- Happy St.Patrick's day. I'm Sylvia Gordon.
- And I am Rebecca Gordon.
- This is a weekly Wednesday wrap-up,
where we wrap up everything that's happened
in insurance this week.
Please stay tuned.
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- All right.
Well, I think St Patrick's days is super awesome holiday.
However, we are Scottish
and I'd like to know why we don't have a Scottish holiday.
- That's why I'm objecting, I'm not wearing green.
- I'm not wearing green.
- Let's talk about a crazy topic
that most agents know zero about.
And please share this video with other agents
or other competitors because we need
to educate the sales force about gender non binary clients
and transgender clients that are trying
to traverse medicare.
- You know, it's an interesting topic.
Typically you have two boxes, male or female.
- Right. - Right?
- If you don't identify as male or female.
- What are your options?
- So there are seven States that require by law
that the Medicare supplement insurance companies now have
to give you male, female, other, or non-binary.
And those seven States are, can you guess?
- I can guess, but I'm just going to-
- Without reading. - I'm going to look.
All right, without re California, DC, Hawaii, Massachusetts.
Oh, and I'm so close, Oregon
- Oregon. Right. And I assume
- New York will come.
- New York and Washington state.
- Washington state yeah.
- The liberal States will all come.
But, so for, in Indiana,
you gotta identify as male or female.
- Yeah.
- On the application.
Okay. So now we're having more and more seniors
that are transgender,
- Right.
- If you're transgender, which means, so let's say
for example,
because my best friend, her daughter transitioned to male
- Right?
- So he is now Jason,
- He's now a man, yes.
- When he applies for a Medicare supplement,
does he apply as how he identifies as a male
or how he was born as a female?
- So it's going to come down
to what the insurance company is going to look at.
Whether or not the carrier looks
at birth certificate or some say what you identify as.
- And we haven't surveyed all of them.
Well, we started with AARP and they say,
we want your birth certificate, which makes sense.
However, having gone, seen somebody go through this.
It's very expensive, long process.
A lot of people don't have the money or the wherewithal
to change their birth certificate.
They just changed their names start taking hormones
and just,
- Leave it at that, let me do, I think you need
to change it. - And they Just do that.
So if you did not change your birth certificate,
but you've been living as Jason, a male and you retire
and you want to apply for Medicare supplement,
you will have to re apply as a female.
- Yes.
- And you will get female rates,
- Which are lower.
- Which are a lot lower.
- Than male rates.
- So don't, something is going to gain the system.
- Oh, for sure. Yeah.
- Right.
Because certain companies don't require birth certificate.
So Anthem, and AARP require birth certificate,
Aetna and mutual of Omaha.
- They are going to ask what you identify as.
- So if somebody just says, I identify
because I identify as a male because I want lower rates.
- Right.
- What stops me
- As of right now? Nothing
- Nothing. I identify, I identify
as somebody who needs lower rates.
- (chuckles)Is that a box? - Yeah.
- Lower rates.
Check. - So right now,
the system can be gained
because the laws and the insurance companies have not caught
up with the societal changes.
So if you do have clients that are transgender
or are gender non-binary, it depends
on the Medicare supplement company.
And I don't know how quickly this is going to change.
Like, I don't know.
And I don't know what all, you know we have probably
a hundred Med Sup. - I know.
- I didn't ask all of them.
- I'm impressed that these already have, have a system
in place.
- And those were some of the
biggest characters in the nations.
- Right, which would make sense.
- That's why we asked them,
but I didn't ask Humana.
We can ask Humana when they're here tomorrow.
- We can ask Humana.
- And just we'll slowly get this information for you.
But Rebecca also asked me about gender reassignment surgery.
- Yeah. I mean, I thought surely, you know
you might get a break on your rates depending
on how you identified and how the carriers rates are
but surely you're paying a hundred percent
of the surgery out of pocket.
- And that's not true. So Medicare actually approved
and I was trying to remember
it, it's been probably.
- I have no idea.
That'll be 10 years ago. - 7 years ago at least,
that Medicare approved gender reassignment
surgery. So it is an approved Medicare approved cost.
So Medicare will pay their percentage.
Your med sup has to pay their percentage.
And when, when I looked into, when they approved it
they said it's about a hundred thousand dollars.
And they said, which is no small drip in the bucket.
But they said, we feel that people that are going
to transition genders will most likely do it
before they ever reach Medicare.
So we feel that it will be very few people that do it.
