Stable Rates

[LostDollar]

My philosophy always has been to look for carriers with at least 5 years in the Medigap market under the same name. Almost impossible to find that now outside of BX, UHC and Humana.

That leads me to another question.

There are multiple medigap plans. suppose you were looking for a particular catgory of medigap plan - say plan Z. You find a carrier that meets your five year criteria and also has a low price for plan Z. However, for every other plan that carrier offers in your state, they have what you consider to be an unreasonably high premium. How do you factor the carrier's pricing practice with other plans into the decision surrounding plan Z?

 

[somarco]

GA is dominated by entry age carriers, a few community rated and more recently, some attained age carriers.

In most situations the attained age carriers should blow away the entry age carriers but that isn't happening.

The three most popular plans in order are F, G and N. HDF is a distant 4th with all the remaining plans in a cluster at the bottom.

F traditionally has the highest rate increases followed by G which usually comes in about 200 basis points lower on renewal. By contrast N plans are coming in 300 - 500 basis points less than G. In some cases the N plans are getting no increase while F & G are taking hits.

This trend won't last forever but take advantage while you can. I still believe N will have some of the lowest rate increases for the near future.

HDF should have lower rate increases but that really isn't happening. The premium is so low that many carriers don't offer the plan. Those that do will raise rates every couple of years but when they do it is often by double digits.

First and foremost in my view is long term stability. I would suggest a carrier that has been in the market 20+ years even if less than 5 yrs in Georgia over one that just got in the Medicare market nationally a couple of years ago.

Parentage means nothing to me. I don't care if the carrier is owned by a big name, A rated carrier or not. The client is buying from the subsidiary, not the parent.

Carriers are buying shell companies or companies that have never been in the Medicare business and trotting them out with low rates. I am not impressed with this strategy either but I also cannot ignore it.

Without naming names, I would recommend a carrier that has been in Georgia a couple of years, but has been in other states for 20 years over a carrier that couldn't spell Medicare a year ago but is owned by a carrier with a big name and relatively little Medicare experience.

Some carriers will target sweet spot plans, like G, and have very competitive G rates while their F and N rates suck.

I won't recommend carriers that do that.

Right now G is the hot plan that all carriers want to write, but if it looks like they are gaming the system to write G at the expense of significantly higher F & N rates I try to steer folks away from them.

 

[Heck13]

Thanks everybody for the input.

 

[LostDollar]

@somarco, thanks for the time you took in composing that reply.