I found Humana’s Letter to Senator Max Baucus here. (UPDATE, this link was taken down, so I have to find this document posted somewhere else?!?)
This is kind of a weird website, but I found it here: http://www.savefile.com/files/1870503
Caution: Reading this will make your blood boil!
Reconstructing the events of October 15th, from what I heard, Humana was the first to come out with a $500/year commission via a Teleconference call in the morning of October 15th. I wasn’t on the call, but later that day, I spoke with someone who was on the call. That agency put out an announcement of Humana’s commissions and that’s what started the “bidding war” for Independent agent commissions.
Then 9 days later, they sent the above letter saying “we were outraged at the MA Sales commissions recently announced by certain health plans.” They end with, “In conclusion, the vast majority of sales made by Humana are made through our long time employed sales force, which we believe is a much better long term solution for Beneficiaries, Plans and the administration of the program.”
This is for Joe B.
I read your drafted letter to CMS regarding commissions and you have really hit the nail on the head.
I wonder if this can be put into a petition and signed by independent agents and sent to CMS. I was very impressed with how brought out the the effects of this ruling in regard to agents.
We do a lot of work for our commssions and I really don’t think CMS understands.
Hey, think about drafting this into a petition and I belive you will get many agents to sign it.
Teresa
I know that I will never sell another Humana plan. Actually in my area after making all that money they made last year, they actually raised this plan. All my 200 customers have been calling me wanting me to take them off this plan and put them on a $0 premium plan, which I am happy to oblige.
Thank you very much for your post. Absolutely excellent information and very useful for me. Great done and keep posted. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Humana is full of it. They do not pay their Agents for every sale made because they have incompetent people working for them. If you want to be in Management you cannot be smart. You have to be dumb.
Boycot Humanna, they have the double standards. They’ll be the next ones with their hands out. We’d be ashamed to even think about offering Humanna. We can’t wait to see a Humanna CEO working part time at walmart as a greetor!
It would go something like this “Welcome to Walmart”, by the way, “Don’t forget to get kicked in the ass at the Humanna table on your way out”
we hate them, we hate them, we hate them = Humanna doesn’t care for our Seniors. It reflects in how they pay a senior that’s employed there. And don’t forget Walmarts Lead loaded Chinese products they sell. The same as the Walmart/Humanna Advantage plan, lead loaded with no benefits except for that fantastic $0 premium!
Humana started this mess by implying that independent agents were not upto the standards of humana captive agents. (see their letter to CMS). They caused the commissions to be lowered back to 2006 levels. Every independent agent in the country should remember what Humana has done in order to better themselves financially. Who among us wants to write for a company that has contempt for independent agents? Let’s all remember this when we are in the field talking to potential clients. If Humana and CMS thinks that we aught to work $165 per enrollment, they both operate in a fog. Let’s all of us remember that clients need to understand how valuable the Supplement is to them and over the years how protected they were. Then out of Washington came the Advantage plans, we should have known from the start that if the Washington so called intellects got involved it would be a mess and here we are. CMS is so out of touch with the real world that quite frankly I hope I can get every person I see to go to a Supplement, at least that’s regulated by the States when common sense still prevails. Personally I think all of the companies offering Advantage plans are very happy to reduce our commissions because it puts more money in their pockets. Finally I would like to remind independent agents that Advantage plans are not as consumer based as Supplements. CMS opened this can of worms by not standardizing the Advantage plans in the beginning. CMS is in fact the problem not the solution, they have developed a coverage which is in constant change year after year which puts Senoirs at risk because of it and they act like we are the problem, don’t make me laugh. A far as I’m concerned, I wish we would have never heard of the great and wonderful Advantage plans. Thanks CMS for all you’ve done for the Seniors.
To the agents who read this comment my suggestion is that we seriously begin to unite and stop this charade.
