How the Affordable Care Act Will Impact You

Here’s my take on it:

There are 3 probable outcomes now that the Supreme Court weighed in on the topic today:

1. Obama is re-elected and Obamacare is implemented as is.
2. Obama is re-elected and Obamacare is scaled back because it is underfunded and the house does not budge on providing the funds it will really need.
3. Romney is elected and Obamacare is rescinded with the House passing the rescission and the Senate using budget reconciliation to get around the super majority requirement.

Outcome #1 – Obamacare is implemented as is

• Your close rates will go up because there will be no medical underwriting – one of the biggest reasons you lose sales.
• Your close rates will go up because people who could not afford coverage will be able to afford coverage due to the  funding in the exchanges to help pay for the insurance

Gone are the days of not having enough money to pay for a health plan – In 2014, Uncle Sam will help families who earn as much as $89k afford a plan.

Gone are the days of a lot of your business dropping off the books in 6 months – people will have help paying the premium, so they will stay on the books much longer.

Premiums will be much higher on average – The plans called for are more expensive, and again, our tax dollars will be helping a lot of people pay the premiums.

You Will Make Less per Sale, but You Will Make a Lot More Sales.

To those of you who think people will just pay the penalty, I respectfully disagree that this will happen on a large scale.

If I get a sudden illness or into an accident, the mere fact that I can buy insurance does not help pay for the initial medical attention that I will need.

So, I will be able to get health insurance after I have a heart attack – but I am still not covered for my initial ER visit, hospitalization and care. That is about $50,000 out of my pocket. A broken leg – $15k. C’mon, you are a salesperson – if you can’t sell this, well you shouldn’t be in this business.

Plus, if you are smart, you have been loading all those leads you have into something you can use to send newsletters and other marketing offers through.

So, you will get sales from all those leads you could not sell because of health conditions or affordability.

What You Will Make at 5% Commissions

Yes, there will be some states (like NY, NJ, MA, etc) where the role of the Navigator will not be available to you. But most of the states you already sell in (TX, FL, AZ, etc) are a lot more friendly to agents and see agents taking on that role.

Option 2 – Obama is re-elected and Obamacare is scaled back

The impact to you will depend greatly on what is scaled back. But considering that the subsidies will be the #1 expense in the bill, I would suspect that the income eligibility for subsidies will be reduced.

This means all of the above for you PLUS a lot more people buying policies off the exchanges.

Option 3 – Romney is elected and Obamacare is repealed

Then its business as usual and commissions will probably start to scale back up – not to where they used to be, but more than where they are now.

The question will be what will the Republicans replace it with to know what the impact will be. But, whatever they do, I would suspect it will be better than either option 1 or 2…

By Clelland Green

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