue manually for awhile, I believe it was eventually fixed with a script.