- That kind of makes sense of makes sense.
- What about the drugs?
How are those?
Are those just normal? - They're hormones.
Right So if you transition.
- Are those covered just as normal under your part D.
- Well.
- In exclusions with that.
- So like I take female hormones
and they're not covered because they're high risk drug.
Because if I take way too much information here,
but I take estrogen
but I take a bio identical it's made out of yams.
Okay. Instead of this, instead of the synthetic
which raises your risk of uterine and breast cancer.
And because it raises your risk of cancer
it's considered a high risk drug with Medicare
which is why you get a lot of ladies mad at you
that their drugs aren't covered
because Medicare considers them high risk.
And therefore they ding the carriers
if they cover them with some do, but most don't.
So if, even if you're a transitioned female
you have to be on that drug.
You're going to run into that problem.
So if you'd like to know more, because eventually
you will have these esoteric cases.
- Absolutely.
- Call us,
the society is changing.
- I'd love to get your feedback
and your comments of cases you've already had.
- Right. How many of you have had a gender non binary
or a transgender client.
- Absolutely.
- Or somebody that once already
has a trans sexual, re identification?
What does it look? - Kind of cool.
- Sexual transitioning surgery.
So next topic.
And we'll keep this as the last topic for this video.
Let's talk about all that, the agent forums,
the chat rooms around the internet
where there's all these agents saying, why do I need an FMO?
Why shouldn't I go direct?
- Right. I just, I, I kind of laugh when I see those
because insurance companies here's the newsflash.
They want you to work with an FMO.
If they didn't, they wouldn't make it so easily
easy to partner up with them.
They know.
And it's been proven multiple times that when you work
with an FMO a marketing group, you write more business.
- So look, you, if
this is exactly the same answer that I give
to a consumer that says, why would I work
with an agent when I can call mutual of Omaha direct?
Same thing.
Why would an agent work with Gordon marketing when
they can work with mutual of Omaha directly?
And that it's the same answer because you get me for free.
You'll do not take a lower commission to work with an FMO.
And this is for any FMO in the nation.
You don't, you don't take a pay cut to work with an FMO
and you get somebody
that knows you understands your business.
You can have my cell phone.
We're going to have a relationship for the rest
of your life versus calling the 800 number
and talking to producer help desk.
Where please hold.
And then they don't have the blah, blah, blah
- Only they only have one product.
Not like when you call producer help desk
they're going to say, you know what?
This product just, isn't a good fit.
You should go here.
That's never going to happen, but an agent will do that.
And an FMO does that.
- I was looking at the med Med Sup plan F
and plan G rate increases that are starting to roll in now.
And they're, as we predicted astronomical on the,
on the F we're looking at 10 to 15%.
So is your carrier going to say, you know
maybe you need to switch over to Cigna.
They're rolling out a new, they're not gonna.
(laughs)
They're gonna say mutual of Omaha
has got a really competitive.
You need to go over there.
- Call my friend Bill. - That's not gonna happen.
- Nope.
- But your FMO is going to be able to
give you an enterprise wide view.
Like I said, you don't pay extra to have an FMO.
- It's kinda like this show, we're giving you the top level
of everything that's happening in the market delivered.
- Is the carrier giving it?
- No.
- And if they gave it to you'd be so fricking boring.
- Oh God. - You wouldn't watch it anyway
okay.
So if you haven't hit subscribe
please subscribe to our channel.
- Please consider to subscribe.
- But it's the same thing with your consumer.
If you don't think there's a room for the FMO
you probably don't have a good FMO.
If your FMO is not giving you value is not
helping you train you, supporting you, giving you ideas
workshops.
- Making you smarter.
- Whatever, we just took 120 agents to Cabo.
You know, what's your a, what's your FMO doing for you?
Okay, first of all, and it's the same thing.
What are you doing for your client?
- Right.
- You got to give value or your client will go right
around you and go directly to the insurance companies too.
So the new agents that are out there, they're saying,
Oh I don't have an FMO I have all direct contracts.
- It's not a smart move.
- It's not.
- It's not a smart move.
- You don't give up anything.
And you should be getting something.
If you're savvy enough to work with an FMO
that brings you value.
- Yeah.
- So if you have questions, tell us in the comments.
If you have objections, if you agree,
give me a hell yeah.
Thank you for joining us in this episode,
we have a video every Wednesday.
Please hit subscribe and you will stay up to date.
- Good selling.
Talk to you soon.
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