Please feel free to add any comments to any of my blog posts. I don’t intend to be a censor of the posts, however, in an effort to keep things professional and postive, I’m going to impose a few ground rules:
1. No profanity. I define profanity as anything I wouldn’t say in front of my kids (1, 6 and 7). In addition, I can “fill in the blanks” so don’t use $%*#&$. Not necessary in my opinion.
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There are three most vulnerable times in the human experience, when we are children when we become elders or disabled . As children we have our parents to champion our rights in most cases. As elders or disabled and if are mentally healthy we can hold our own. If we are not the resources at our disposal are at risk as is our well being going forward.
The CMS intentions are to protect the elderly and disabled. In their efforts they have” thrown the baby out with the bathwater”.
I am a medicare marketing agent for a known health carrier. The company promotes CMS compliance while cracking their production whip and exploiting our efforts to make a living while making a ton of money.
We are damned if you do and damned if you don’t overburdened with disabeling regulations .
The government reduces the premium paid to medicare advantage plans and the insurance companies respond by abusively raising the premiums and co-pays to the medicare beneficiary. The companies are not adjusting to the new rates. They are dumping the mother load on the beneficiary.
The government should be protecting them but instead they have approved this response 2 years running. Our hard earned taxes become nothing but bargaining power for government and big business to work together while the elderly and disabled are further burdened by higher premiums and demanding co-pays.
I don’t want to be an agent anymore. I want to champion our elderly and disabled. I want to be a broker and represent the people the way I would want to be represented . We are many out here who feel the same way and we need to consolidate our efforts to do just that.
Sound politics placing the well being of our American citizens FIRST. I will work my ass off for that kind of leadership!!
A Rivera
I agree with Wendell, our rights have been eroded. This is because those in authority at CMS have listened to our senior citizens who have screamed: “too many phone calls …” No One, apparently sat down with CMS and told them the inner workings of preparing, finding and paying for prospects, and the selling process involved. These people have no IDEA AT ALL OF WHAT WE DO; that is why their rules are “one sided.” In truth, we have been painted as: “THE ENEMY, SCAM ARTISTS, etc.”
Therefore, the “trust factor” is suspect until the agent seeks to bridge it. This is because of bad publicity, and those few agents who was self-serving, branding the universe of agents, as stated,
I am sure, that seniors would like to have some relationship building with the agent that they like; and they have the choice to choose amongst many, but after they do, I am sure they would like to see that person and have that person (agent) remember them and call them intermittently. The way CMS has it, there is to be no relationship building, no human touch, and the interaction and verbiage is stilted, cold and abstract. This can stop – when THERE IS REPRESENTATION OF AGENTS’ (INDEPENDENT) point of view and the realities of their day to day job duties. Advertisements are needed to show WHY AGENTS ARE NEEDED AND WHY YOU SHOULD CALL YOUR AGENT!! This is missing. As an agent, who cares about my clients, I have been called by clients after they have settled into their health plans, because of life’s dynamics and sickness, they turn to someone they hopefully can trust — the agent, who brought them a suitable health plan and satisfaction.
Once Universal Healthcare is approved in the United States, there will only be 1 payor, there will be no more Medicare or Medicaid. I wonder if somehow Health Insurance can survive, perhaps insurers can offer supps, all though I do not think our government will allow it.
Craig,
Do you have any idea when CMS will release the second half of the AEP commissions
Wendell, I could not agree more. I’ve been waiting to hear someone picking up the 1st amendment issue.
Imagine a client asks you about MA plans and you tell them that a government agency has required you sign a form and then wait 48 hour before you can discuss it with them.
It’s seems so ridiculous I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I might post something on this on my MA “rant” page this weekend. I want to find the actually wording by CMS so I can be accurate.
If you are so inclined check it out.
http://medicareadvantageplan.blogspot.com/
PS. Sorry for the “a” word in another response. (I actually cleaned it up to get to that.)
I wonder if anyone has begun to think about how much these CMs rules are infringing on our rights as individuals and our right to do business in this Country. Case in point, when have you ever been told that you can’t stop to see someone about insurance until CMS says so. When is it not our right in accordance with free speech to be able to to do a proper job of discussing and comparing plans to our clients whenever they want us to so they can make objective choices? When did we as agents loose our civil rights to do business without restriction of free trade? CMS has, if you think about it, just taken our rights away as US citizens. Stock Brokers can call and go see anyone they want, Mortgage Brokers can also, in fact anyone can except Insurance Agents. If ever there was a time for us to unite as a national lobby it’s now. Believe me this movement is underway and you will find that help is on the way.
Wendel,
Please see my latest post http://blog.ritterim.com/2009/05/22/cms-guidance-on-scope-of-appointment-form/comment-page-1/#comment-2193