Required Curriculum
Ethics both individually and throughout society set the benchmark for behavior that is morally right and good. Ethics also encompasses the mission, values, and principles of a profession. A Code of Ethics is used to measure individual and organizational performance against an established benchmark.
To address this important factor in health insurance sales, NABIP has created this course to educate professionals about ethical behavior and the inherent expectations for ethical behavior in their roles in their relationships with their clients and business resources. This course also includes a discussion of the potential ethical concerns created by the Affordable Care Act and the world of advancing technologies. Additionally, this course will satisfy most state requirements.
Employee benefits are a major part of the overall compensation for employees in the marketplace. The significance of the term “employee benefits” has increased in recent years. Whether you use a narrow definition of employee benefits or a broad definition of employee benefits, employee benefits are an important “expectation” for employees to receive when working for an employer and for employers to provide to their employees.
The course covers employee benefits that include medical expense coverage, life insurance, retiree life insurance, disability income, and managed care plans.
To address this important factor in health insurance sales, NABIP has created this course to educate professionals through an introduction to the basic concepts of group benefits and their role in today’s health insurance marketplace.
This course covers advanced topics related to group benefits, including ERISA, Medicaid, and Social Security. NABIP has created this course to educate professionals about advanced group benefits topics.
ERISA is a major federal legislation which widely affects the employee benefits marketplace. It defines an employee welfare benefit plan and the communication and transparency requirements that must be met in order to be compliant with the law. It also defined a fiduciary and established the fiduciary’s role in an ERISA plan. ERISA also established rules around plan discrimination, benefit plan claims procedures, required plan reporting, and the appropriate handling of plan assets.
Medicaid is a federal and state government program that pays for medical assistance for certain individuals and families with low incomes and resources. Medicaid enrollment has grown significantly due to the Affordable Care Act’s guidelines. Medicaid is a highly visible alternative to medical care that is available through the state health insurance exchanges.
In addition to covering the topics on Medicaid and ERISA, this course will explore underwriting and the processes of evaluating an insurance applicant, making decisions about the applicant’s acceptability for insurance coverage, and determining the appropriate basis on which to determine the price for the coverage. The agent or broker needs to understand the pricing and underwriting process, as this is the process which determines the competitive status of his/her proposal for the client.
This program will survey social insurance programs, including Social Security, that are important in the employee benefits marketplace. Social benefits account for nearly one quarter of the dollars that employers spend on benefits for their employees. For some employees, the social insurance benefits serve as the foundation for the employee’s benefit program; for other employees, the social insurance benefits may be the only benefits they have.
ACA and Beyond: A Modern Look at Employee Benefits (CE status by state)
Developed by experts in both the Patient Protection and Affordable Care (ACA) and overall employee benefits law, this high-level course will ensure that the student understands the key technical components of the ACA. Additionally, its goal is to ensure that students are aware of how the law came to be enacted, the ACA’s place in the overall body of federal and state laws regulating public and private healthcare and health insurance program, and how the law may evolve and change in the future.
Students that complete this certification program will be better prepared to counsel both individual and business consumers of health insurance on the specifics of the ACA impacting new options and requirements for health plans the law has created, and how to best help consumers moving forward.This course includes a digital version of the textbook.
Electives (Choose 3)
Account-Based Health Plans Certification (CE status by state)
Our workforce is changing in terms of where we work, how we work and the way we work. This means that health plans, particularly employer-sponsored health plans, are often offered with various types of accounts. Some accounts may even be offered on their own to be used in ways that are different than they have been used in the past.
Knowing which account to use for each of your clients is critical and NABIP has created a new course to ensure you remain on the cutting edge of innovative new opportunities.
Advanced Benefit Account Manager Certification (CE status by state)
The curriculum content for this course is developed by contributors and instructors having played a critical part in the development of the Benefit Account Manager certification course. NABIP’s lead instructors deliver their knowledge online in a meaningful way that explains principles from a practitioner’s view. The purpose of this advanced level of benefit account management training is to provide seasoned professionals with a deeper understanding of the complex role they play while achieving a higher level of confidence in supporting clients while conveying the value of benefits using creative consultation, regardless the size of the group. Account managers employers expect them to serve as the primary relationship owner for an assigned group of top tier client accounts with demonstrating ownership for retention and growth. With the completion of this course account managers will ensure clients derive maximum value from their services, prepare implementation plans and lead client onboarding, present content strategy, and play an integral part of their client’s annual plan. Delivery will consist of online lectures paired with written versions of the curriculum that covers, definitions, and includes quiz exercises to ensure comprehension.
Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements (ICHRA) Certification (CE status by state)
ICHRA is an evolution of the standard HRA. What makes an ICHRA unique is that it can reimburse employees tax-free for individual health insurance premiums. This means employers may choose to forgo offering a traditional group health plan to employees. Instead, employees offered and accepting an ICHRA buy their own individual health insurance plan and receive tax-free premium reimbursement for some or all the cost. This plan type puts employers in the driver’s seat. They design their plan, determine the participants, and establish the limits.
