Health Insurance…

On December the 1^st I’m slated to start my new job with Kentucky Farm Bureau. That job, as an insurance agent, waits for me only if I can pass my health insurance licensing exam this coming Tuesday. I’ve been in the insurance business for 15 years but in all that time I’ve never written health insurance; never needed to.

I started out as a life insurance agent, selling policies door to door. Those were lean days, let me tell you. At that time I only had my life insurance license, because,… well that’s all you need to sell life insurance door to door. Then later on when I joined my father in his crop insurance business it seemed to make sense to go back and get licensed for property and casualty insurance as well so that I could sell crop insurance, but also auto insurance, home insurance, etc… But in all that time I never wanted or needed to sell health insurance, which it seemed to me was probably the most difficult and complicated of all the insurance types.

However, now Farm Bureau says they won’t hire me without it. So I’ve got this month to complete my training class (which I’ve done), study the material (which I’m doing), and take the test (which I will do on Tuesday), so no pressure. On a positive note, I’ve never failed an insurance licensing exam. I don’t expect I will this time either. Once the test is passed I will have all insurance licenses and could write any kind of insurance under the sun if my company offers it.

So is health insurance as hard as I thought it would be? Well, yes and no. No in the sense that it’s still insurance and so many of the principles of insurance are the same. Everything from mitigating risk, to contracts, to companies, to terminology is the same no matter what type of insurance it is. So when we learn that an insurance contract is a unilateral contract (meaning that only party, the company, is required to perform its duties under the contract) we can know that this remains true for all types of insurance; life, health, car, home, etc… So in that way, I already know a lot of this material.

However, health insurance is indeed an onerous subject matter to master. There are numerous types of policies offered by numerous types of companies which cover numerous types of situations for numerous types of clients. Keeping all the different combinations straight and making sure you know the rules for the interactions of each is a monumental task.

I was pleasantly surprised to know that we didn’t have to fool with learning any of the new Obamacare provisions yet. It seems that because the law doesn’t fully go into effect until January 1^st that the licensing test has not been updated with the new material, so I didn’t have to learn it. That’s good and bad. Good that I didn’t have to learn it for the test, but bad that I’m going to have to learn it on the job later when the law goes into effect. So eventually,…. I’ll have to learn it.

I have opinions on Obamacare but I’ll save those for another post. Those of you that know me know what they are (I’m not a fan). At some point I’d like to lay out all the reasons why, but the points are too numerous to list here.

So, until Tuesday, I’m stuck in study mode. If you don’t see or hear much from me on the interwebs, you’ll know why. Nose in the book!!!!!