The Year In Commentary: Broker Commission Losses And The Future Of Healthcare

Through high-profile business acquisitions, growing regulatory activity and changing carrier relations, advisers had their hands full with business-altering activity in 2016. EBA’s most-viewed blogs of the year reflect this reality, covering the impact of the Department of Labor stepping up compliance measures and a range of ways the Affordable Care Act continues to affect adviser commissions.

Listed below in order of most viewed, these EBA commentators analyzed how the evolving landscape of employee benefits is impacting advisers and their livelihood.

9) ACA making brokers broke?
Sally C. Pipes, president and CEO, Pacific Research Institute, breaks down the connection between ACA costs and carrier decisions to end individual product commissions in “How the ACA is squeezing benefit brokers.”

“The ACA’s problems stem from wishful thinking. The law’s architects sought to cover the generally costlier care of the elderly by requiring the young and healthy to buy insurance,” she says. “The premiums from the latter, who don’t consume much care, were supposed to offset the cost of treating the former, who do tend to visit the doctor more frequently. But fewer young people — and more older and sicker people — have enrolled than expected.”

Pipes calls on the next president to repeal and replace the ACA “with healthcare reform that relies on market competition, not government fiat, to deliver accessible, affordable, high-quality care.”

Nothing contained in this blog is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Pacific Research Institute or as an attempt to thwart or aid the passage of any legislation.

Scroll to Top