Practice management

Hopefully you all had a wonderful holiday season, and are back to work energized and ready to tackle the many important decisions that await you.

From childhood on, we have mentors for everything we do - parents, teachers, coaches, counselors. Everywhere we turn, a mentor is there to guide us through uncharted territory and help us succeed.

Some years ago, I was a researcher for a major employee benefits educational association. I learned that changes in federal legislation mean big business for advisers because of the demand they create for education. So here is my educated prediction for the new year: the equation in 2011 will be education equals sales.

With the new year in mind, I have a question for you: Are you working from a blueprint for success in 2011, or are you simply doing exactly what you did in 2010 and hoping for a different result?

Without a doubt, many of us working deep in the weeds of our organization's health plans are wary of the ever-mounting regulations surrounding health care reform. Recently, I attended a presentation that included a flowchart of implementation dates that looked sort of like a MapQuest depiction of lower Manhattan.

It's hard to believe we've reached the end of yet another year - it seems like 2010 began just a couple of months ago. And what a year it has been.

Unemployment. These days, it's an unfortunately common term. Many women have lost their jobs - single, married with children, or otherwise. But even more men have been laid off, which brings rise to another problem: a major shift in family roles.

These are uncertain times for employee benefit brokers and consultants. "Obamacare" and the minions in the federal agencies are entrenching national health care with speed and design. Most recently, brokers found out that pay for the various services they provide employers will be placed on the administrative side of carriers' ledgers, making commissions subject to the law's medical loss ratio restrictions.

Boosting employees' take-home pay by providing voluntary benefits at significantly reduced premiums? That's a winner.

The year that is drawing to a close just might be remembered by benefit professionals as the most challenging one ever. Despite signs of recovery in some sectors of the economy, as 2010 ends the country remains stuck in the worst employment downturn since the Great Depression.

Beverly Beattie, founder and president of Selden Beattie Benefit Advisors, is in the vanguard of advisers who are executing a plan to thrive, not just survive, in the post-reform era. Watch an interview with Beattie on our new video channel, Adviser TV.

As predicted by producer organizations, the interim final rule on medical loss ratios issued Monday by the Department of Health and Human Services left agents and brokers on the administrative side of MLR calculations.

Sam Fleet, president of AmWINS Group Benefits, sees many opportunities to make up for the loss of commission revenue due to health care reform.

The Department of Labor’s new 401(k) fee disclosure requirements that take effect Jan. 1, 2012 go far beyond disclosing mutual fund expense ratios to cover every nook and cranny of expenses in plans, right down to indirect service providers, speakers said at the FundForum USA 2010 conference in Boston Nov. 1.

Unless the lame-duck Congress acts to extend the Bush-era tax cuts about to expire at the end of 2010, the income tax rates that will take effect Jan. 1, 2011 will return to the rates that were in effect a decade ago. The result: More money will be withheld from paychecks, according to an analyst at the tax publisher CCH.

When California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in late September signed bills creating the nation's first state exchange under PPACA, the move was a "disappointment" and "clearly dangerous" to health insurance brokers and advisers, say those who have been following the legislation's development.

At this point we are approaching the end of the year, and many of this year's key renewals have been handled. Undoubtedly your time has been consumed with all the day-to-day tactical activities required to manage your business and to retain your clients. And in all likelihood you are beginning to get used to the potential impact of health care reform and whatever the "new normal" will be.

Maybe it's easier because I'm a woman, but I somehow manage to get on the news or in local trade journals and newspapers a lot ... for free. No paid advertising has ever brought me even half of the income that results from these free radio shows, public appearances and newspaper write-ups. Maybe it's because women tend to have an aura of trust about us that men have to earn. This isn't fair, but few things are.

So, I promised that we’d get back to analyzing health care reform, and I am a woman of my word. We’re going to do things a little different today, though, and make today’s post a listen instead of a read.

Forgive me, pros. I’m a little bleary-eyed today, since I stayed up until after midnight to get the official vote tally (219-210, by the way) and real-time analysis of Sunday’s House vote on health care reform.