6/16/09 UPDATE – See my most recent update here. . .
I got a confirmation last week that CMS had, in fact, pushed out the corrected files for Broker Commissions as of June 4th (last Thursday). Apparently, there was a subset of the file which was showing that some cases were to be paid initial commissions instead of renewal.
Further, they anticipate that all files (January through June) will be pushed out to the Health Plans by the end of June. Given about 2 weeks to process payments, in the absence of any further troubles, I’d project that we’d be current through June by mid-July. Going forward, reports should be coming out on a monthly basis.
Class action lawsuit? Where are the attourney’s?, I’m tired of the empty promises and “CMS error excuses” I jumped thru your hoops now jump thru mine!!!!!. Withholding our commissions is illegal!!!!! Effectively you are ruining the lives of people who honestly tried to make a living in a very stressful and demanding career, sacrificing family time to make ends meet.. Our questions to you CMS, How do we pay our bills?, How do we pay our rent or our house payment?, How do we feed our children???, What is the best way to beg for money on the street????. Thanks to CMS we are all now BROKE!!!!!. Thanks to all the wonderful people at CMS for stripping me of last thing I hold dearly to myself. HOPE!. I apologize to all in our situation for a less than adequate gov. organization. (LIKE AIG or GM or any other failure the government chooses to BAIL OUT from financial ruin, my question for the hard Honest Working AMERICANS is where is our bail out that we justifibly earned? Some of us voted for him, where is OBAMA????. HELP US thats all we ask in the most simplest of ways.
It is very clear that this is CMS way of getting agents to quit selling Medicare Advantage plans. Medicare Advantage plans are a threat to the size of Medicare. The more popular Medicare Advantage plans become, the less personnel Medicare will need. The smaller the size of Medicare, the less important Medicare becomes (read: less pay for executives).
In the corporate world, if someone wants to get rid of you, they just make you so miserable that you quit. It’s less liability to have you quit than fire you.
This commission “surgery” that Medicare is perpetrating is one way to get us to quit. If we quit, less MA plans will be sold, helping to preserve the Medicare juggernaut.
And Obama is in cahoots with Medicare – he just proclaimed loud and clear at the AMA speech he gave that he wants to eliminate the overpayments for Medicare Advantage plans.
A 1-2 punch designed to slowly diminish the impact of MA plans. What the insurance companies don’t realize, is that this new revenue source will slowly wither and die if they don’t protect our commissions. We Agents, unsalaried, un-benefited, un-overheaded “employees” bring them enrollees in return for a tiny compensation. Without us, the overhead gets bloated, and the level of enrollees withers, as does the profitability of the plans.
The question is, do you think Medicare Advantage compensation at $200 per year for 5 years (subtracting for disenrollments for whatever reason – the average length of compensation is probably less than 3 years) is worth your effort?
I don’t think so – I will still offer MA, but I will “de-emphasize” such plans and give real world examples of problems people have with the plans so they are fully informed (and hopefully swayed from such plans). This will result in more Med Supp sales and less MA sales.
I have had no problems with Med Supp sales, the commissions are (now) much higher and my freedom to offer them (no Scope of appointment forms, no enrollment issues with CMS or the Company – if there’s a problem, I get a phone call – can you say that with an MA plan??? I think not!!!) makes it a much happier sale for all involved.
Time to start the shift of marketing dollars to other products because this political battle over MA plans will only come crashing down on the agents. Smell the coffee and diversify now. Don’t wait until its too late…
But to be honest – if MA goes away tomorrow,we’ll all be much happier because the “Wicked Witch (CMS)” doesn’t like “Toto (MA plans)”. It’s just a matter of time before the Wicked Witch/CMS snatches our Toto/MA plans away from us. Ain’t enuff water to melt that Witch (CMS)…not with a self serving congress and President on it’s side…
Does anyone have any idea of when the pffs and the ppo commissions will be payed to us.
My current understanding is that by the 3rd week in June CMS should have reports to the companies on all NEW commissions through May 2009 and then it will be whatever the companies commission schedules are like. For examples some companies process ASAP and pay weekly. Others only pay once a month, so you’re looking at July. Since the first reports contained errors, I am not sure if that will be a cause for further delay to ensure that these reports are accurate. My understanding is that the reports are probably not accurate or at least according to rules that were published ever since they started messing with this but that currently there may not be a method to address those inaccuracies. It’s a shame as I have the belief that all of this messing around has got to cost more than if they just paid the agents as stated and contracted for originally and made up changes for future effective dates, instead of trying to get their act together after the fact.
[...] This resulted in what I’ll be calling the “New Report” which CMS pushed out to the MCO’s on June 4th. See my blog post on that here. [...]
We waited 7 months for this???
I enrolled 26 people with effective dates of Jan and Feb.
23 of which were new to a MAPD I get paid on 6 of them.
What is going on????
You got screwed Bob just like the rest of us. Anyone that had a PDP when you enrolled them is considered already in the Medicare Advantage program as far as CMS is concerned. Its theirs and the Insurance companies way of weasling out of paying us commission. They know darn well what they were doing when they pulled this bs.
I know one thing. I won’t adhere to any of their regulations. I think I’ll do some door knocking tomorrow in some HUD high rise senior apartment building. Think I’ll bundle some final expense and hospital indemnity in with the sale… Police that CMS!!!