Individual Health Insurance Certification (CE status by state)
Health insurance protects financial security as a person anticipates and moves through life’s various stages. Adequate health insurance helps to build and maintain financial security by shielding a person from financial setbacks that could compromise that security should ill health or injury occur at any stage in life. Employer funding of health insurance has declined significantly over the past 30 years which places more responsibility on the individual to provide his or her own financial protection.
Agents and Brokers ensure their clients to have products of value that provide peace of mind and protect against significant losses. The client becomes the policy owner and the insurer backs the promises in the contract. Underwriting is an essential function in all forms of insurance. It is the process of evaluating an insurance applicant, making decisions about the applicant’s acceptability for insurance coverage, and determining the appropriate basis on which to provide coverage and charge a premium.
NABIP created this course for professionals to better assist their clients in working towards an immediate goal of becoming protected against insurer insolvency and unfair treatment by insurers. Health insurance is arguable the most heavily regulated type of insurance; it protects almost irreplaceable personal values that are directly related to health and well-being, earning a living, and the conduct of life’s basic activities. Purchasing individual health insurance is a process that relies on a number of fundamental components such as insurability of health-related expenses, sources for individual health insurance, and the market for individual health insurance. This course will educate you on the Affordable Care Act, the purchasing process for individual medical expense coverage differences and comparisons from the purchasing process for individual disability and long term care.
Medical expense policies provide the benefits for health care services purchased on an individual basis. Historically, principal policies were limited to hospital and physician services related to inpatient care and surgery and had fixed or scheduled benefit limits. The Affordable Care Act expanded coverage requirements with the inclusion of essential health benefits, eliminated lifetime and annual maximum limits, eliminated health status as underwriting criteria and eliminated pre-existing condition clauses for medical expense plans.
Pharmaceutical Facts, Policy and The Market Today Certification (CE status by state)
The Pharmaceutical Facts, Policy and the Market Today Certification has been developed by NABIP to educate, explain, and discuss the many parts of prescription drugs and their impact on America's healthcare and health benefits. This course will explore the interaction between stakeholders, clinical and economic positives, obstacles that affect those that profit, and population that rely on prescription drugs. Students will gain a foundation of the industry, role of prescription drugs as a means of providing medical treatment, payment of those benefits and predictions for the future.
Developed by experts in the market space, this three-hour course instruction will ensure that students understand the key technical components of self-funding and are better prepared to counsel their clients on the various benefits of elimination of most premium tax, lowering cost of administration, claims/administration and customer service for employees.
Historically, employers have turned to the self-funding of their health plans when traditional insurance programs failed to meet their cost expectations. The many thousands of employers in the U.S. who have implemented self-insured medical programs later discovered the other advantages such as coverage flexibility and client-specific benefit plan administration. Self-funding is one of the most effective ways employers can control the rising costs of healthcare coverage. In understanding self-funding as a concept and how it differs from fully insured products, this course will help provide in detail how it all works and proven methods for communicating this option to employers and employees in a compelling way.
Advanced Self-Funding Certification (CE status by state)
This five-hour course will begin with paying distinct attention to regulatory concerns, service-model options, cost-containment strategies and underwriting. Class participants will walk through unique issues that self-funded plans must face due to mergers and acquisitions followed by a concentration of study covering the integration of next-generation elements in plan design, transparency tools, quality-based models, cost-sharing and control, tool integration and incentives, and payment controls.
Single-Payer Healthcare Certification (CE status by state)
Members of Congress are discussing whether a single-payer system, such as in Canada and other countries, would be the way to achieve universal coverage in the United States. Some of the proposals being considered may look similar to systems we have today, but are still single-payer systems or a pathway to single payer. Would you recognize a single-payer system? These systems exist all over the world and we can learn from those that are already in existence. This issue is not only an issue of political contention, but one that is being broadly discussed on an ongoing basis.
It is critical for health insurance professionals to understand what a single-payer system would mean for their families, clients and country. This three-hour course provides in-depth instruction from NABIP CEO Janet Trautwein on the importance of the overall functioning of healthcare delivery and financing in the United States, the structure of single-payer systems in other countries, and detailed information on legislation that has been introduced in Congress or proposed by political candidates. It also includes important references for supplemental reading, continuing education credits and a final exam.
Wellness Certification (4th Edition) (CE status by state)
Employee benefits professionals get asked complex questions every day. Employers want increased productivity, reduced absenteeism, higher engagement and lower medical costs. The ability to answer these questions and provide timely, effective advice is essential. For this reason, NABIP released the fourth edition of its Corporate Wellness Certification, which addresses company wellness needs in a comprehensive overview.
After earning this certification, you will be better able to communicate the need for wellness and prevention, demonstrate the effectiveness of wellness with proven case studies, build sound business cases for wellness, and confidently provide guidance on implementation.