United Healthcare

[michellea]

What do you mean by "selling." Do you mean continuing to sell secure horizons but through an FMO rather than as an ICA or going to a new carrier?

Winter

I am currently direct captive with the company. I can ONLY sell either the Sec. Horizons or AARP Med. Comp. plan or the AARP supp plans. Which locally here in Mobile, Alabama is fine with me, there is only one other main competitor. The problem is now that I am branching out to be an ind. agent I want to offer my clients whatever is best for them. I want more then UHC medicare products to sale. Also in the panhandle of Florida there are plans that are better then what I am able to sell.

So I was wanting to not be direct captive anymore and just have my contract through an FMO that way I could sign up with other carriers as well.

My fiance is also direct captive with UHC so we were thinking I would go ahead and end my contract with them. If they put a 6 month hold on me it would not hurt me because if I need to write that product my fiance will handle them. Once I am able to write with them again through a FMO he could then end his captive contract.

 

[ABC]

UH was very competitive in the group business. I put a good size block of business with them and held it there for about 3 years. At first they were great. Great field office with excellent broker support.
I first realized they were going to have some problems when I had groups that had large loss ratios and they were giving small rate increases.
Then they bought Pacifica which was a huge acquisitions. Pacifica owner other regional companies like American Medical Securities and so on. So now you have this huge company where every division is on a different system.
Customer services went down the drain. I am out in the field selling there products and they could not even give me correct plan designs.
The vice president of UH for my state was in my office and flat out told me they dont care about small group. All they wanted was 1000+ groups but they could not even generate quotes for those groups.

Its a shame the company has gone down because they have all the tools to be a number one carrier. Right now they are the most profitable Health Insurance company in the country go figure that one!

 

[xrac]

.....Right now they are the most profitable Health Insurance company in the country go figure that one!

After reading the proceeding this questions comes to mind. Is the profitability related in anyway to the ways they try to stiff agents on commission.

 

[patch36]

Well, with respect to the complete, total and absolute IDIOTS I worked with for medicare stuff, I'm not surprised. They would be better suited for a different line of work!

I went through all their training and was an ICA for their Medicare stuff this last season. They are total Idiots at the Regional and Corporate Management level.

Other than having plans that were not competitive and had no network, they were ok I guess. There is a reason they decided to call their Networks "POS" instead of PPO.

Their total sales pitch was to push their affiliation with AARP and that would make up for the difference in lack of Network and Poor Plans. Real Genius.

They laid off most of the teams in the 3 metro markets I am familiar with.

 

[moonlightandmargaritas]

Is the profitability related in anyway to the ways they try to stiff agents on commission.

Probably, even if they just delay to ride the float.

 

[somarco]

Frankly, I don't know why any carrier would want to be in small group. I'm glad they are, but the only small groups they get (from me at least) are uninsurables.

Picked up 2 last month.

 

[Winter_123]

Probably, even if they just delay to ride the float.

That would make sense when viewed from a business perspective. However, I think the answer is simply that they are out of control. They are not really a company anyway, they are basically a holding company with a collection of divisions and each division has another grab bag of companies that have been acquired. They try to compensate for this by centralizing everything and having a core group of back office staff who are prepared to say "I don't know" or give you a wrong answer to a wide range of questions, to save you from having to shop around.

In regard to their being the number one company etc, that makes more sense to me than it would years ago. We have recently seen a large number of highly successful corporations in a variety of fields that fly very high before they crash and have to pay the piper for all of their papered-over sins. To see one more would not surprise me.

Winter