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Health Insurance Agents, This is Your Time to Shine!
By: Craig Gussin

Consumers across America did not understand the ACA and how it worked. They will also not understand the American Health Care Act and will rely on you the agent to educate them.

I know this as a fact as the media has reached out to me a lot over the last 7 years to explain the law, how it works and what options are available to the consumer/their audience.

Agents who were involved and educated about the ACA have been very successful since the ACA began. Don't miss out, now is the time for you to get involved, get educated and be the go to person for your clients, their friends and family.

Over the next 12 to 24 months it will seem like almost every day there will be a story about what health insurance will look like after the ACA.

Every person you meet will want to know and will probably ask you what should they do with their health insurance. Agents are going to be the ones giving them their answer!! Why not be that agent? Read more.

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March 2017

A Note from Our President By: Mark Haskell

It's a New Dawn - It's a New Day...And I'm Feeling Good! You Should Fee Good Too!

Click Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfJRX-8SXOs

Nina Simone-"Feeling Good"

It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life, for me

And I'm feeling good

And this old world is a new world
And a bold world, for me

I have heard so many opinions ... some good ... some bad ... many indifferent. I do not think it is time to be political, therefore I am not

going to be. For me it is a time to be spiritual, and be positive. I am thinking back to all the doom and gloom I heard early on in the ACA days. For me and for most of us that embraced the changes the last few years have amongst the most rewarding of our careers.

As a young man I believed in swimming against the current. I found this approach to life and my career to be tiring and ineffective. I decided back then that the best way to get ahead was to swim across the current instead of against it. The problem with this approach, though doing much better than before was I was not moving ahead nearly as quickly as many of the old timers who left me behind as they waved by. I watched them move right past me. They learned that swimming with the current ... not against it, or across it, that they traveled farther and faster. This is a great lesson ... swim with the current and not against it! Read more.

Broker Rant By: Barry Cogdill

Hello to all SDAHU readers. The new normal for health insurance is the relative lull that occurs after the fourth quarter mess is finally resolved. And, it takes until the second quarter for that mess to resolve. Not to complain, but the enrollment processes at insurers are barely acceptable, and often have errors and omissions that require my agent broom and dustpan to clean up. In the end, it is clear that the importance of the customer experience is not high on the list for health insurers. Sigh. I digress.

The Republican majority released their health reform framework, the American Health Care Act, on March 6. So, in the wonderful world of insurance acronyms, are we to call this the AHCA? To paraphrase our new President, "nobody knew how complicated health insurance is". The talk is easy, and the walk is hard. Replacing the ACA is not really feasible in the short term, as the sinews of much of the law are so inter-twined that killing one branch might unexpectedly kill others. The new blueprint for our health insurance system is, in current form, a compromise that tries to leave enough crumbs for the various factional groups that must vote for it to feel appeased. It leaves the employer tax advantages for offering health coverage in place, and defers the "Cadillac" tax concept out to 2025. Employers are no longer mandated to offer. Most taxes are eliminated. Carriers can design less expensive "catastrophic" plans than the four-level coverage now required. Read more.

Legislative Update By: Jim Morrison

Hello SDAHU,

Last month eight SDAHU members headed back to Washington DC for the annual NAHU Capitol Conference. We met with our five San Diego congressional offices to provide ideas for market stabilization, campaigned to keep the employer exclusions intact, our hope to repeal a number of the taxes in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and our continued effort to remove broker compensation from MLR (a position NAHU strongly supports) so we can continue to provide the valuable services and expertise to our clients. We also shared stories on how health care reform is impacting our clients and what they can do about it. The general tone was very positive on both sides.

As you know, Donald Trump, has been working to change the ACA with executive orders, and find a way to get a full ACA repeal bill and some kind of ACA replacement bill through Congress with just a majority vote in the Senate. Backers of legislation normally need the support of at least 60 senators to get a bill other than a budget measure through the Senate. At the Capitol Conference, a few lawmakers who might be able to round up 60 supportive votes for the right bill in the Senate spoke. The list of speakers included Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La. There were a number of other great speakers covering a range of relevant topics too.It was a great trip. Read more.

Philanthropy Corner By: Joel Marcus

The SDAHU Public Service | Philanthropy programs are off to a good start. Fred Cartier and Rogers Benefit Group sponsored our February luncheon restaurant raffle. If you are interested in being a sponsor, please contact Joel Marcus or Gail James Clarke.

BANDING TOGETHER - We were honored with a Service Award and plaque by the Banding Together music program we contribute to. It is in recognition of our contributions to help provide financial and in-kind assistance to their music programs for children and young adults with disabilities. The award was presented at the Belly-Up nightclub fundraiser, which we also contribute to. It is an amazing program. The children also made several music videos thanking us in song. You can see them on our website at sdahu.org. Read more.

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