Insurance agents were central to the health care reform successes in California

California health insurance industry agent

Regardless of political beliefs with surrounding Obamacare, many achievements were made by these professionals.

California insurance agentFrom the time that the Affordable Care Act truly went into full swing, last October, insurance agents played a key role in making sure that the people who required coverage would be able to find the health plans that they needed, at the best available prices.

When the Covered California exchange first started, these professionals were not seen to be as important as they became.

Both the officials from California and President Obama, himself, had been telling consumers that it would be very easy to purchase their health plans. They claimed that it would be a similar experience to shopping online for other products, and that they could enroll quickly and simply through the exchange websites. At that time, insurance agents weren’t really mentioned when it came to being able to comply with the so-called individual mandate.

In California, while it looked as though things would be grim for health insurance agents, the opposite was true.

Peter Lee, the executive director of Covered California, had said that gents who sold individual health plans would see considerable struggles in their futures and may find that their futures would be similar to that of those selling travel policies, for many in the state, this was far from the case.

When the Affordable Care Act kicked into high gear, these professionals played a massive role in enrolling people across California, as there was a far larger number trying to sign up than had been predicted. In total, an estimated 1.4 million people enrolled in private health plans from October 2013 through March 2014.

Among them, 525,000 Californians were signed up by insurance agents. This represented almost 40 percent of the total enrollment throughout that time. This was approximately the same number that actually used the Covered California website. Moreover, they managed to accomplish this without receiving very much assistance from the state operated exchange, during its earlier days. Although the agents did suffer from the same glitches over the exchange website as individual consumers, the official exchange call centers often refused to provide assistance to those professionals who were acting on behalf of consumers. It is only now that they are starting to receive their due recognition.

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