Aetna Medicare Supplement November Updates

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NEW AND EXCITING:

New underwriting process and application tracker

Starting October 1, our underwriting process will give you faster decisions for underwritten Aetna Medicare Supplement applications. We have not altered our underwriting philosophy in any way. Most applications will have a decision within a few minutes. This exciting change also comes with an updated online application tracker, to give you clearer visibility to those decisions.

Changes: Point-of-sale telephone interview and voice signature option

To help make the underwriting process even easier for you, we’ll no longer require or offer a point-of-sale telephone interview as of October 1, 2019. We’ll also be discontinuing the voice signature option.

  • If any point-of-sale interviews are still pending after October 1, the phone line will still be available to use until those interviews are complete.
  • Instead of a voice signature, you’ll continue to have 3 easy signature options for your electronic applications: security question signature, in person signature, email signature.

Our new underwriting process

Once we receive your Medicare Supplement electronic application, we will provide one of the following underwriting decisions within a few minutes:

  • Approved
  • Needs further review
  • Declined

We will also provide decisions on your paper applications once we have verified all required information has been included with the submission. This review may delay how soon the decision is displayed on the website.

  • Approved applications will be processed as normal.
  • If an application needs further review, the application will be reviewed by our underwriting staff.  And if necessary, our associates will call your client with targeted questions for clarification. This new telephone interview process will be easier for your client, as we will not need to review all health questions.
  • If an application is declined, we’ll send the applicant (and you) a letter with details about how to get a copy of the information used to help with the underwriting decision. The application tracker on the agent website will show if an application is declined. A copy of the letter will be accessible within 24 hours.

MACRA 2020

Are you wondering how MACRA works and how it will affect you and your clients?  I have attached a cheat sheet that will help you have a better understanding of MACRA.

Aetna has launched their MACRA 2.0 strategy in 15 states with more coming either later this year or early next year.  Watch for your e-bulletins for more information.

August launches for MACRA 2020 – SC, IL, LA, AZ and TN

July launches – AL, GA, IA, MI and MS

September launch – FL

October launches – OH, NC, KS and PA

 What does all this mean?

Aetna plan F rates will be on average within $15-$20 a month of our plan G rates and our plan F rates have been lowered. You will be able to offer a high deductible G with effective dates after 1/1/20

 Why is Aetna putting out rates that are so competitive on plan F?

There are tens of millions reasons why.  After 1/1/20 anyone on a Medicare Supplement currently or Medicare eligible by 12/31/19 will still be able to purchase plan C, F and HIF after 1/1/2020. These clients that would like to receive a very competitive plan F rate with us will need to go through underwriting so this with be a very healthy group of insureds which can mean lower rate increases.

 

Aetna has a new agent services phone number: 866-272-6630

New Quoting App!

Aetna has launched their new app for quoting all products.  You no longer have to save the link to you home page. All you need to do is download our “quote on the go” app from the app store.  You can quote every product Aetna offers in one easy format!