Two decades ago, a gallon of gas cost less than a dollar. There was no law requiring seatbelts, text messaging involved using numbers on a pager, and the marketing rules governing Medicare took less than 15 minutes to read and understand. How times have changed. Whether driven by inflation, technology, or policies designed to protect, change is unavoidable. Yet as inevitable as change is, people are adverse to it by their very nature.
For agents selling Medicare plans, change has come in the way of hundreds of pages of new rules governing everything from what defines an educational meeting to what food can be served, and from the number of calls you can make to a prospect to exactly how much your commission check will be. These changes, commonly known as the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act (MIPPA), were made largely in response to the unscrupulous practices of a few and are intended to, as the title suggests, protect patients and providers.
While MIPPA has restricted the ways in which you’re able to market to seniors, it hasn’t changed the fundamental, supportive relationship you can have with your Medicare clients. Likely, some of your Medicare members have been with the same health plan for many years, and may not realize the different options available to them.