AARP has announced that it will voluntarily suspend sales of some limited benefits health plans it has marketed in conjunction with UnitedHealth Group.
The products, according to an investigation by the U.S. Senate’s Finance Committee, may have been misleadingly offered as comprehensive benefits packages when in fact they lacked catastrophic coverage or placed caps on benefit amounts. The plans were marketed to pre-Medicare retirees, ages 50 to 64, under the names Essential Plus Health Insurance and Medical Advantage Plan.
Now it’s easier than ever to compare Medicare Advantage plans with our Medicare Quote Engine. Yesterday we added a link for Summaries of Benefits. This allows you to compare all the Dr. and Hospital benefits with ALL Medicare Advantage plans in the country.
To Use Our Medicare Quote Engine:
Log into Agent Gateway
Click on Quote Engine
Enter the clients zip code, check Medicare Advantage 2009, agree to terms and conditions and click submit.
You will see ALL MA products available in that county. To see the benefit of any of those plans, click on the link for Summary of Benefits on the far right.
For complete Instructions on how to register, how to log in and how to use Agent Gateway and the Medicare Quote Engine, visit our Agent Gateway page!
Quick story about an agent who works with Ritter who was in a car accident this past Thursday. He was treated at a hospital for his injuries. April, from our office, got a call from his manager about another matter and asked how Jim was doing before they hung up.
Well, turns out that Jim ASKED to be released from the hospital Friday night. Why? Because he had 5 appointments scheduled on Saturday and he didn’t want to break his appointments. He had to help his clients. Jim’s wife drove him to his appointments on Saturday because he couldn’t drive with broken ribs.
I’m sure he’d be embarrassed about me telling his story, but that’s just one of many, many across the country about an agent who’s totally dedicated to serving his clients.
A few minutes ago, I received the final company data to complete my spreadsheet of broker commissions for the 2009 Medicare Advantage selling season. I will complete the spreadsheet tonight and have it ready to send out to agents first thing tomorrow morning.
At this point, all commissions are subject to CMS review and they can approve, ammend or reject the commissions which are filed by the carriers.
I submitted my suggestions to NAIFA - PA to roll up to AHIA (the Health Conference of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors). The Executive VP of the Pennsylvania branch, Jan Hartman, Esq., has passed these comments on to Diane Boyle, EVP of AHIA. She appreciated the input!
As you can see from the following memo from NAIFA, they are preparing comments to CMS on this interim rule in addition to NAHU and should be filing them soon.
We have writing agent level commissions for all our companies except for 2 at this point. One is being released at 11am ET and the other should be no later than 2pm ET. Once we have all of the commissions we will be sending out an e-mail to all appointed agents with all writing agent level commissions.
Thanks for your patience. We’d like to address all of the companies at once instead of sending out things piecemeal.
Note that this affects NEW PATIENTS only. Also, exceptions will be make for emergency care or for those who need a level or type of care the isn’t available elsewhere in the region.
NOTE: Geisinger Health System is the Hospital/Doctor system. They own Geisinger Health Plan (the insurance company).
If you plan to sell or have sold Chronic Condition Special Needs plans, you will want to be aware of this.
There are a number of Special Needs plans on the market today for those with “Chronic Conditions”. As a part of the MIPPA law, CMS was directed to convene a panel to determine which conditions should qualify as Chronic Conditions. These new guidelines will take affect in 2010 and will not affect 2009 enrollment. Here is a copy of the report: snp_cc_panel_final_report_v3
If you look at the report, pay special attention to pages 5 and 6 as these are the conditions which are permitted in qualifying for a Chronic SNP beginning in 2010.
Some Chronic SNP’s on the market today have much lower standards (like taking a Cholesterol lowering drug). I’m not sure at this point if these folks will be grandfathered (unlikely) or disenrolled (more likely), but you may end up having to write them a new plan in 2010 (for no additional commission, given the new commission rules).
I made a number of updates this weekend on procedures in working with Coventry:
See Submitting business page for updates on Use of the new Agent Writing Number (AWN) in the Critical Info Section. Also, I provided updated guidance on how to use their Telephonic Enrollment procedure.
In the Websites section, I added information on how to use their new “Application Tracker” program to follow your submitted business.
In the Forms section, I posted instructions on how to build an enrollment kit using downloaded forms.
