Paid the same either way
Carrier commissions for Medicare plans are set by CMS and are effectively identical across the plans we offer. We have no financial reason to push one over another, and we will say so out loud when a client asks.
About Penny Shield
We started because a good explanation was strangely hard to find.
Penny Shield, LLC is an independent Medicare agency. Our whole method is to explain the tradeoffs clearly, put them in writing, and then get out of the way while you decide.
Our story
It started with a stack of unopened mail.
Our founder spent an afternoon in 2019 helping his mother sort through forty-one pieces of Medicare marketing mail. Not one of them explained the difference between a Medicare Advantage plan and a Medicare Supplement policy. Several implied a deadline that did not exist. Two looked close enough to official government correspondence to be alarming.
She was an intelligent, careful person who had run a bookkeeping business for thirty years, and she could not make the decision — not because it was beyond her, but because nobody had laid out the actual choice.
Penny Shield exists to be the missing explanation. We are a licensed agency, so we can enroll you when you are ready. But the part of the job we care about is the hour before that, where the options finally make sense.
Our approach
Four rules we do not bend.
These are not aspirations. They are the conditions under which we agreed to do this work, and the reason we turn down some of the lead sources that other agencies buy.
No same-day decisions
We do not use deadline pressure as a sales tool. The Annual Enrollment Period is eight weeks long and your Initial Enrollment Period is seven months. There is time, and we will tell you exactly how much.
Everything in writing
Any recommendation we make comes as a one-page comparison with premiums, copays, out-of-pocket maximums, network notes and drug tiers. You keep it, you show it to whoever you want, and you hold us to it.
Licensed and appointed
Every person who speaks with you holds an active health insurance producer license in your state and completes carrier certification and AHIP training annually. Ask for a license number and you will get one.
Team philosophy
We hire for patience, not for closing rate.
Agents here are salaried with a small quality bonus tied to client retention and complaint-free service, not to enrollment volume. It is a slower business model. It also means nobody on this team has a reason to rush you off the phone.
Every conversation is documented, every recommendation is reviewed by a second licensed agent before it goes out, and every client gets an annual check-in in October whether or not they bought anything from us last year.
When a plan we do not carry is clearly the better fit, we tell you and point you to Medicare.gov or your State Health Insurance Assistance Program. That happens a few times a month and it is fine.
- states where our agents hold active licenses
- 50states where our agents hold active licenses
- carrier organizations we are appointed with
- 9carrier organizations we are appointed with
- the year we started doing this
- 2019the year we started doing this
- of annual reviews that end with no plan change
- 1/3of annual reviews that end with no plan change
Want the explanation before the sales pitch?
That is the only kind we give. Start with a question, not a commitment.
We do not offer every plan available in your area. Any information we provide is limited to those plans we do offer in your area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-MEDICARE, or your local State Health Insurance Assistance Program to get information on all of your options.