Do agents need to worry about employment following the changes from the reforms?
Now that the decision of the Supreme Court over the Affordable Care Act’s healthcare reforms has been announced, agents are wondering how insurance jobs will be affected by this ruling.
Though jobs in the health care industry are expected to rise, what can agents and brokers expect?
Hospitals, patients, and insurers will all see significant changes in the system as a whole, particularly as January 2014 grows near, the time when all of the states must have their exchanges up and running.
The individual mandate will mean that up to 30 million customers will join the industry.
This new customer surge will mean that there will be a notable increase in spending as well as in use. Equally, this will bring more money in to doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and other healthcare providers (and those in their employ) as well as insurers and their workers.
The strongest growth in employment will likely be in the areas of home care and primary care, though it is also expected that hospital administrators, social workers, and dieticians will all see a greater demand. The tech sector of health care will also be one of the most notable winners in terms of demand and employment.
Insurance jobs are facing significant uncertainty, but not because of the individual mandate.
The reason that agents and brokers have lost their previous sense of relative security is due to the part of the law which states that only 20 percent of the income from premiums can be spent on costs other than medical care. If anything other than that is used to pay for administrative functions, payroll, or other expenses, it must be returned in the form of rebates to the policyholders.
This year, around $1.1 billion is expected to be paid back to policyholders from their insurers. Much of that will come from the budget that had been formerly used for worker salaries. Insurers are, therefore, being forced to change their business model and the way they look at insurance jobs, as they are moving to an environment which is more comparable to receiving one-time fees than taking a percentage of a growing market.