The open enrollment period for Individual Major Medical Insurance 2023 came to life today – and gives agents and advisors another chance to talk to customers about pricing, inflation and long-term financial planning term.
Average premiums on benchmark coverage available through HealthCare.gov — the site created under the health care legislation dubbed Obamacare — will rise 4% next year, after dropping an average of about 3% this year, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Nationwide’s retirement research arm reported last week that 24% of 1,140 U.S. adults surveyed have cut or are preparing to cut their retirement plan contributions because of healthcare expenses.
Kristi Rodriguez, senior vice president of Nationwide Financial, says that high and unpredictable cost of health care gives finance professionals a chance to grab the attention of customers and prospects.
Many people “are terrified of what rising healthcare costs could mean for their retirement plans”, Rodriguez
The background
Congress created the Affordable Care Act public exchange system, known to the general public as “Obamacare,” to encourage healthy young people to purchase private health care coverage and maintain premiums. by lowering overall average claims.
The exchange is supposed to provide a “Travelocity for health insurance”.
Originally, the ACA’s editors expected each state to operate its own state stock exchange. Eighteen states now operate and operate their own exchanges.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services created HealthCare.gov to provide exchange services in states that were unwilling or unable to do so. HealthCare.gov now manages ACA exchange programs in 30 states and administers exchange programs for three more states.
Exchange managers, insurers and regulators have developed the enrollment period calendar system, or restrictions on when people can enroll for coverage without showing they have what the government sees it as a good reason to enroll in coverage, with the goal of getting healthy people to pay for coverage even when they don’t expect to need health care.
The enrollment period open to leading individual physicians will run from today through January 15, 2023, in states that use HealthCare.gov to run or administer their exchange programs.
Other states may set their own enrollment period dates.
States generally use the same enrollment schedule for individual coverage sold outside of the ACA exchange system, to avoid pushing the sickest people into or away from exchange plans.
The enrollment period open to primary individual physicians is separate from the annual election period for the Medicare Advantage plan and the Medicare Part D prescription drug plan, which runs from October 15 through December 7.
Early indicators
There are early signs that registration activity for 2023 could be at least as strong as registration activity for 2022 was.
HealthCare.gov had registered 64,848 individual health insurance agents and brokers for this registration period from Monday, up 19% from the number it had recorded as of October 31, 2021 and 35% from the number it had recorded as of October 31, 2020.
Google Trends, a website that provides summaries of Google search activity data, shows that search activity for terms related to health insurance enrollment such as “HealthCare.gov” has been sluggish. nearly the same over the past week as before registration began. coverage period 2022.
More reasons to follow him
Many life, annuity, and retirement professionals got their start selling health insurance, then dropped out of major medical insurance for 65-year-olds when the Care Act was implemented. affordable prices has changed the products and reduced the remuneration of producers in the individual market.
Here are five reasons why companies like Nationwide are still interested in leading medical insurance.
1. Some customers get their health coverage this way.
Even in the income bracket of people with an income above 400% of the federal poverty level, or $54,360 for an individual and $111,000 for a family of four in most of the country, 4.9% of adults aged 18 to 64 were uninsured when a government survey team polled them in 2020, and 6.6%, paid for their own health coverage purchased directly, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Some of the people who purchased their own coverage obtained coverage through the ACA exchange system, and some purchased individual coverage through the over-the-counter market.
Access to individual coverage, purchased on-exchange or off-exchange, is particularly important for self-employed types who are candidates for using life insurance, disability insurance, retirement and estate planning services for the self-employed. clients.
2. He created huge health coverage distribution organizations.
About 14.5 million people had signed up for 2023 health cover through the ACA public exchange system as of January 2022, according to CMS data.
Publicly-listed private web brokers have suggested that their relationships with health insurance clients have a lifetime value of around $1,000 each. This suggests that the ACA’s public trading programs may have listing relationships worth more than $14 billion.
