The value of a health insurance broker.

It's the personal nature of health insurance that makes the need for human interaction so important. The purpose is to finance care and at times that comes in moments of fear and personal crisis. There isn't a website or “navigator" that can compensate for that.

Employers are more likely (20%) to offer medical coverage in markets with competing brokers. Broker competition is associated with lower premiums (13% less).

The government is throwing bushels of tax payer dollars at the concept that our service has no real value and unnecessarily adds to the cost of coverage. I beg to differ.

http://ow.ly/21xUV2

How Paul Bunyan and Babe will help the Affordable Care Act (and MNsure)

MNsure (Minnesota's health insurance exchange) has rolled out it's Ad campaign with Paul Bunyan and Babe, the Blue Ox, making the pitch that Minnesota is the land of 10,000 reasons to get health insurance. http://ow.ly/21ln6Z

Not that I plan on filling my Blog with  the commercials from every state exchange, but this is a witty and clever example of getting the attention of the uninsured (in Minnesota's case 1.3 million of them) that it's a good idea to have health insurance coverage. 

This rollout in states that have decided to create their own exchange is the one best chance for the law to gain traction with the American people enough to take it out of the liability column for the President and his administration. 

That in of itself is a tall order and will need a Paul Bunyon like effort to succeed with 40% of the population polling that they don't understand (or approve of?) the Affordable Care Act.

The New Health Insurance Marketplace

Ready or not, here it comes. I saw this HealthCare.Gov commercial at the end of The Charlie Rose Show on PBS last night http://ow.ly/216DZ7

Covered California has a budget of about $290 million taxpayer dollars to spend on educating the masses. Half will be in traditional media like TV and radio. 

You won't be able to commute to work without seeing their billboard or hearing their drive time radio spot. Once you get home the exchange will pop up during football timeouts and between housewives reunion shows.

The majority of the money into social media, data mining you on FaceBook and distracting the single folks fussing over their Match.com profiles.

I just hope their jingle is catchy and not annoying. 

Since I tweeted this out I had 40 clicks yesterday and another 46 today. Not Rock Star numbers but it has an audience of health insurance brokers staring at the reality that the product they've been selling with its myriad of options is being dumbed down to a row of cereal boxes. A sobering thought.

The video I link to is put out my a new co-op in Iowa and Nebraska and has their tag attached to the actual HealthCare.gov video.