Barry J. Fisher Paradigm Insurance Marketing

For the past 20-years my activities with the California Association of Health Underwriters has given me the opportunity to advocate on behalf of the free market health care delivery system and the role of the agent in the distribution of insurance products. Many have asked me why, since my primary focus has been long-term care insurance, would I spend so much energy talking about medical insurance issues.  My answer; I always knew that at some point in time the nanny state would turn their attention to my product area. That time has arrived.

Now at the risk of being politically incorrect or offending someone’s tender sensibilities my simple and straightforward philosophy towards an over weaning government controlled health care system has been simple and straightforward:

1. The government has a legitimate interest in fostering and regulating a level playing field so that private insurers can create insurance policies that people want to purchase and to make sure that the consumer is protected against insurance programs  that don’t live up to their promises; and
2. The government that governs least governs best.

To say the least, the health care reform bill that is being signed into law as I write this Blog is none of the above.  It is not only everything that many of us have fought over the years it is exactly the worst of all of the evils that supporters of more government invovlement claim that they are fighting against.  A case in point is the CLASS Act long-term care component of the reform bill. While it holds out the promise of long-term care benefits  it’s primary function within health care reform is one of the many  dubious “revenue neutral” funding schemes within the bill. 

While the outlines of coverage within CLASS are still hazy what is clear is that the majority political party is counting on it to generate $70 billion dollars of revenue towards the overall cost of health care reform. This despite the fact that the American Academy of Actuaries and the Society of Actuaries have already told anyone who will listen in the Federal government that CLASS is “actuarially unsustainable“.  Since I’ve already discussed CLASS in last month’s BJFIM/Paradigm Webinar and at our broker meeting in Woodland Hills two weeks ago I won’t bore you with the sketchy details of the plan and will cut to the chase; IN MY OPINION, CLASS is an integral part of a government run Ponzi scheme being perpetrated on the American people.  If an insurance company designed and marketed a product like this to consumers its executives, including the actuaries, would be “perp-walked” out on the nightly news. So to quote radio talk show host and President of the Landmark Legal Foudation, Mark Levin, “so there, I said it!” 

But the beautiful thing about America and the entrepreneurial amongst us is that there is a “pony” in this pile of *&*$. The one good thing about CLASS is that employers must “opt-out” of offering CLASS insurance (and I use the term insurance loosely) to their employees. This gives you the opportunity to open the discussion.  The pro-active agent and financial planner has a reason to discuss and encourage employers to insure themselves and key employees  with high quality private long-term care insurance and offer the same on a voluntary basis to all employees. There’s no time like the present to do this.  Overtime, CLASS will skew the private LTCi markets making products more expensive and less attractive to consumers. Why you may ask?  Enrollment in CLASS is likely to be less than predicted and adverse selection will be rampant due to the guaranteed issue basis of the program. As CLASS’ anticipated revenue does not materialize, it will threaten to torpedo the entire funding scheme of  Health Care Reform.  What happens when government programs fail?  Politicians and bureaucrats tinker with the private markets and we all know where that leads.

You can do good for yourself and your clients by getting them into private long-term care insurance today.  Traditional or linked LTCi will never get better or be “cheaper” than it is now.  Over the next month I will post a series of product reviews giving you the highlights of each of the carriers in our portfolio.  We will also do a webinar sometime prior to the end of April to sum up the best of the best.  As always, our job at BJFIM/Paradigm is to help you make more long-term care insurance sales easily and quickly. Our staff stands ready to assist you.

In the meantime I hope that you will join me in becoming more actively involved in our electoral process so that we can replace those in Washington D.C. and Sacramento who wish to abrogate our freedom of choice in all things health insurance and health care related.  As we’ve painfully learned elections have consequences. Let’s make sure that the next one does as well but this time in the freedom’s favor.

barry@paradigmins.com