Broker blog

One might expect a health insurance conference to be boring. What? Shocker! As I embarked on my first Benefits Selling conference, I was hopeful, but expecting it to be like many others.

GOOD NEWS! It was SO much better than I expected (my article picture is from some other conference). Following are my top 10 AHA moments…

Why do your clients offer an employee benefits program? This is an important question because the way you approach it will impact your recommendations and business. Some think of their employees as family members and want to make sure they’re taken care of. Others do it to avoid the ACA’s employer mandate penalties.

Have you ever had a really great idea only to Google it and find out you weren't the first to think of it? Most of us have, and it's really disappointing, especially because nearly every time it happens, I'm just certain that this is THE idea that will make me a million bucks – only to learn moments later that it's already making someone else rich.

Have you ever been to a conference focused on healthcare and legislation? Well, let me tell you – it is one rockin’ time! The conference was hosted by the National Association of Health Underwriters (NAHU) and it was called Capitol Conference. We dubbed it Cap-Con, for short. While it was no Comic Con, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

A few weeks ago, I published an article entitled “Is this the beginning of the end for the ACA?” For someone who’s normally pretty positive, this article was fairly pessimistic. Here’s the short version:

Trying to sell health insurance is a tough job. Here’s why:

 I was born in Canada the year nationalized health care started there (that was 1967 for you history buffs). It was well-funded and provided great care for a few decades. But medical inflation was out of control. By 1991, when I moved to the U.S., the medical plans started to get stripped down to the bare minimum. This opened up opportunities for brokers to add new employee benefits to their suite of offerings.