Unhappy Medicare Plan Issuers Zero Out Agent Commissions

News November 04, 2024 at 12:41 PM
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What You Need To Know

  • An agent group says members heard about some comp cuts just 24 hours before the cuts started to take effect.
  • One veteran sees the cuts hitting 35% to 40% of his Medicare clients.
  • Issuers are pruning covered-drug lists and making patients pay more for some of the drugs still covered.
Medicare word on tablet screen with medical equipment on background

CVS Health's Aetna unit and Elevance Health last week turned their backs on part of the Medicare plan market.

The issuers announced Wednesday that they would stop paying commissions on new Medicare Advantage plan and Medicare Part D drug plan sales in some markets Friday. States affected include California, Connecticut, New York and Texas.

One Medicare plan agent in New York state, Jerry Cohen, estimated that the commission changes have affected about 35% to 40% of his Medicare plan business.

Jessica Brooks-Woods, the CEO of the National Association of Business and Insurance Professionals, put out a statement calling for insurers to work with NABIP to make sure consumers get help with choosing the right health coverage.

"This disruption hits particularly hard at a time when seniors are already grappling with higher prescription costs and shrinking benefits in their Medicare Advantage plans," Brooks-Woods said.

What it means: All financial services professionals with clients who use Medicare Advantage plans, Medicare drug plans and Medicare supplement insurance policies need to make a point of understanding the changes in the market, whether they normally help clients with those arrangements or not.

The clients with the affected plans may have to rush to choose new plans and may have trouble getting plans that will cover the hospitals, physicians and prescription drugs they now use at any price.

The backdrop: Medicare Advantage plans provide an alternative to original Medicare for about 34 million of Medicare's 68 million enrollees, and stand-alone Medicare Part D prescription drug plans provide prescription benefits for about 23 million of the enrollees.

An annual enrollment period gives people who have original Medicare, original Medicare with Medicare supplement insurance or existing Medicare Advantage or Medicare drug coverage a chance to sign up for a new Medicare Advantage plan or Medicare drug plan coverage.

The annual enrollment period for 2025 coverage started Oct. 15 and ends Dec. 7.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that oversees the Medicare plan program, has been tightening funding levels and marketing rules in recent years.

An Inflation Reduction Act provision that caps enrollees' out-of-pocket spending on covered drugs at $2,000 per year has led many issuers to increase premiums and deductibles and narrow their "formularies," or lists of covered drugs, to offset the impact of the new out-of-pocket spending cap.

In the summer, many Medicare market players were predicting that the annual enrollment period for 2025 could be a nightmare.

Fran Soistman, the chief executive officer of eHealth, a web-based health insurance broker, said in August that CMS should consider extending the annual enrollment period to help consumers cope with the confusion.

A few weeks later, Centene's WellCare unit announced that it would stop paying commissions on drug plan sales and renewals.

Non-commissionable plans: Zeroing out commissions is a way for insurers to stop selling unprofitable products without formally withdrawing the plans from the market.

If agents fail to get appointed to offer plans sold by issuers that pay no commissions, they have a difficult time saying much about those issuers' plans. That means agents may have difficulty talking about the zero-commission plans even when they want to recommend them.

The last major wave of sudden commission eliminations hit in 2015 and 2016, when health insurers were expressing displeasure about management of the Affordable Care Act exchange plan program. In recent years, the ACA exchange program market has stabilized, and issuers have resumed paying commissions.

The data: Michael LaPick, a health care market analyst at Healthcare.com, an arm of the HealthCare Inc. lead-generation service, has suggested in a commentary that overall 2025 Medicare Advantage plan and Medicare drug plan menus look healthy.

About 60% of enrollees will have access to a Medicare Advantage plan option with a zero-dollar monthly premium,  97% of the Medicare Advantage plans will offer dental benefits, and a HealthCare.com analysis of Medicare plan data shows that the average Medicare drug plan monthly premium will fall to $46.60, from $53.95 per month this year, LaPick reports.

But Ron Mastrogiovanni, the CEO of HealthView Services, a health, retirement services and financial services data firm, said pressure on plan menus is showing up in indicators that are more difficult to analyze using the big Medicare program plan listing spreadsheets.

"Carriers are making changes to coverage and eliminating some plans," Mastrogiovanni said. "Retirees and their advisors need to review the fine print to evaluate the potential impact on their retirement budgets of deductibles, out-of-pocket costs based on the drugs they may be taking, the risk of unforeseen medical events, and which drug tiers are and are not covered within their plan."

HealthView has found, for example, that the average star rating, or quality measure, for Medicare drug plans is falling to 3.06 on a 5-star scale for 2025, from 3.7 this year.

The drug plan star rating drop is due mainly to efforts to push drugs out of the "formulary," or list of covered drugs, and efforts to move drugs from tiers with lower out-of-pocket costs for the patients to tiers with higher out-of-pocket costs.

Meanwhile, even if the overall average monthly premium for Medicare drug plans will be lower in 2025, the average price charged by three major issuers will rise by an average of 11%, according to HealthView.

The average premium for the leanest plans will fall 4%, but the average premium for the richest plans will rise by an average of 21%, the firm estimates.

What agents are seeing: Erin Fisher, a Medicare plan agent in Connecticut, objected to the timing of the compensation changes.

"It is one thing to let agents know about this 'elimination of pay' in advance of Medicare's annual enrollment period but another to do it during AEP when agents have enrolled beneficiaries in the non-commissionable plans," Fisher said.

Jerry Cohen, the agent in New York state, said the changes have been especially severe for Medicare drug plans. He noted that the monthly premium for one Medicare drug plan that's still available will increase to $37 in 2025, from $3.70 this year.

"I don't think we've seen the end of this business commission reduction," Cohen said. "This is just the beginning."

Cohen predicted that the affected consumers will flood the Medicare program's own call centers with pleas for help.

"It's a really rotten situation," Cohen said.

Medicare program rules forbid agents from charging clients service fees for help with Medicare drug plan selection, but Cohen said that he believes that some agents may try to charge services fees anyway.

Credit: CMS

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