When it comes to selling Medicare products there tends to be a lot of misconceptions. For starters, when your client enrolls into medicare through social security they are enrolling in part A and B coverage, or also called Original Medicare. This coverage is offered by the government and not what medicare agents sell.  Medicare Advantage and Medicare supplements however are plans offered by private companies. These plans provide more extensive coverage from what clients already receive from original medicare in addition to a range of additional benefits such as dental, vision, hearing and drugs coverage depending on which plan your client chooses. I listed a couple of other topics that often get confused when it comes to differences in medicare advantage and supplement products.

Coverage

Medicare Supplements aka Medigap or “Med supp’s” for short, are higher premium plans that clients pay in addition to original medicare. They charge extra premiums to fill in the coverage gaps that clients are exposed to when enrolled in original medicare with Parts a and B.

With medicare supplements clients are often left to pay little or no co pays and don’t have to worry about doctor networks as they are always accepted. For example, Plan F or often referred to as “The Cadillac Plan” would cover all services that fall under part A or B without any co pays. 

However, for Medicare clients eligible for medicare after 1/1/2020 plan F is no longer available but there is still plenty of options. If your client was already on medicare or eligible prior to 1/1/2020 they can still enroll in plan F. 

Now you may have noticed we have not addressed part D at all which is drug coverage. Medicare Supplements do not cover part D and need to be pair with a Prescription Drug Plan or PDP.

Medicare Advantage however, covers what they call Part C. Part C combines part A, B and D all in one plan. Medicare advantage plans are usually lower premium plans, often $0. These plans are cheaper monthly but have a lot more gaps in coverage.

For information on how to help cross sell products to help cover these gaps click here. For these plans you would need to make sure that your clients doctors are in network and compare drug coverage among the available options in your clients residential area. While sounding like a daunting task we have a platform where you can enter in all of this information and it will tell you the best options followed by enrollment options from that same screen. To view more information on this tool watch our webinar.

Certifications

The most common reason I hear why agents don’t want to sell medicare products is that they don’t want to deal with annual certifications. You do not need to certify in order to sell medicare supplement products. This is important for agents specializing other types of insurance. For example, life and annuity agents who don’t want to spend a lot of time on certifications for medicare can sell medicare supplements by just having their life and health license (which they would already have).  For part D and medicare advantage products however you do need to take the AHIP certifications.

For those life and annuity agents who have sold Medicare Supplements, but cannot sell the Part D without AHIP, they should visit medicare.gov. There, agents can enter their client’s drug information to see the best options, and have the clients enroll. A popular option, this offers lower commissions on drug plans than that of a Medicare Advantage or Supplement plan.

Conclusion

At Pinnacle Finanial Services, our team makes Medicare easy for our agent partners. We provide all of the technology and training necessary for insurance professionals to be successful in selling Medicare products. Consider us your back office!