California not paying 'MAPD commission' --- is this a national trend?

[MedicareWAA]

Demographics. Too many seniors and too few healthy younger folks

It has nothing to do with this. The Northern California health system market is concentrated and they're not enormous fans of accountable care, let alone managed Medicare. It's also a relatively affluent part of the country and it gets rural very quickly.

 

[Fisher]

Dude… I don't care.

Wrong gender, Ecko. Although I have known some chicks who were absolutely righteous dudes in my day.

 

[EckoRomeo]

Agents will be first to go, sorry. IMO they are Going bak Inhouse employees getting hourly pay and bonus per enrollment coming

Everyone who keeps saying this obviously isn't aware that employees are more expensive than contractors, and carry more liability.

Paying an employee $100k salary is much more expensive than paying a broker a $100k in commissions.

 

[annon123]

Everyone who keeps saying this obviously isn't aware that employees are more expensive than contractors, and carry more liability.

Paying an employee $100k salary is much more expensive than paying a broker a $100k in commissions.

Not to mention they are also more expensive as employees usually get benefits as well.

I'd guess they're figuring that they'd get sales out of almost everyone who makes the effort to call them vs brokers who have access to multiple companies and may or may not use them. Of course with brokers they are only paying commission on the sales they do get, but perhaps they are hoping their overall market share would go up using just employees to sell?

 

[MedicareWAA]

I was told by a beneficiary his golf fees where getting reimbursed, free dental, 150.00 of free groceries, OTC meds free, and a free membership to gym.

If you needed a client to tell you this, you're not a health insurance agent serving seniors. This information is very well known.

It's frustrating to me that so many people in our profession don't even understand how the economics of MAPD work, including this fallacy that most MA carriers are struggling to make ends meet.

These things said, I agree everyone should panic and sell their books (to me).

 

[DonP]

If you needed a client to tell you this, you're not a health insurance agent serving seniors. This information is very well known.

It's frustrating to me that so many people in our profession don't even understand how the economics of MAPD work, including this fallacy that most MA carriers are struggling to make ends meet.

These things said, I agree everyone should panic and sell their books (to me).

We all know the carriers still making billions but that's irrelevant. What's relevant is when your stock drops 50% because your profit margins under pressure and stock holders lost 10's or 100's of billions in value . Carriers work for the shareholders and will cut costs and benefits tu get those margins back

 

[annon123]

We all know the carriers still making billions but that's irrelevant. What's relevant is when your stock drops 50% because your profit margins under pressure and stock holders lost 10's or 100's of billions in value . Carriers work for the shareholders and will cut costs and benefits tu get those margins back

And that is the major problem of for profit heath care. Shareholders come first.

 

[MedicareWAA]

We all know the carriers still making billions but that's irrelevant. What's relevant is when your stock drops 50% because your profit margins under pressure and stock holders lost 10's or 100's of billions in value . Carriers work for the shareholders and will cut costs and benefits tu get those margins back

None of these carriers has a functional DTC operation at scale. They need brokers, and they'll always need brokers. United just happens to have lots of leverage … until they don't.

Every one of these carriers sees the majority of their enrollments come from third party sources … even Humana. The only way a large carrier can gut MA commissions is if the other large carriers do the same thing. And that won't happen. We might see it pop up market by market from year to year, but carriers want growth. Hell, they NEED growth.

In other words, your fears are so exaggerated that they're borderline annoying. You're taking a kernel of truth and extrapolating it into a doomsday scenario that doesn't compute with how MA economics actually work. The economics and the purpose of PDP are so much different than MA.

 

[DonP]

None of these carriers has a functional DTC operation at scale. They need brokers, and they'll always need brokers. United just happens to have lots of leverage … until they don't.

Every one of these carriers sees the majority of their enrollments come from third party sources … even Humana. The only way a large carrier can gut MA commissions is if the other large carriers do the same thing. And that won't happen. We might see it pop up market by market from year to year, but carriers want growth. Hell, they NEED growth.

In other words, your fears are so exaggerated that they're borderline annoying. You're taking a kernel of truth and extrapolating it into a doomsday scenario that doesn't compute with how MA economics actually work. The economics and the purpose of PDP are so much different than MA.

It's not just the damm carriers decision . Cms has a massive say in this . I guess in the end I'm speaking more to almost mafia style overrides (80% -200% of agent commissions)and marketing money using taxpayer money .Take away the overrides and much of the past yrs greed and chaos is gone .And obviously DOJ agrees with me as they sued carriers and big telesales shops . Yes carriers need mapd agents to market but they also need them in med sups and that hasn't stopped some carriers from cutting med sup commissions hard . But just as bad as cutting commissions is going to be widespread commmission suppression coming . We're all just batting shit around now . We'll know reality in September/Oct.What happens happens and no agent is leaving the business till we see reality .

 

[MedicareWAA]

It's not just the damm carriers decision . Cms has a massive say in this . I guess in the end I'm speaking more to almost mafia style overrides (80% -200% of agent commissions)and marketing money using taxpayer money .Take away the overrides and much of the past yrs greed and chaos is gone .And obviously DOJ agrees with me as they sued carriers and big telesales shops . Yes carriers need mapd agents to market but they also need them in med sups and that hasn't stopped some carriers from cutting med sup commissions hard . But just as bad as cutting commissions is going to be widespread commmission suppression coming . We're all just batting shit around now . We'll know reality in September/Oct.What happens happens and no agent is leaving the business till we see reality .

CMS isn't coming after agent commissions. They've never suggested a problem with commissions. I don't care about the uplines. They provide little value.