Bye Bye Humana, Bye Bye...

[FLM2]

Linkage to Federally Facilitated Marketplace (FFM) temporarily being disabled
In order to provide consumers the best possible experience, as of November 22, 2013, Humana will be temporarily disabling direct linkage to the FFM from Humana’s agent tools. Please note that KY and CO state exchanges are still functional for submitting 2014 plans.
This will affect you if you are sending an AOA (Agent Online Application) link for consumers to apply for a plan with a January 1, 2014 effective date. When the applicant clicks on that link, they will now be directed to a page which will inform them to contact you so that you can provide them with a quote and calculate their APTC (subsidy) eligibility. The consumer will still be able to link to the healthcare.gov site to begin their eligibility application and enroll if they wish. Please remember to provide them your National Producer Number (NPN) and full name to be entered into the application.

Let me be the first to say, eff you Humana, thanks for the screwing...

 

[HealthGuy]

FLM2 why so serious? whats the big deal, who cares about Humana....whats under your craw brother?

 

[FLM2]

Why do believe you know how I feel about this or anything else.

My position is that agents are getting screwed in a variety of ways, by the Exchange mechanism-there is every reason to believe that they won't get paid for applications from their clients and this announcement by Humana is just another brick in that wall.

No one has been hurt more by healthcare reform than the agent community or haven't you noticed? If you aren't somewhat irritated by this then you don't write enough business to notice half of your commission check missing each time you write a policy.

I don't write exchange plans but was planning on doing a few of them for clients who are friends-after this announcement I will just tell them to do it themselves.

My question to you is 'why don't you care about this?'-Humana is one of the larger insurance companies, how long is it before all of them offering plans on the exchange do the exact same thing/

 

[Josh]

No one has been hurt more by healthcare reform than the agent community or haven't you noticed?

The Americans stuck with an overpriced healthcare system are the real victims. Kathleen Sebelius had a report sitting on her desk outlining the increased cost for everyone as a result of this bill for almost a week before the vote. She didn't want to impact the vote so she didn't share the info.

The cost of this debacle is going to be on the shoulders of financially successful individuals over the next several years, possibly indefinitely.

Yes, this healthcare reform has potentially put some agents out of business and reduced the earnings of many, but they can find a new job. If you really want to put a point on it, anyone paying for a plan that isn't eligible for a subsidy are the ones really getting hurt and there is no way around paying for the increased cost as a result of the government "helping". Health agents can find new work to avoid the mess, people paying for health insurance can't avoid the impact on this.

My tax dollars go to subsidizing overpriced health insurance and there is not a damn thing I can do about it. About half of Americans don't even pay income tax, but I have the privilege, no, the honor, of helping them pay for health insurance that is even more expensive because of "healthcare reform".

 

[FLM2]

The Americans stuck with an overpriced healthcare system are the real victims. Kathleen Sebelius had a report sitting on her desk outlining the increased cost for everyone as a result of this bill for almost a week before the vote. She didn't want to impact the vote so she didn't share the info.

The cost of this debacle is going to be on the shoulders of financially successful individuals over the next several years, possibly indefinitely.

Yes, this healthcare reform has potentially put some agents out of business and reduced the earnings of many, but they can find a new job. If you really want to put a point on it, anyone paying for a plan that isn't eligible for a subsidy are the ones really getting hurt and there is no way around paying for the increased cost as a result of the government "helping". Health agents can find new work to avoid the mess, people paying for health insurance can't avoid the impact on this.

My tax dollars go to subsidizing overpriced health insurance and there is not a damn thing I can do about it. About half of Americans don't even pay income tax, but I have the privilege, no, the honor, of helping them pay for health insurance that is even more expensive because of "healthcare reform".

I hear what you are saying but I've lost, by my calculations, over $250,000 in income since March, 2010. I'm not complaining, it was my choice to stay in the health insurance business and it's been fine, but how can the lost earnings of health insurance agents, who were used by the insurance companies to meet the MLR requirements without doing anything else to control costs, be topped by anyone else at this point in time?

 

[Josh]

I hear what you are saying but I've lost, by my calculations, over $250,000 in income since March, 2010. I'm not complaining, it was my choice to stay in the health insurance business and it's been fine, but how can the lost earnings of health insurance agents, who were used by the insurance companies to meet the MLR requirements without doing anything else to control costs, be topped by anyone else at this point in time?

I'm going to mostly ignore your calculation there, but it's the same argument I hear from MA agents. "I have to roll my book when a carrier changes there benefits and it's all that extra work for no extra money". Yes it is, it's your renewal money. If for some reason the carriers did not pay you what they agreed to, that's a problem and I can identify with that more, but simply because carriers reduce commissions on business already on the books I'm less sympathetic. If most people stop working at their job they stop getting paid, renewals are a way to keep getting paid on work you did. Yes, there is service work, yes there is more to it than just sitting back counting money, but all you agents know full well one of the reasons you like the business is the residual payments with either no or little extra work.

I can't even do the math on what the overall impact on this healthcare bill is going to cost me. The government didn't actually address the real issues surrounding the cost of healthcare and in fact they made many of them worse. Any group with 500 or more employees usually saves a pile of money by going self-funded. The government is putting MILLIONS of people on fully insured plans; it's complete insanity. If there was a "government health plan" that was literally the government health insurance plan (like Original Medicare) and they self-funded I'd be surprised if it did anything short of cutting health insurance premiums in half. I even like the way it's structured with an initial deductible and a coinsurance. Hell, just take that, add an OOP, use the existing Medicare network and call it a day. Government can let people enroll in that for whatever the given rates are for the age and boom, it's done. Have an annual enrollment and it's off to the races.

Maybe health agents did get their lives disrupted by this much more than most, that's entirely possible, but society as a whole got hurt pretty bad on this.

 

[FLM2]

Ignore all of the calculations you like, but when I wrote a $500 a month policy in 2009 my compensation was about $1500 in first year commissions. Since then it's been about $720.

If you don't think that is a big hit to a self employed, commission only independent agent then I'd like some of the stuff you are smoking-the rest of the stuff hasn't started to affect anyone yet and won't until January, 2014.

My comment was simply that health insurance agents like myself have been hurt more by ACA than anyone else at this point in time, that is an undeniable fact.

As for your 'tax dollars' I pay the same taxes so we are in exactly the same place relative to that-are you paying half of your income in taxes that go directly to pay for healthcare?

 

[HealthGuy]

Flm me thinks losing 250 k on this badboy is stretching it? And I ask you questions cuz u post intelligent chit bro

 

[FLM2]

Flm me thinks losing 250 k on this badboy is stretching it? And I ask you questions cuz u post intelligent chit bro

You are kidding, right?

Commissions are half of what they were in 2010, on average, before the act was passed.

Marketing expenses haven't been cut in half, neither has anything else.

An agent who made $100K in commissions in 2009, if he wrote the same business in 2010, made about $50K. $50K x 3.5 years is $185K in lost commissions.

It's pretty simple math.

It's probably more than $250K for me, I am just being conservative and not counting the reductions in renewal income when commissions went from 6-7% to 4-5%.

 

[Yagents]

It's a temporary thing with Humana, as these articles state, a fix is in the works.

The control of info by the gov't is unprecedented. A large majority have no idea there is an off exchange market. The impression is that everyone must get in line for HC.gov

New way around troubled Obamacare site may be days away | Tampa Bay Times

CMS sees progress with direct plan enrollment - Brett Norman - POLITICO.com