Much has been discussed in the media about most of the aspects of the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare.” I have not seen much about the plight of more than 100,000 insurance agents and brokers.
The floodgates are about to open for the mass firing of healthcare insurance agents.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act dictates that health insurers must spend at least $0.80 of every $1.00 in premiums collected on health care in the individual and small group markets, and $0.85 in the large group market.
Insurance agents represented by National Association of Health Underwriters tried hard for the government to define their commissions as part of the medical expense and failed. The argument by insurance agents was a senseless argument.
Obviously, financial constraints are such that health insurance companies are being forced to develop new products that are suitable for the 30 million uninsured Americans who will soon be insured under the law. There will be no room for commissions in the new lower cost products.
The other big development is the advent of healthcare exchanges under the new law. These exchanges are not yet up and running but it is easy to picture them to be akin to Amazon.com (AMZN) by necessity and by law, insurance companies will have to display their products in easy to understand and easy to compare formats. There will be a huge migration of business from traditional healthcare insurance agents and brokers to the exchanges….Read more on Forbes