Humana Agent Compensation Plan
MA IST YEAR -INITAL SALE
1st year sale $320
years 2-6 $13.33 per month
MA PRODUCT CHANGE
$160.00 paid first month
years 2-5 $13.33 per month
DRUG PLAN
$50.00 1ST YEAR
$25.00 2-6 $25.00
This came this morning.
Will have to wait and see what other companies think we are worth. Humana will get no business from me.
We will soon have deer season in Wisconsin the week of Thanksgiving. Well for me the hunting season starts on Monday and it will be called the HUMANA HUNTING SEASON and it will be to take everyone that myself and my agents can back to a supplement where seniors get the best plan that money can buy.
I am a senior myself and have a Humana drug plan ,but not for long.
Mad as heck in WIsconsin
The Call to Action/Health Care Reform 2009 proposal released 11/13/08
(http://www.finance.senate.gov/) by Senator Max Baucus is a disaster.
The Baucus plan is an expansion and continuation of the status-quo
mixture of a government subsidized ineffective private health
maintenance insurance industry operating parallel to and within Medicare
Insurance.
7 Specific Reasons Why the Baucus Health Reform 2009 Plan Fails…..
1) The Baucus plan fails to enroll all Americans in a single payer
National Health Insurance such as the most efficient health insurance
plan (Medicare) which is already contracted with most doctors,
hospitals and clinics in the Country. Medicare has the lowest operating
expenses and the best morbidity (sickness rates) and mortality (death
rates) compared to all other insurance companies. The Baucus plan will
therefore divert $700 Billion to $1 Trillion per year away from
patients, hospitals, doctors, clinics, nurses, pharmaceuticals,
therapist and researchers into the overhead pockets of health private
insurance company administrators and executives.
2) The Baucus plan fails to technologically upgrade, integrate and
centralize medical billing and records systems in order to optimize
examination of clinical outcomes, pharmaceutical efficacies and monitor
fraud and abuse. In addition, by failing to centralize and
technologically upgrade billing and records systems within a single
National Health Insurance plan, America will be unable to instantly
monitor disease outbreaks and instantly respond to natural and man made
disasters or bio-nuclear terrorism..
3) The Baucus plan fails to control drug costs by failing to allow a
single efficient national health insurance company such as Medicare to
bid on pharmaceuticals. In addition, the Baucus plan by failing to put
all Americans on a National Health Insurance Plan such as Medicare does
little to shrink the ‘risk pool’ of insured, thereby failing to decrease
insurance premium expenses for all Americans.
4) The Baucus plan fails to provide funding for scientific, clinical and
epidemiological research and development by allowing private private
insurance companies to divert funds from medical research and
development to instead support their massive and profitable
administrative and executive bureaucratic overheads.
5) The Baucus plan fails to provide physicians with the same legal
protection from malpractice lawsuits which have been established for
commercial health insurance corporations during the last 3 decades.
6) The Baucus plan fails to explain where to find the 1.5 million new
health care workers which will be needed once 100 million new Americans
obtain health care insurance. Health care workers can be found easily by
shutting down the wasteful and inefficient private health insurance
companies, putting all Americans on National Health Insurance such as
Medicare. The 1.5 million former private insurance company bureaucrats
can then be remployed to actually deliver health care in hospitals,
clinics, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, pharmacies and home
health services such as Alzheimer family assistance.
7) The Baucus Plan fails to address this problem of disenfranchised
physicians. Many physicians in this country have left the practice of
medicine, or downsized their practices due to private insurance company
abuses, malpractice threats and direct pharmaceutical marketing. A
recent national poll of physicians based on the AMA database
demonstrated that 60% of physicians support a single payer National
Health Insurance such as Medicare. A continuation and technological
upgrading of our most fair Medicare Health Insurance for all based on
the concepts outlined above, would undoubtedly motivate those
disenfranchised physicians to return to the profession and bright
younger physicians to invigorate the field.
