AHIP Outbound Calls - Does This Prohibit Medigap Prospecting?

[The Rabbi]

If you can't follow the rules then you shouldn't sell them.

I learned in kindergarten that rules are made to be broken. No one is perfect and where is Big Brother anyway? I know, he's busy not being accountable for the $100 plus billion in fraud and waste by CMS.

 

[insurance0707]

Isn't that the truth....while CMS is monitoing agents to make sure they aren't surving meals instead of light refreshments, or making sure that were taping phone calls to prove that a referall called us instead of us actually calling a referall, 60 billion dollars is escaping their attention from fraudulent medicare claims. While I understand there are some bad agents out there, I think they need to use there resources a little better

 

[retread]

I wonder how much CMS spends on the contractors that they hire to be mystery shoppers. It looks like they are using private companies that hire the mystery shoppers to do the shopping. They should just do it themselves and skip the middleman. It's got to be expensive when you consider their doing it in every state. It looks like this is one of the companies they use. Look at the Medicare Advantage info in the upper left hand of this link

TrendSource - Time Sensitive Business Intelligence

Interesting. Looks like they want 40-70 yr olds. When I got "shopped" at a seminar back in '09, the SS was a college kid trying to work his way through school. He reported that posting my web site address on a table in the back of the room as "unapproved marketing material". He also claimed I used "scare tactics" because I discussed a news report published that very day during an informal chat after my presentation. I pointed out that return evelopes are not labeled with the CMS stamp of approval as a precedent of simple literature exemptions and my web site URL was ALL that was on a 4x5 card on the table with my business cards and some coffee and cookies. This was a "Sales Event" and conducted appropriately. Furthermore, no "scare tactics" could be leveled at me by the mention of a current news report in casual conversation. The report went nowhere, but I had a lot of paperwork to fill out. (BTW: Compliance scanned my website and had me make one simple change, which I did immediately, and they were satisfied. It was to edit the sentence I used about their MA plans... I referred to the name of one, which I was told to remove. ONE WORD, mind you!)

The following year, the carrier urged all its agents to defer from conducting seminars due to "shoot first and ask questions later" approach of the Secret Shopper program. Way to go, CMS! Do everything in your power to discourage the public from getting information.

The comments about the amount of money CMS is spending on this SS program versus FW&A is spot on! In a time when the country is drowning in overspending by our government, CMS is one of the big spenders. Then they turn around and complain about how expensive the MA program is.... DUH!

They need our help to sell these plans and then stab us in the back at every opportunity. This is the big problem with CMS trying to micromanage the MA sales force: They are not good managers, they do not know how insurance sales work, and they don't use common sense. I will not dispute the fact that there are some rogue agents and agencies out there that are unethical. The problem is that they do not know how to go about rooting out the weeds... they just use a broad application of herbicide that kills everything.