Agents and brokers drove in 39% of the enrollments for Covered California during the 2013-14 ACA open enrollment period with the least amount of training and resources of any group submitting applications. As Covered California starts their budget process allocating money for 2014 training, I had to speak publicly at a Board meeting and plead for additional training for Certified Insurance Agents.
Covered California needs to spend more on agent training
If youve ever attended or watched one of the Covered California Board meetings youll notice that most of the public comments are made by professionals paid by organizations to make their pitch either on behalf of the consumer or the health plans. No one paid me to spend my afternoon waiting to speak in front of the Covered California Board. But like many agents and brokers, I wasted a lot of time and money trying to get answersto questionsduring open enrollment.
Excellent training supports agents to help their clients
In retrospect, the answers I wanted should have been given to me either during training or made easily accessible on a Covered California website. When we are supported as agents, we can efficiently help our clients. Now is the time for Covered California to be laying the foundation for good training of agents and building their online resources. Since I dont work for Covered California, all I can do is go to the Board meetings and beg to have the proper funding to support that training and those resources.
Let Covered California know that agents matter
Now is the time to write letters, attend the Board meetings, and let the Board know that with good agent training, the enrollment numbers will go up and the application mistakes will go down. Everyone wins when agents and brokers are supported to help their clients enroll with Covered California.