The Baucus plan is wasteful, inefficient, fragmented, creates a new
redundant beurocracy and will continue to provide no potential future
health improvements for America. Only an efficient National Health
Insurance carrier such as a technologically upgraded Medicare Insurance
company will be able to provide low cost health insurance and pharmaceuticals
for all Americans while maintaining the quality of private physician practices and Hospitals.
H. Green, MD, FACP, FAAD, FACMS
The discussion regarding commission to CMS should include a level commission to be paid based on a percentage of premium received. If this does not happen only Benefits can be adjusted in the event of a change in Premium Reimbursement. This will have an adverse effect on the Medicare Beneficiary. Plus Insurers will most likely have to reduce counties based on premium reimbursement. The Insurers should be able to indicate a specific percentage of reimbursement as the level commission that would be earned each year.
With a new administration coming in and the current economic conditions, Insurers should not have to guarantee a level dollar amount for the next 5 years this would be completely unfair to the Medicare Beneficiary. All other insurance products are based on a percentage of premium and it would only make sense not to deviate from this method.
This would help add balance to actuarial assumptions and insure increased county participation by insurers. This would also allow the Insurers to pay a fair commission amount to the agent
They are correct we are paid too much for the sale but not enough for the service. I have asked the NAHU to develop a kind of code of service read on and copy and forward if you like.
Sales Commission Issues
I cannot believe we keep calling the commission paid for MA and PDP a “Sales Commission”. I am writing this to hopefully provide a different perspective allowing CMS and all those folks working closely in this arena to understand this process demands much of our time and effort for service rather than sales. Service is ongoing month after month year after year. These are some of the year-round duties the Certified MA Agent is required to perform.
1. Review Prescription Medicines and their cost in order to help select the best plans. Researching formularies and matching the best co-pay options, gap coverage options and alternatives.
2. Offering up suggestions for folks to research the possibility of generics or pill cutting as alternatives in order to help avoid reaching the coverage gap. Most MA agents have a wealth of knowledge regarding Prescriptions, never offering advice only discussing the options available helping with overall understanding.
3. Helping folks apply and re-apply each year for Low Income Subsidy. Maintaining records for those who may not have qualified this year but may qualify as income requirements normally increase as a rule sometime around the end of the first quarter.
4. Helping with applications and understanding of Medicare Savings Programs knowing where the Health and Human Services offices are located in their communities. Knowing specific contact people in those offices. Helping re-apply for benefits each year.
5. Agents virtually are becoming public servants providing Educational Events in the communities they serve as well as providing many other community outreach activities and functions.
6. Working in the Provider Community offer training and understanding of Medicare Advantage Plans. An ongoing educational process as many of these agents has developed relationships with various levels of Providers of Care.
7. Agents are required to provide service twelve months out of the year where sales activities are limited to an enrollment period that runs through the dead of winter and the holidays often times having to be away from their families, unable to share the season with loved ones working countless hours.
8. For 2009 agents will have the added burden of recording calls and documentation of virtually each step they take.
9. For 2009 the agent will have to set two, three even four appointments to be able to review Long Term Care Needs, Final Expense Needs, Financial Needs regardless of how far a drive out this might mean greatly increasing the expense of providing these services.
10. Overall expenses will be increasing with the additional regulatory requirements for setting appointments and the limited ability to simply ask the question “Do you folks need help understanding your Medicare Options?”
11. The additional burden placed on agents because of the inability of 800 Medicare to correctly answer the questions they receive. Even the United States Senate understands 800 Medicare only correctly answers about 1 in 10 questions correctly according to the Senate Survey. These inefficiencies create additional service requirements for the agents.
The Medicare Beneficiaries deserve the services provided by the Certified Medicare Advantage Agent. Where would millions of Medicare Beneficiaries be today if it was not for the good deeds and services provided by these community servants called agents. Let me assure everyone if MA agents were paid by the hour the hourly wage would be much less than comparable providers of service.