- Hi, I'm Sylvia Gordon.
- And I'm Rebecca Gordon.
- Google changed their rules
for agents to run ads for Medicare.
So be sure to watch the whole show,
so you can learn what you can and can't do.
(Rebecca clicks tongue)
(upbeat music)
- Okay. Well let's kick it off with Anthem.
They're doing another great thing in the
(indistinct) market.
This is for the great state of Indiana.
They will pay your clients a $100 visa card
for getting their physical.
So they just go in, they get a full physical,
and about six to eight weeks later,
a $100 visa gift card will be sent directly to them.
- Now, many other companies
have some similar type incentive.
Where if you get your annual physical,
you get a $25 credit to your awards program online.
And the reality we all know is
that most people never go online
and then download that credit.
They never actually get it.
So Anthem is taking the lead in saying okay,
you get your physical, we will send you the money.
You don't have to log in.
You don't have to set up an account.
You don't have so many points before you can redeem it.
All the other carriers, are you hearing me?
- You don't have to have a different password.
- So Anthem is leading the way here
and we wish the other carriers would follow suit
and make it this easy to redeem these rewards.
We would like to give a salute to Anthem.
Best in class.
- It's on certain products and plans,
so if you are not taking advantage of this,
reach out to your marketer
and we'll fill you in on the rest of the details.
- Okay, so Google.
- Google.
- Just said 'hey, cool. You wanna run ads on Google?
I mean, we're like the only thing going, right'?
Everybody except for Russell Logo uses Google.
Russell's only one that's using Bing.
Russell's pretty smart.
Cause nobody else is using Bing,
but everybody's using Google and Google said,
'Hey,
the people that are trying to cut through the cracks here,
the lead vendors that aren't licensed,
we're going to cut them out'.
So for, for a time being here before
before everybody figures out how to gain the system,
which if you're smart, you've already figured it
out, like me,
for the time being,
if you want to run an ad on Google, you have to apply.
And they just opened this up two weeks ago.
So you have to apply
and you have to submit your licenses to
prove you are a licensed insurance agent.
Okay? Then you have to pay a fee depending
on how many States you want your ad to run in.
If you want it to run in all 50 States, it's $1,500 a year.
So that's the bad news.
The good news is for a time being,
it's going to tamp down on the competition.
So for a small window here,
you're going to have more reach on your ads.
So it's going to cut out all the lead vendors.
Eventually they're going to all partner
with some agent and use their license and blah, blah, blah.
We know how to get around rules.
We are Americans, but for the time being
you do have some extra hurdles to go through
and it's supposed to take two weeks to get approved.
So I don't think anybody's officially approved yet.
- Do you have an example of an ad?
- Just any ad,
any ad targeting a Medicare beneficiary,
you can not run it on Google unless you've been approved
and proved that you are a licensed agent.
Okay. Let's just, it's more, it's more headache.
Don't wait for ADP.
And then they get backlog.
And then you're like, Oh my God, Oh my God
- You gotta get approval.
We gotta give a big shout out
to some rockstar agents.
Her name is Renee,
and she has been with Gordon marketing for over four years.
She's qualified for three of our national conventions.
She's here.
I believe this was in Cabo.
And with her marketer, Kim Becker.
- And Renee came to us,
she was working primarily with another FMO
and she started just doing one product with us.
And then she was like, 'wow'.
The other FMO is in her backyard.
So it's in her home state and in her backyard.
And so she felt like, you know, it's more convenient.
He's right here.
And we said, 'okay, whatever, you know, just try us
out' because we don't really go to your houses anymore.
Everybody, we talk on the phone texts, cell phone, email
you know, so you don't really need to have that
FMO in your backyard.
And she moved all their contracts to us
and has been happy as can be and will love her.
And hopefully she and her fiance,
Bruce, will be holding their wedding ceremony
on our Costa Rica trip next year.
That's what we're hoping.
- We're going to be a bridesmaid.
We're holding that for her.
So she's a fantastic agent that we are very
proud to be affiliated with.
- Thank you.
- And thank you for choosing Gordon marketing.
So let's go back to some more of the social security stuff
that nobody wants to learn, okay.
Like one of my memes, I haven't posted it yet
but it's like my lowest point on
COVID when I was just, you know, home, like what to do.
I thought, you know what?
I've always meant to learn
about social security because I know we should.
So might as well do it now.
That was like my lowest point.
- And look at you now you're like a social security expert
- But you know, it's like when you
when you have a ton of time on your hands
you can't say I don't have time for it.
Like yeah, you do.
- Right.
- So I did one...
- Did it, ya dug in.
- ...of those boring things.
Windfall elimination provision,
those of you that have clients that are government employees
local state, federal, not the military, but
that social security taxes are not taken out of your pay.
You can't get social security.
Okay, that makes sense.
Social security is you pay to play.
And so that's why a lot of people would say
I don't get very much.
I'm going to get,
I get 450 bucks a month for social security
You didn't work long enough.
- Right.
- It's pay to play what you put in, you get out.
So if you did not have taxes withheld
from your social security, you're not gonna get it.
So let's go to the next slide.
So that's one thing,
every agent can look when they're like
I don't understand why this is not working.
So in 1983, they decided to make it fair
because some people worked for the government for 20 years,
and then they worked for themselves
for 10 years or they work for an employer.
So they have paid into social security,
10 years enough to qualify,
but they also have a government pension.
- Right.
- And so the government said, 'that's not fair'.
They're going to get social security
and our replacement for social security.
That's not fair.
So the government attempted to make it more fair in 1993.
And that's called a 'windfall'.
They didn't want you to get a windfall.
They don't want you to get social security
and their government pension.
So what they said is there's a formula.
I'm not gonna do the math.
Not because I can't,
but I can okay.
- But she can
- I can, okay.
There's a factor that they reduce your social security.
But the thing to remember is they'll never reduce it
to zero you'll you'll,
if you work 10 years, you'll get something.
It might not be a lot, and it might not be what they want.
So that's what I said
how to avoid being shocked.
Windfall primarily,
it's sort of about 2 million people that get impacted by it,
so it's not a hundred million to really,
and they're mostly in these seven states,
California, Colorado, Illinois,
Louisiana, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Texas being the big one.
And I get teachers from Texas calling me all the time.
- It's interesting with Ohio
- Because they were a teacher that didn't make
that much money.
So they have teacher retirement services and there,
her husband made a lot of money
and they're planning on getting spousal benefits off his
because it was so much higher.
Or if he passed,
they're gonna get his whole social security.
Then they find out, oops,
their teacher retirement annuity is gonna
reduce it all the way down.
So if you go to the next slide
this is what I said, help your clients.
- Oh my gosh.
Keep them from being shocked
about what their retirement's really going to look like.
Because I mean, yeah
it's not so shocking that they're gonna fall down,
but if you don't understand anything about social security
you need to,
because your clients are aging
into social security and Medicare, about the same time.
You're the only specialist they know to talk to.
And it's really...
- It's up to you.
- It's up to you to help them with this.
So we've been doing a lot of webinars, doing CE classes.
- We're going to be doing a social security bootcamp
at the end of June
- I'll be in Idaho all next week, doing both client seminars
with the public and doing agent seminars.
And then we're also next week in Virginia
doing social security.
- We are in Virginia.
Yes, actually this week, but we will be in Texas,
in I think three to four weeks,
we will be in Houston and San Antonio.
And if you have agents in your office where
you need some additional training, please let us know.
We can accommodate that and either do a private webinar
for you or potentially come to your office.
- Thanks for watching tune in next week.
- Good selling.
(upbeat music)