I know that many of my fellow health insurance brokers are just itching for the House vote next week preying for a vote against the health bill by the new Republican House members which of course could lead to a total recission at the Senate, and then finally a crescendo when Obama signs to repeal his own law! I also know that many Christian evangelists are holding out hope that Jesus may return this year and end the earth except for the agnostics and non believers who of course will have to walk the earth which won’t be a fun place without the Christians.
The question is which of these things have a better chance of happening in 2011. Well, I am Jewish so I really hope number 2 doesn’t happen, but on the other hand, number one seems like a bad break for my thriving health insurance brokerage which is doing pretty well these days at the top of Google. But of course the question wasn’t which one would I rather see happen but which one has a better chance, and sadly I am picking number 2 based on the fact that according to many versions of the bible it happened once before. The same can’t be said for a President repealing his own legislation.
In any event there were a couple of great Florida health insurance articles (the link points to my own great site on the topic not the articles which I am about summarize anyways) about the fact that Florida has done absolutely 0 so far in preparing for 2014 regarding setting up a health exchange. Many of my fellow brokers are preying that we don’t become like the extinct travel agent or worse like those people that sell their organs on Craigslist (that’s not a great analogy, but I wanted to reference that great money making idea for my fellow brokers looking for alternative ways to generate money).
The two main threats being that MLR will make it impossible to pay commissions and worse that health exchanges will be the only avenue to buy health insurance, and that the exchanges won’t need agents.
Our state (Florida) has a NAHU meeting yesterday and some top insurance reps warned us to take an active role in setting up the health insurance exchanges in order to be like the great state of Utah which in fact already has a health insurance exchange albeit with awful commissions at 7 percent. Don’t ask me how agents will be involved when someone shops for health insurance in Utah as that seems as ridiculous as WalMart letting me open a mini Walmart in my car where I can sell guns and ammo near an Arizona shopping center.
The four executives on the panel at Thursday’s forum, which was hosted by Tampa Bay Association of Health Underwriters (TBAHU, we are a member of the Miami chapter in fact) included Jonathan Anderson of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida and Sherry Baker of Aetna. Sherry Baker is currently trying to figure out if she can afford to pay my agency higher commissions based on our outrageously high production than most other brokers. So if you read this Sherry, for the love of God, please say yes and I in return will get an Aetna tattoo on my genitals.
The four had remarkably similar views on the health-reform law, mostly positive. It has some flaws, they said, but it will bring coverage to many millions of uninsured Americans, most of them healthy enough to improve the risk-pools. In other words: Lots of new business.
Bottom line, said Anderson from Blue Cross, “4.2 million Floridians don’t have insurance, and we have got to find a way to help them find coverage.”
