The Affordable Health Care Act is making things easier for the everyday American, so do you need a broker anymore?

The Health insurance industry has seen some paradigm shifts in the past years, especially if you include the major legislation that has been rolling out called the Affordable Health Care Act(ACA). One of the prime purposes of the ACA was to simplify insurance and make it easier for the every citizen to understand. While it has succeeded in making obtaining insurance easier for individuals, insurance these days is still hard to obtain, understand, and install when it comes to companies and employers.

Do you trust WebMD over your Doctor?

This is perhaps one of my favorite quotes I use when explaining the benefit of brokers to clients, friends, or family. Yes, even friends that are looking for individual plans (of which we do not consult or sell) get that same quote, even though I won’t be selling it to them I still tell them to find a broker that does. Why is that, you may ask? It is the same reason why I don’t sponsor myself if I need legal help, or why our business has a CPA instead of trying to do taxes myself, or why if I get a fever that isn’t going away, I wont trust WebMD to solve all of my problems. If you want something done right, go to a professional and give yourself time to do what you do, best. An added bonus to all of this – brokers are free to use, so using a broker for your health insurance is akin to having a doctor at the cost of WebMD searches – free.

Brokers are free, are at least they should be!

If your broker is charging you for a service that isn’t beyond the normal scope of health insurance, please give us a call now so we can save you money! In all seriousness, broker services are free as long as they are in the normal scope of health insurance, and they are sometimes free for other services they have as well (ours, for example, are free to our clients). With this known, wouldn’t you rather let someone do your work instead of you doing it all by yourself? If you are a HR professional, compensation professional, business owner, etc. please stop wearing all of your hats and let a professional help you. We, at least here at Buettner Insurance Agency, don’t take over your decisions, we instead tell you what looks the best for you given the information provided to us and we go from there.

Even the CEO of Healthcare.gov believes brokers are needed to make sure clients get the best out of health care.

The CEO of Healthcare.gov, Kevin Counihan, recently said; ““The broker is integral… as integral as it can be in the sale and distribution of our product…”. Now, the ACA has been a rough ride for many insurance brokers; many have lost jobs, many have quit, and with the amount of changes rolling out over the next few years we may only see the sharks in the pond survive, but even with the ACA which was thought to destroy the role of the Broker, has only shown again how important we are to the system. With all of the new legislation, ERISA audits, ACA rules, etc., the need for a broker has only raised, and for good measure. Every day, as a broker, we are constantly reading up on this literature to make sure our clients are ahead of the schedule and are in compliance. The way I have seen it go, is either: a good broker is hired by the company to administer their insurance, a broker isn’t used and a HR professional is hired (ouch), or a broker isn’t hired and the company may suffer from less-than-efficient health insurance with Deparment of Labor penalties.

The simple way to move forward – Brokers are your friend, and if they aren’t find a new one.

Brokers are a major part of health care, and without them, the system would be too confusing for people to really take advantage of the great tools/policies out there with no loss to the owner of the business hiring the broker. Instead of walking the road alone, hire a free and helping hand. If you happen to be a California business owner or Human Resources/Compensation/Saftey Admin/Professional and would like to know more about Buettner Insurance Agency or our 95% retention rate, please contact us below at the bottom left hand corner. Have a great day!