Timothy Jost, a professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law and a consumer representative to the NAIC, said most people won’t need brokers because buying policies on the exchange will be simple. “Frankly, I don’t think that there’s going to be quite as much to do as there is now,” he said.
In Congress, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) has said he plans to introduce legislation along the lines of what the brokers want, but health law supporters are gearing up for a fight. “I think it’s safe to say that there will be a vigorous debate in Congress on this,” said Vincent Morris, a spokesman for Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.).
In a letter to the NAIC, Rockefeller on Tuesday expressed his disappointment that the group was reopening debate on the issue “on behalf of just one of the many interest groups not completely satisfied” with the minimum spending rules. He said he would oppose any such legislation that “would protect the income of health insurance agents and brokers, but at the expense of millions of American consumers and businesses.”
Brokers are often powerful voices in states — which license them — and have allies among many insurance commissioners.
“The majority of commissioners do believe the agent role is just so important in purchasing health insurance,” said Mary Beth Senkewicz, the deputy commissioner in the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation. “The agents, they’re little mini-HR departments. The agent actually goes out, shops the plan and looks at the demographics of the group.”
Brokers’ representatives say that buying health coverage is complicated — that individuals and small businesses need professional guidance to select the best policies and exchanges need brokers’ help in setting up their rules.
Jesse A. Patton, a broker and president of the Iowa Retail Federation, warned that if brokers don’t have a financial incentive to bring people into the exchanges, they might steer people to policies sold elsewhere.
“For the states that have the agents as a foe, that’s going to put real pressure on the exchange,” Patton said. Without brokers, “the exchange is going to have a really tough time of surviving.”
This article was produced through a collaboration between The Washington Post and Kaiser Health News. KHN, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health-care-policy organization that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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