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Start preparing now.
That’s the advice from insurance industry veteran Dwane McFerrin to insurance agents weeks before the kickoff of the 2025 Medicare Annual Election Period (AEP) in a new exclusive Senior Market Sales® (SMS) video updating producers on the latest changes. While regulations ban agents from discussing plan details before Oct. 1, you can alert clients to the importance of reading their Annual Notice of Change (ANOC) letters and get your technology ducks in a row now in anticipation of the disruptive open enrollment ahead.
“If you don't get off to an early start, you may never get to new business,” said McFerrin, SMS’ Senior Vice President, Med Solutions. “You may be spending your entire AEP rewriting your coverages out of necessity. So it's important for an agent to get an early start (on anything that can be done) here in August and September. Don't wait until October 1st. There's too much work that needs to be done.”
With just weeks to go before its Oct. 15 kickoff, the 2025 AEP is living up to expectations as the most tumultuous in Medicare history, with an unexpected, new Part D Prescription Drug Plan subsidy, along with dropped plans, carrier exits and steep premium increases for all product lines: Part D, Medicare Advantage and Medicare Supplement.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on July 29 announced a “voluntary demonstration program for standalone prescription drug plans,” which McFerrin describes in the video as a premium stabilization program providing a $15 subsidy to participating Part D sponsors. While the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 aimed to lower prescription drug costs for people with Medicare and reduce drug spending by the federal government, its $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket drug spending and its limit on annual premium increases led to anticipation that Part D plan sponsors would increase premiums to cover higher costs associated with a more generous Part D drug benefit.
Regardless of whether you view the subsidy as a bailout to insurance companies or a blessing to clients, Part D changes will be part of the public discourse in an election year, McFerrin said. Fighting misinformation that’s spread by word-of-mouth or social media will be critical this AEP, and SMS can be one source of factual, unbiased information on how the changes will impact clients, he said.
“Talk to a trusted source. Make sure you're getting good information, because you're passing that on to your clients,” he said. “Let's make sure that we're accurate, we're honest, we're trustworthy, and that you are indeed the professional agent that your clients rely on.”
SMS offers contracted agents customizable marketing materials that alert clients to the possible changes they may encounter without discussing plan details and that position you as the trusted source.
McFerrin, a respected authority in the Medicare insurance space, also said agents who prepare their businesses to work efficiently will emerge from this AEP the most successful.
Make sure you line up technology that saves time now, because that time savings will help you see more clients, both existing and new. You don’t want to be setting it up when it’s time to be meeting with clients.
“This could be a year where technology is even more important than ever before,” McFerrin said.
For example, agents using free SMS technology save valuable time by:
- Mass emailing existing clients to ask them to update their prescription, pharmacy, provider and demographic information online
- Identifying clients affected by Part D plan changes such as dropped drugs
- Enrolling clients in multiple ways — email, text, face-to-face, PDF and voice signature
McFerrin also provided other AEP updates, including:
- The federal court judge's stay that blocks CMS from enforcing new rules that would have changed compensation amounts
- The provision of the 2025 CMS Final Rule impacting how agents can contact leads
- Medicare Advantage, Medicare Supplement and Part D rate increases by several carriers
- Expected Part D formulary changes as plan sponsors act to absorb their increased risk
- Lingering uncertainty on commissions with some carriers indicating they will not pay new business or renewals
- Numerous carrier exits from the Medicare Advantage, Medicare Supplement and Part D markets
- Various states’ adoption of the birthday rule with guaranteed issue
- Shortened prior authorization times from 14 to 7 days
- The new requirement for Medicare Advantage plans to send policyholders a personalized “Mid-Year Enrollee Notification of Unused Supplemental Benefits” in July
- The reversal of a previous trend of vertical integration with a carrier and provider under one roof
- The Medicare Prescription Payment Plan — referred to as the “smoothing provision” — which provides the option to people with Medicare prescription drug coverage to spread the costs of their prescription drugs over the calendar year rather than paying in full at the pharmacy counter each time they fill a prescription
Don’t wait to get started this AEP. Call an SMS marketing consultant at 1.888.747.3810 to prepare for the busiest — and your most successful — AEP yet.
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