- Do I have food in my teeth?
- Do they look-
- They don't match your shirt at all.
Hey, I'm Rebecca Gordon.
- Hi, I'm Sylvia Gordon.
- And on this week's special edition
of the Weekly Wednesday Wrap-Up.
- We're going to talk about a lot of Part D changes for AEP.
- There's a lot.
And we're gonna tell you probably why it's happening.
So stay tuned.
- Yeah, stay tuned.
(upbeat music)
- Alright, so this is super cool.
Anthem came out, a couple of weeks ago
and they said, you know,
"We're not gonna pay any more commissions this year
on our enhanced Part D. We'll pay renewals."
And I was like, alright.
And then Erin had said something
about Mutual of Omaha's Part D
and then I'm hearing stuff
about maybe Aetna's Part D and it got me thinking.
- What's up?
So could COVID have anything possibly to do with this?
Do you know what the average cost for a COVID test is?
- What?
- It's between $800 - $900.
However, do you know what the cost is
if you're down in Miami?
- What?
- $2400 to the insurance company.
Huh, huh.
That's all on the internet, folks.
I'm not making up these figures.
So I asked our marketers this morning,
we had like 30, 35 people,
we meet every morning to discuss the industry.
I asked,
"How many of you know people who've had a COVID test?"
99% of the room went up.
I said,
"How many of you know people who have had repeated tests?"
- And I would like to show my results.
- Repeated tests.
- Because a week ago I got all the symptoms of COVID.
I got all the symptoms I was like,
"Oh crap,"
So I quarantined so I could get my results.
- She did. She followed all the rules.
She did very good.
- And I did not have it, I had a sinus infection.
But, every time I cough and sneeze,
around people go into a freak zone.
So I have to like show my results.
And they're like, are you sure those results are valid?
- Exactly. That's what I thought. It could be false.
- My fever never got above 99.4.
- But that is interesting. The amount of people
- Like me-
- Who have been tested multiple times this year.
- I had two antibody tests. I had two tests.
- Someone is making a lot of money off these tests.
Somebody's making some money.
- So Part D changes, Mutual of Omaha.
Boom. If you haven't stayed abreast of what happened,
they finally went into Med Advantage
after like 15 years in a very limited market
and then they pulled the plug on it.
So they're not in Med Advantage anymore, they sold that,
but they're still in Part D,
which is also relatively new for them.
They discontinued their value plans,
and they're introducing new low premium plans
that they're going to call premier.
They will be crosswalking members from the value plans
to the plus plans with an effective date of 1/1/21.
This will increase premiums.
So something, if you have sold that plan
to get out ahead of them,
talk to them about, they will be notified
in their notice of change letters that ANOC
for those here that are new,
that ANOC letter is the changes
to your existing plan that comes out in October.
So that should be getting ready to come out soon,
that generally generates calls to the agents
because people go, "Oh I don't know what this means".
- And Envision, current members will need to re-enroll
with a short re-enrollment for Elixir plan
if they wanna continue for the 2021.
We're seeing a lot of movement in this market,
in this Part D space.
This is something you're heavy and really reach out to us,
make sure that you're doing everything
in your breast of what's going on.
That's just kind of interesting.
This COVID thing has been good for business.
- And the consolidation. So Aetna's not paying.
Most people aren't on that plan anymore,
that got sold to WellCare.
- Your energy's real low, being sick.
- Aetna, come up with SilverScripts.
That's a SilverScript one.
- There she goes, SilverScript.
- That's some good news with healthcare,
no changes on the Part D.
- Thank God.
- I will take that, thank you.
But they did have some other cool changes.
So they rolled out this Premier Producer
- Can we say it?
- It's like for elite agency.
- Oh okay.
There's different levels.
So this is the congratulations on the platinum one
so that the agents that write a lot of business
can get some more perks. You can get-
- So is this an invitation only?
- Yep.
- Okay.
So if you got those, that means that you've got
a certain amount of points that you can go
into the thing to order stuff.
It's the toolkit.
- Oh okay, cool.
- And you could get window clings and car magnets,
and stuff with your points.
So that's really cool. I like it.
- That is nice.
- I like it.
They also have it officially announced but they are
supposed to have it ready by October 1, the voice signature.
So basically it makes every agent
have the ability to do remote.
- Yep. And that's for everybody.
- That's for everybody. And-
- Is it safe to say like,
you're kind of like a call center?
You're like a one person?
- You're like a one person call center. Yeah.
And with COVID and nobody knows
what's going to happen.
- Right. It's beautiful.
- You have the ability to not miss a beat
and continue to work with your clients remotely.
And to do that most voice signature.
Now we don't know all the details
but if you're not using lean yet,
get on lean first, get set up with lean,
familiarize yourself with lean.
