That's right. There was a meeting about this some months ago, and one of the reasons was due to the negative PR UA was getting from complaints. They also appear to be shifting their focus to life products more than health. The commissions for life with Liberty National are just sickening. Not only do you get the advance and the residuals, you also get large production bonuses. The incentives are pretty huge, but I can't attest to their quality. The LN Cancer plan appears to be pretty good - I'm told it pays all radiology past a certain point, and in my area, it costs about $11 per month for someone under 30. They like to combine that with the UA Cash Cancer policy for a greater benefit because the up front cash benefit on LN is low. LN doesn't have a Crit Ill though to my knowledge, so I don't know how impressive the product selection is to many people here.
I wondered if it was because the UA name was not holding as much high esteem as before, and a shift from more health to more life business, by torchmark. I know that traditionally, wall st. likes torchmark.
You know if they would alter their "lead program" if you wanna call it that, they might not be a churn and burn factory, but hey that is how all the managers make the money.
I mean you call names off of a list tell them that you have a free "accident" policy you would like to give them. Then while in the house you try to sell them a real insurance policy.
There is an office park about 10 miles from my house that has a local "Lib Nat" and "UA" offices in the office park and both of these offices are right next door to each other lol.
They intend to fully change everything to Liberty National, including the name on the office window, from what I understand. UA also just released a new UAPartners. With it, you can call the number on the partners card, tell them you want to meet with a chiropractor, a dentist, whatever. UAPartners contacts the physician and sets the appointment for you. They apparently added an additional network offering bigger discounts and more features as well.
I always thought the discount card aspect of torchmark- was kind of cheesey, slightly. Will UApartners change to LibNat partners? This whole thing is strange. However, I think torchmark has a chance to position themselves as a solid life captive shop for the newby, with AIG doing what they are doing. Some new philosophies and new management styles- would have to happen.
Yeah, I wouldn't really know. I think the UAPartners is a pretty decent deal at, what, $11 a pop? Discounts, mail-order service, scheduling appts with providers, determining the cost BEFORE the appt, and the customer knowing the costs up front before going is pretty decent if you ask me. I don't know of any other discount program that does it, but whatever. Scripts may not be that much cheaper, but they were telling agents the mail-order prices would be much lower because they were going with a different discount provider network.
I still think you can do better just by getting a free drug discount card from a website like freedrugcard.com or yourrxcard.com. My wife has a monthly prescription. We used one of these (don't remember which one) after paying over $50 for her rx and ended up paying $26 for the rx the following month. It worked for us, so I figure it's worth it being that it's free. We're not spending a buttload of money on prescription coverage under a comprehensive plan, and we can afford what we're paying on the prescription she takes.
UAPartners is just a broader service because it discounts chiropractic, dental, hearing, vision, and scripts. The new plan just adds the feature of scheduling your appt ahead of time and telling you how much it will cost before you go. Let's hear it for medical cost transparency! That's something I'll pay for anyday considering you can't usually get it otherwise.
