VALUE PENGUIN Info and Feedback

[AllenChicago]

VelaPoint - Personal Insurance Professional independent agency is who they are using

Thanks for checking this out, YAgents. I suppose Mr. Value Penguin needs to earn more from his hard work than what website advertisers pay. VP is pretty business-savvy. He may be a part-owner of Vela Point agency. Lots of people are cashing in on the lucrative ObamaCare machine....eventually.

 

[FLM2]

I've deleted Value Penguin from my bookmarks, the premium and subsidy calculations are incorrect and they are obviously using this forum to help them get another agency going while grabbing as much information as possible from agents on this forum.

 

[AllenChicago]

I've deleted Value Penguin from my bookmarks, the premium and subsidy calculations are incorrect and they are obviously using this forum to help them get another agency going while grabbing as much information as possible from agents on this forum.

In Chicagoland the ValuePenguin premiums are from 2% to 6% lower than what the carrier website says. The subsidy $$$ amounts line up with the Kaiser calculator well. It's not a perfect comparison quote site, but it's simple to use for really quick estimates. Far more useful than that premium estimater at healthcare.gov.

Sorry that the VP site is so out-of-line there in your state, FLM2.
ac

 

[Post Quartermaster]

I just ran my county and everything looked Kosher.

Does the phone # show up on the embed if we use it on our site?


Nevermind, I did a test embed, and see that clients get slung to the VP site when clicking for more details. Pull that feature out, & I would gladly pay a subscription fee to use, as the #'s look good in my area.

 

[RayNY]

I appreciate the work you put into this. I spot checked rates in NY and found a few inaccuracies.

Argument sake, Oscar Platinum Edge in Suffolk county, you say $556.84, hioscar.com says $544. All of the Oscar rates are different than the Oscar Site (but then again, the Oscar rates from the "official" rate grid are different, and there are different rates in the official "premium estimator", and different rates shown within the portal on the NY exchange).

Emblem Select care Gold is $539.45 on your site, $550.24 on Emblem's site with pediatric dental, $538.34 without pediatric dental. BTW I just found out that it looks like they can strip that cost out if you have stand-alone pediatric dental. No one else had indicated this yet in anything I've seen. They also have "Contraceptive-Free" plans for those that want to opt-out of contraceptive coverage (same price, however).

Empire BCBS is a few dollars off from the numbers I have.

Health Republic Looked accurate, or within a few cents at least.

Any chance you could let me know which reference you used to obtain the rates? I can tell it's not from the carriers, the "approved rate grid" or the exchange.

 

[Ann H]

VelaPoint - Personal Insurance Professional independent agency is who they are using

VelaPoint is the call center that HPA (Health Partners America) is using, too. HPA's deal is basically that the referrer gets 25% of the commission for just referring and letting the call center handle it.

 

[pcbinsurance]

Doesn't Word & Brown also offer a referral "commission" too? I think they emailed me about a similar program they have.

 

[AllenChicago]

A new website for comparing plans was just rolled out this week:

Link: http://www.TheHealthSherpa.com/

Not as accurate as Value Penguin, due to a lack of age bands, but more convenient and accurate than the HealthCare.gov plan/premium estimator.

Health Sherpa news article: S.F. programmers build alternative to HealthCare.gov - CBS News

.

 

[bluediamond]

Lost a prospect last week because of value penquin quote, they brought it into office and said this is the plan we want and could not believe is was only $586 per month (can't remember what plan now) but anyway I ran the new quote to go into the app and it was $900 and some change for exact same plan. It is possible they may have put wrong info in, don't know, they were pissed and left. Had a couple mid 50's in an under 65 seminar that brought some vp quotes into it, but could not run quote's to match.

 

[AllenChicago]

Lost a prospect last week because of value penquin quote, they brought it into office and said this is the plan we want and could not believe is was only $586 per month (can't remember what plan now) but anyway I ran the new quote to go into the app and it was $900 and some change for exact same plan. It is possible they may have put wrong info in, don't know, they were pissed and left. Had a couple mid 50's in an under 65 seminar that brought some vp quotes into it, but could not run quote's to match.

A long thick disclaimer ribbon graces the bottom the the ValuePenguin website now. The only accurate sites for non-subsidized premium prices now are the carrier's websites. For subsidized prices, no quote may be accurate (yet), because the Federal Government is getting it wrong at the source.
ac