And then get ready for the enhancements
that are supposed to come out 10/1.
- That's exciting.
- Yeah, because you might be stuck at your house.
You might not be able to leave.
You might be sick.
Your clients might be sick.
Or the government might not allow you to go out.
Climate might not allow you to go out.
You have to have a plan.
- And as we spoke on the last week's episode,
we just brought our new partner, Mr. Nick Williams, with us,
who will be heading up our phone sales division.
So stay tuned for more information coming on that.
- The Medicare millionaire.
Now we do need to kind of you know,
this is the time of year.
Things get bottlenecked.
And we see this with contracting, and I'm always-
I don't know why carriers don't realize
that they're going to bottleneck this time of year.
So we have a list of carriers that are like four to six,
maybe eight weeks out on processing contracts.
- So this is like, I was in a couple agents
office last week.
'Cause I like to travel when I'm sick.
And they were like, "Hey, no offense.
But you guys are really sucking right now
with such and such carriers contracting."
And both of them said the same thing, and it's not us.
I don't want to pass the buck, but it's on the carrier.
And so that's why I thought,
maybe if we just tell them some of the carriers
what their turnaround time is.
So you know in advance, when you recruit some agents
this is going to take about this long.
Because people have the opinion
that everything's electronic and boom, boom, boom.
- Right, it is bottlenecked.
So Mutual of Omaha, four to six weeks GPM,
Gerber, Royal Neighbors.
I would give all of these four to six weeks.
Anthem, looking at several weeks
on getting theirs processed.
- Way slower than it needs to be.
On the Life Side.
- On the Life Side, they are the slowest.
And people think they're so big.
They're one of the largest companies in the world.
I don't know.
- I don't know.
- Their contracting is the slowest.
- But protective life is less than a week.
- Yeah. Protective is one of the fastest.
- So thank you.
And typically, if you see really hot rates,
really hot products, all that demand-
and people don't do that.
Like, Effigy. Their fixed annuity was on fire.
And so they got all the business.
So of course the business is slow.
And sometimes I think agents don't just stop
and think about it.
You know, it's always gonna follow suit like that.
- Look at the cycle.
- I think they think,
"Hey, if you're going to have a really awesome product,
you're gonna staff up to handle the demand."
And the answer is no, never.
I've never seen that.
- That doesn't make sense.
- That's a good idea though.
Before we close up this issue,
I want to talk a little bit about the chatbot
There's dad.
- So handsome.
- He loves his chat bot.
This right now is only Medicare questions.
But we will be expanding this to life and annuities shortly.
If you've used it, will you let us know
in the comments what your experience has been?
If you haven't used it, go in and use it.
Prank him, ask him something.
Just see how quickly they respond.
Try to trip them up. See if they give you the right answer.
Let us know. We are giving out these buttons.
These buttons say,
"Ask me about medical, dental, and vision."
I know this looks hokey.
If you wear this during AEP,
I guarantee this button will make you money.
- It all works.
- Because I always forget to ask.
'Cause I'm in a hurry and I got another appointment,
and you put it on there and they'll say,
"Hey, you know, I've been seeing your button."
And then that's something to go back to them on, follow up.
If you don't have time, let it passively market.
It will work. We will send you a button.
If you try the chatbot and let us know your experience.
And we haven't warned the team
that they're going to get tested.
But I used to test them all the time
when we first started it.
So they'd always be like, "Is this Sylvia?"
So once I stopped doing it,
they still kept thinking it was me and it wasn't.
Then it was other people.
But it's handy when you're in the field
and you're with a client and you're, you know,
like right now, if you have a sinus infection
you're just not thinking clearly and quickly,
you could ask somebody that's live.
It's live 9:00-5:00 EST.
And it's real, licensed agents behind it.
It's not a robot.
- I love chatbots.
- It's LiveChat.
- I use them all the time.
- Yeah. Well, I don't like when it's robots.
- No, when they're real, I love them.
They're fantastic.
- Another FMO has a robot,
and it's like, "Hey, what's your name?
Let's get started."
Then you say, "Hey, my name is Sylvia."
And they're like, "Well, Sylvia, how are you today?"
I'm like, "I'm great."
And it's like, "It's a beau-
they're just like buying time so they can look you up
on the computer, and the chat bot.
And then they're finally like, "What's your question?"
Then like, "Just one second, and I will get you-"
And it's like, "Oh my God, I hung up by now."
- I wasted my time.
- I hung up.
This is a live person.
When they answer, they're right there. Okay?
So we've had a lot of great responses from it.
When you are in the field,
there's just too many things to know.
You know? But there's somebody that's got your back.
Try it. You can also get it on your phone.
If it saves you, please let us know.
- Let us know.
- That's all I have for this week.
- Have a great week, folks!
(upbeat music)