James Mahoney

As an independent health insurance agent for the past seven years, I have educated people of all ages providing choices to gain affordable insurance appropriate to their circumstances including benefits/risk tolerance. Through this approach independent agents provide a beneficial community service while usually saving families several hundreds of dollars per month. I have reduced family insurance costs an average of $3000 annually by placing members on individual health insurance plans with comparable benefits to employers' plans. Generally citizens do not know how to access health insurance information and make comparisons by themselves. We agents do this for a living and are paid commissions for this valuable service. These commissions were reduced by 33 1/3 % for which all of the health insurance companies blamed the PPACA legislation under the mandatory Medical Loss Ratio. In order to restore a continuing decent living for independent health insurance agents who are mostly middle income earners and also to attract quality new people to our profession, I am requesting that agent commissions be considered non-administrative costs outside of the 80/20 medical loss ratio so that insurance companies can pay independent agents a fee commensurate with their efficacious performance of services to the citizenry. Thank you for considering this request. James Mahoney 540.569.0871