WATERTOWN — At a general overview of Medicare seminar held in late March at Flower Memorial Library, additional chairs had to be brought into the room for the overflow crowd. Barbara M. Ackerman, the program’s host, warmly welcomed all participants and proceeded with her PowerPoint presentation, pausing to answer any questions. At the end, there was applause for the soothing way she explained the basics and particulars of Medicare.
“I’m a people person. I’ve always have been,” Ackerman said Tuesday morning over coffee at Panera Bread in Watertown, one day before she brought her “Medicare 101” program to Massena Public Library on Wednesday evening. People skills form the basis of her company, Senior Benefits NY.
The “senior solutions specialist” and licensed insurance agent helps people navigate Medicare — the U.S. government-funded health insurance program primarily for people 65 and older. Ackerman, a native of Massena and a graduate of Massena High School, travels most of New York State, from Buffalo to Plattsburgh and Massena to Binghamton, sharing her PowerPoint Presentation with a mission of taking the complexity and potential confusion out of Medicare.
She doesn’t charge for her services. Ackerman’s income is derived from commissions linked to private health insurance companies. After enrolling in original Medicare, there are two ways to get additional coverage: Medigap (Medicare Supplement Insurance) is a supplemental plan offered by private insurance companies that work with original Medicare, focusing on coverage “gaps.” Medicare Advantage involves private insurance companies that contract with Medicare as an alternative to original Medicare. While in Medicare Advantage, a patient has a limited network of providers.
Ackerman explained it even further: “Medigap and Advantage Plans are all private insurance companies.” (Excellus, Humana, United Healthcare, etc.) The difference between the two is that Medigap private insurances work with original Medicare to provide supplemental coverage, and the Advantage Plans work in place of Original Medicare.
Some people about to enroll in Medicare may find it all a tangled web.
“Our seminars are educational only,” Ackerman, a North Syracuse resident, said. “There’s no pressure. That’s what I love about it. There’s no selling involved. That’s another reason why I think people like to come to the seminars. There’s no obligation. It’s just a learning experience. But if you learn to trust me or whatever and want my help, that’s great. Or, if you learn what you came to learn and you want to be on your merry way, that’s fine too.”
Ackerman’s Senior Benefits NY works under the umbrella of American Senior Benefits, which operates a hybrid business model, combining elements of independent agents and career insurance agencies. ASB provicdes training, product portfolio and company support.
“We are all our own entity,” Ackerman said. “We are independently owned and create our own business name.” She’s the sole employee of her business.
Ackerman previously worked in administration at Molina Healthcare, which provides healthcare services to families and individuals who qualify for government-sponsored programs, such as Medicaid. She left that job to work at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, where she found doing tasks such as fundraising events more fulfilling. But after three months on that job, in early 2020, the COVID-19 lockdown arrived, which cost Ackerman her job.
“I was getting depressed and went kayaking with a friend of mine one day,” she said. Her friend’s husband was in the insurance business and the couple thought that Ackerman had the right personality for the career. But Ackerman, not liking the idea of selling insurance, was reluctant at first. But she later decided to meet Paul Zobel, the friend’s husband. Zobel is president of American Senior Benefits of New York State.
At first, Ackerman was doing “hard-core selling” over the phone. “I didn’t like it and almost left. The people don’t know you, and they’re like, ‘Where did you get my number!’ It’s invasive, almost. It’s not inviting. Then, we started doing the seminars. Paul came up with the idea of putting together a seminar with a PowerPoint.”
The first seminar was at a community center. “It was very well received,” Ackerman said. “People called us after and asked, ‘Can you come over?’ So, an idea was born. This was toward the end of COVID and a lot of libraries hadn’t opened yet, so we went to senior community centers.”
Most of Ackerman’s seminars are now held at libraries. “People find them easily and most of them have pretty good-sized conference rooms, so that’s what we started doing.”
Ackerman plans her seminars about three months in advance. She suggests people sign up for them when they see public notices about the seminars listed in their areas.
“The most important thing to me is trust,” she said. “It’s huge. You want somebody you can trust because people are making some important decisions and they are entering a pretty important time of their lives, you want somebody to help you who you can trust.”
One reward of her job is seeing seminar attendees feeling more at ease toward Medicare.
“People are surprised about how easy it is once they understand it,” Ackerman said. “But a lot of times, you have to explain it in an easy-to-understand manner, because there’s so much to know. They have to break it down into small segments. If you try to explain everything at once, you can get overwhelmed. It’s a little, bit by bit, and once you understand this segment, you go to the next one.”
Some seminar attendees understand Medicare quite well, Ackerman said, but may just want confirmation that they are doing the right thing.
“That’s fine too,” she said. “There are also people who just want help signing up with Part A (usually no monthly premium; helps pay for inpatient care you get in hospitals, critical access hospitals and skilled nursing facilities) because they’re going to keep their work insurance. Those, I wouldn’t sign up for a plan, and wouldn’t get a commission on that, but that’s OK too.”
Ackerman said she lives by something her late father, Edgar P. Ackerman, impressed upon her: “Treat somebody the way you want to be treated.”
That attitude has paid off. “It’s happening more and more to me now, where people will call me and say like, ‘Joe and Kim Mitchell? You helped them out a couple years ago and got a plan for them?’ They recommended you. So that’s why I’m calling.”
“That’s so sweet,” Ackerman said. “The people are the best part of what I do.”
To find out more about Ackerman and Senior Benefits NY or to contact her, go to her website at seniorbenefitsny.com/
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