Extended, situational deadlines mean the 2014 Obamacare open enrollment period isn’t quite over, but for the majority of Americans, the deadline is here. As of April 1, the public health insurance marketplaces are closed for business until November, and the Obama administration exceeded its revised goal of 6 million signups by the end of March.
As the dust settles, producers have time to reflect on the past six months and how health reform has impacted their business. While an Oliver Wyman survey indicates that
the majority of producers don’t feel participating in the exchanges was “worth it,” several agents and brokers have celebrated the huge influx of clients and opportunities for cross-selling.
“Brokers aren’t bailing out,” noted Oliver Wyman analysts Nick D’Addezio and Dan Lyons. “They’re hopeful about making money from advisory fees and cross-selling ancillary products.”
Nevertheless, pragmatic producers do have some concerns and suggestions for improvement regarding the next open enrollment period.
Insurance Business spoke to a few such agents around the country and compiled this list of the four suggestions we heard repeated most often.
1. Separate open enrollment from Medicare enrollment
Susan Lundy, owner of Benefits By Design in Larkspur, Calif., serves clients for both their health insurance and Medicare needs. One of her biggest complaints with this year’s open enrollment period is the fact that it coincided with that of Medicare.
“Obviously no one’s asked an agent who’s been selling for a long time what would happen if they have open enrollment for everybody under the age of 65 at the same time as open enrollment for everyone over the age of 65,” she said.
Orange County agency owner Patrick Freeman agreed, suggesting that the government move either the open enrollment period for Medicare or the larger period for Obamacare.
“Otherwise,” he said, “I’m going to make the choice to serve my Medicare clients.”
2. Regulate open enrollment by birthday or last name
Another of the primary frustrations with the 2014 open enrollment period was the mass influx of healthcare shoppers in the periods leading up to important deadlines. The various exchanges buckled under pressure and producers were left working nights, weekends and holidays to accommodate the rush.
Lundy believes she has the answer to this particular quandary, however.
“All they had to do was to take the approach of having every person’s birth month as their open enrollment period year after year,” Lundy said. “Now, I guess it’s too late to do that. No one even addressed the fact that it will stress everyone’s systems beyond belief.”
Freeman agreed, suggesting the government could also regulate open enrollment by last name.
3. Delay tax subsidies until tax time
The calculation of tax subsidies is imperative. Otherwise—as many insurance agents have noted—shopping through a public exchange is an exercise in futility.
However, Dan Eich of Tumwater-Wash.-based Oak Insurance Services would prefer to see the time at which these subsidies are applied change.
“If we are still operating on the basis of subsidies, have them applied when individuals are filing axes,” Eich suggested. “It will be very interesting to see how many individuals ‘fudged’ their numbers this year and will owe the next.”
4. Eliminate all online exchanges
Again and again producers likened the online exchanges, both state and federal, to a “bottleneck.” The online system has in many cases delayed commission payment for agents and—even more importantly—deleted, lost or corrupted client applications causing even more work in agency offices.
Eich believes the solution is to eliminate all exchange websites and adopt a system similar to that of Medicaid—a controversial suggestion, to be sure, but one he feels is justified.
“I would suggest scrapping the exchanges,” he said. “They are just a financial load to the system and are a bottleneck. There is already a system in place in all states for Medicaid.”
What do you think of the suggestions above? Based on your experience, what would you add to this list?
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