The dust may have settled on the Hill for now, but agents and carriers alike can almost certainly expect more change. But where does “reform” leave health agents and benefits brokers right now? Is it time to get out, or get ahead?

By the time you read this, it could all change. Yet, health reform's regulatory chaos has some analysts already discarding health insurance agents as the first casualty of health care reform. Rest in peace to those who find their fate relegated to the same career trash heap as travel agents, a gratuitous intermediary likely facing a complete phase out.

If the gloomy undertone is getting to you, it might be because it's hard to ignore the death knells. Like the one from Merill Matthews, a Forbes contributor from the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas: “I began to warn health insurance agents in speeches and on conference calls that when Obama referred to administrative waste, he was talking about them.”