I’m Allie Shipman, and I’m a new recruit here at Empower brokerage. I’ll be working closely with John Shinn on the senior products, primarily Medicare Supplements. We’re going to do this web series for you all, on how to give an introduction to Medicare with your clients. This includes going over their options, and how to make it simpler for them. So, when asked – “Where should agents start when it comes to Medicare and their clients?” – John first covered the important of implementing a fact finder into the presentation.

That is a great question. The best place for agents to start that are accustomed to working in this marketplace is knowing a lot about your prospects. You really need to do a thorough fact finder for learning their wants and needs when it comes to Medicare. Knowing what the eligibility period looks like is also highly important. This is all accomplished with a fact finder. As with any other presentation, you do a discovery process to find out more about your applicant. In doing so, you learn what they like and what they don’t like.

In concordance with the fact finder, all agents should be familiar the eligibility requirements for Medicare. John briefly sums up Medicare eligibility:

You need to understand the eligibility period. If you don’t know, it’s pretty simple. People are eligible for Medicare three months before their sixty fifth birthday, the month of that birthday, and three months after their birthday. That’s a seven-month period of eligibility. So that’s basic eligibility, you can read about it and we’ll talk more about it in this series is as we go along.

Alongside eligibility, agents should know about the two ways to get Medicare. The reason why agents need to know about all the different Medicare plan options is to effectively advise their clients on what’s right for them. If an agent doesn’t know the difference between the plan options, then they could be advising their clients on a plan that isn’t right for them. Therefore, it’s critical that you know about the different plan options, which includes knowing what each option does and does not cover.

There are two ways that most people get Medicare when they’re first eligible and after they turn sixty- five. The first way is original Medicare, which is health insurance through the government. You pay premiums to the government, who then pays the doctors, and you pay whatever is left over. Everybody should know that Medicare doesn’t cover everything. Everyone who has ever been on Medicare that I’ve talked to is thankful for it. They do a good job of covering most costs, but it doesn’t pay all the bills. That’s where Medicare supplements come in, and another Medicare option is Medicare Advantage. We’ll talk more about that in other videos, but for today, there are two main ways for people to get on Medicare. That is with original Medicare or Medicare Advantage.

So I hope that helps. I’m excited to be talking more about this and I’m excited to be working on this with you. This will be fun, and we’ll work our way through this series. Hopefully this will be helpful for everybody.

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