Open Enrollment 2019

The leaves are changing. It’s Open Enrollment Season, or as the Trump Administration calls it, “Weekend at Bernie’s”.

Medicare Open Enrollment is from October 15^th to December 7^th. The compressed under age 65 Open Enrollment is now November 1^st to December 15^th. Yes they overlap. Plus, most of our group policies renew on January 1^st. Your local insurance office is very busy.

Please allow me to share a couple of thoughts.

Medicare Beneficiaries are always early for their appointments. On October 15^th, the first day of Open Enrollment, I had two clients waiting to talk with me at 1:50 for their 2 PM appointments. One was 10 minutes early. The other was 24 hours early. She was scheduled for the 16^th. That might have been shocking had we not had an unexpected visit from our friend Bob (name changed) that morning at 11 AM. His appointment? December 2^nd. Six weeks early! A new record.

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It is almost election season. Sometime over the next few months you will hear a friend say, “If (fill in the blank) wins, I’m booking the first plane to Canada!” People from both sides say that, but we all know that they aren’t going anywhere. We have an insurance version of that. Every agent has heard, “If I get sick, I’m just going to get on a plane and go back to (insert country of origin here) where it won’t cost me anything!” Seriously, they aren’t going to go back to England, Italy, or Russia the moment they feel chest pains. These people are in the USA by choice, and they really have no interest in being anyplace else. The insurance agent nods knowingly and then gets back to finding the client the right policy.

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Open Enrollment can be very stressful for both the agents and the clients. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) policies change every year. The prices usually go up. The networks expand and contract. The deductibles and copayments are tweaked annually to comply with the ever-changing regulations. We are in this together. We need your focus and attention, if only for 45 minutes to an hour. Some of our clients need to go through the Exchange to qualify for a Tax Credit Subsidy before they can pick the right policy.

This is blog has a national following and according to Google Analytics, most of you reading this are outside of my service area. So this isn’t about me, it is about You and Your agent, whether she is in Portland, Maine or Portland, Oregon. You and your agent are on the same team. Your agent, very often a small business person purchasing his/her own coverage, is there to help you get health insurance, the way most Americans access and pay for health care.

We celebrate Open Enrollment. There may not be cake. There definitely will be coffee.

DAVE

www.cunixinsurance.com

Picture – Knoxville In The Fall – David L Cunix