Employers' health benefits agents, brokers and consultants may be generating less compensation from health insurance sales than they used to, at a time when Medicare Advantage plan producers' revenue is soaring.
The U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee put figures supporting that conclusion in a Medicare Advantage producer cost report that was released Tuesday.
Markus Bjoerkheim and Jack Dacey, two committee analysts, came up with health insurance producer revenue estimates, then adjusted for inflation by expressing figures from before 2025 in 2025 dollars.
The inflation-adjusted figures show that producers generated $13.8 billion in revenue from selling Medicare Advantage plans and Medicare Part D prescription drug plans in 2025, up from about $5 billion in 2025.
Brokers generated a total of $6.5 billion in commissions and related types of compensation from selling fully insured group health plans in 2025, down 35%, from about $10 billionin 2015, the analysts found.
The analysts based the figures for fully insured group health plans on an analysis of insurers' medical loss ratio reports. The MLR reports include only the amounts producers collect from insurers and managed care companies for selling insurance, not the fees or other compensation they may get for helping to set up and run self-insured health plans or for providing other kinds of services.
Some members of Congress have been talking about reports about high broker compensation levels in the Medicare plan market. The Joint Economic Committee came up with the group health insurance producer compensation totals to put Medicare Advantage plan producer compensation in context.
What it means: The shift to self-insurance, tough employer price negotiations and other forces may be reducing the inflation-amount of compensation brokers get for selling group health coverage.
The backdrop: Members of Congress are already considering a bill that would limit Medicare Advantage broker compensation and add reporting requirements.
The U.S. Labor Department has been promoting cost transparency and sponsor prudence standards that could push employers to look more closely at benefits broker compensation and benefits consultant compensation, as well as at compensation for PBMs and other types of benefits providers.
The focus on producer compensation comes at a time when members of Congress and other policymakers have been talking frequently about concerns about "middlemen."
The report: The analysts who prepared the report noted that an increase in Medicare plan producer compensation might be a good value if the producers are helping enrollees get more suitable coverage.
But the analysts said 10 big issuers seem to be pushing up producer compensation levels.
Many of those large issuers seem to be using relatively aggressive efforts to identify enrollees' health problems in ways that increase the amount of condition-related subsidy revenue that the issuers get from the Medicare program, the analysts said.
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