Fontainebleau Hotel on Miami Beach. Credit: Monteleone/Adobe Stock
The National Association of Business and Insurance Professionals is bringing hundreds of benefits brokers, consultants, vendor representatives and benefits analysts to Miami Beach, Florida, this week to come up with ideas for getting health benefits through all of the upheaval.
NABIP's latest annual convention began Saturday and is set to end Tuesday.
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The focus of the agenda is less on insurers providing fleshed-out, fully insured plans for employers and more on employers and their advisors cobbling something together.
Related: NABIP 2024 Annual Convention: 7 key moments
NABIP's own hot new project is a compliance requirements certification program for agents who will be helping consumers with Medicare enrollment and Medicare Advantage plans
Dave Dickey, chief executive officer of Second Story Sales, told the story of employer plan sponsor stress with a slide with the headline "Employers are raising deductibles."
Sponsors like Excel Health Plans and exhibitors like Ault International Medical Management are at the convention to talk about efforts to help small and midsize employers create and manage their own self-insured plans.
Several speakers are talking about plan administration tech, and the agenda for Tuesday features a session on the pharmacy benefit manager controversy. One of the panelists scheduled to appear in the PBM session is Mark Cuban, the famous "Shark Tank"alum and mail-order pharmacy founder.
Other speakers are talking about moves to use individual coverage health reimbursement arrangements and other, ICHRA-like accounts to provide employer cash that workers can use to be their health coverage through the Affordable Care Act public exchange system.
Peter Nelson, the new deputy administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the director of the CMS Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, appeared for a general session Sunday with NABIP Chief Executive Officer Jessica Brooks-Woods,
CCIIO is the CMS agency directly in charge of HealthCare.gov, state-based ACA exchange programs and other ACA commercial health insurance programs.
Nelson is, in effect, the head of efforts by the administration of President Donald Trump to run ACA programs.
Nelson made it clear that he's a strong supporter of the new employer-sponsored cash-for-coverage health plans. "I'll admit to earning the reputation of 'Mr. ICHRA,'" he told Brooks-Woods, according to a NABIP account of the session.
Nelson also made it clear that he's a supporter of agents and brokers.
"You are essential to the open enrollment period," Nelson said.
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
