Now that the Dodd-Frank bill has passed the Senate, you may be wondering: What does this mean for me?

According to National Underwriter Life & Health, “H.R. 4173 provisions would affect the standard of care that applies when insurance agents and brokers sell investment products, create a Federal Insurance Office (FIO) at the U.S. Treasury Department,  give states of domicile more authority over regulation of reinsurers, impose new standards on the rating agencies, classify indexed annuities governed by National Association of Insurance Commissioners standards as state-regulated insurance products, and impose new suitability standards on sellers of annuities.”

There are eight major components of the financial reform package:

1. Fiduciary responsibility
2. Financial designations
3. Federal insurance office
4. Optional federal charter
5. Financial stability oversight council
6. Consumer financial protection bureau
7. Senior investor protections
8. Equity indexed annuities

So how do you feel this package will begin to transform your practice over the next few years – if at all? Share your thoughts and comments here, and watch our for upcoming coverage from the Summit Business Media life and health group.

Well, the battle (this battle, at least) has finally come to an end. Yesterday, the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals ruled that the SEC didn’t properly analyze the rule’s effect on the indexed annuity market, and tossed out 151A once and for all.

That’s right – if you haven’t heard it already, here it is: Indexed annuities will remain state-regulated, and remain classified as insurance products.

So to celebrate, we’ve gathered the most recent links on the event. Feel free to add your own!

The Battle of 151A: The Indexed Annuity Community Takes on the SEC (National Underwriter Life + Health)

U.S. Court of Appeals Vacates 151A

Federal Court of Appeals Vacates SEC Rule on Indexed Annuity Contracts

SEC Rule 151A Vacated by D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals!

Court Tosses Rule 151A

D.C. Circuit Court Vacates Rule 151A as Arbitrary and Capricious

And, of course, the Agent’s Sales Journal 151A Resource Center.

Update: Here is the official order to vacate Rule 151A.

Last week, the fight to keep indexed annuities state-regulated made a huge step forward when House conferees approved the Harkins amendment to the financial services bill H.R. 4173. That’s good news for agents who have been selling indexed annuities as insurance products and want to continue doing so – the SEC’s Rule 151A, which was passed in 2008 and originally set to go into effect on Jan. 12, 2011, would have regulated indexed annuities at the federal level, as securities, and led to a world of trouble for the popular product’s current distribution system.

Now, all the remains is to sit and wait for the passage of H.R. 4173 in the Senate – but it looks like Democrats are still pushing to get the support they need for the bill, which has beenpassed in the House and reconciles the differences between the House and Senate versions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act bill.

But even though the passage of H.R. 4173 would now mean a victory for the indexed annuity camp, it may not be all roses and sunshine. For one, the financial services bill includes a number of issues of concern for producers – for instance, the creation of a Federal Insurance Office,

And Huffington Post blogger Shahien Nasiripour recently wrote about how the Harkins amendment could end up hurting, not helping, seniors.

So what do you think? Is this the inclusion of the Harkins amendment sweepingly good news? If you sell indexed annuities, are you breathing easier, or are you holding your breath to see whether the financial services bill will actually make it through the Senate? And do you think that it’s a bright spot in what could be an otherwise game-changing bill? Share your thoughts here!

So it appears that President Obama is taking some steps to make sure carriers and employers don’t use the oncoming health care reform as an excuse to make things more costly on everybody.

First, the White House released a set of rules and regulations aimed at discouraging employers from cutting health benefits or raising the cost to employees.

“The rules limit the changes that employers can make if they want to be exempt from certain provisions of the health care law passed by Congress in March,” writes New York Times reporter Robert Pear. It seems that if a company wants grandfather status – health plans in place earning exemption from the reform rules and regulations – they’ll need to be careful about the measures they take to keep costs at a minimum.

Then, on June 22, Obama met with the CEOs of more than a dozen major insurance carriers to warn them against hiking rates simply because they could.

“There are genuine cost drivers that are not caused by insurance companies. But what is also true is that we’ve got to make sure this new law is not being used as an excuse to simply drive up costs,” reported the Washington Post on June 23. “The CEOs here today need to know that they’re going to be required to justify unreasonable premium increases.”

Some groups, such as AHIP, call this a move in the right direction that, if followed, would allow consumers and other industry critics to see that rate increases aren’t just a result of corporate greed. When the cost of care goes up, so must the cost of coverage.

And it’s not just a veiled threat on the part of the President – starting next year, the Department of Health and Human Services is set to begin working with states on annual rate increase reviews, demanding carriers to provide reasoning for “unreasonable” changes. The definition of “unreasonable” is somewhat up in the air – though a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that increases of 20 percent of more aren’t uncommon in the individual market.

So what do you think? Will the guidelines in place help curb unnecessary rate increases and unreasonable activity on the part of employers? Or is it simply smoke and mirrors that will fail to protect consumers from the fallout of reform? Share your opinions here.

I have a confession to make: I’m a little tired of health care reform. Writing about it, hearing about it, soliciting and editing stories about it – it’s kind of getting old. How do I stop writing the same types of leads over and over again? How do I make this topic interesting and fresh?

That’s a pretty heavy confession for the editor of a business-to-business magazine, given that my No. 1 task is making industry issues easier for you to understand, and helping you succeed in the face of these issues. And there has been no industry issue bigger than health care reform in recent memory (at least my recent memory).

All that being said, I gently remind myself that I don’t really need to make it interesting and fresh. That what my lead says is only important to me – what’s important to you is what’s in this bill, how it affects you, and how it affects your clients.

In talking with industry experts and producers, I’ve heard nearly as wide of a variety of opinions as there are people in this world. While putting together a recent story about our 2010 Health Market Study, I spoke with one agent who’s been in the business for more than 30 years and who called himself very conservative. His friends and colleagues are very conservative, too. As a result, he’s really ticked some people off – because he’s all for health care reform. In fact, he said, his only problem with what’s been going on for the past nine months is that Congress hadn’t actually done anything.

Well, at least one agent’s problem went away in late March, when the health care reform legislation was actually passed and President Obama put his signature on it. But then many more problems arose for many more agents – as in, what’s next? And when do these things take affect? And what’s in this bill anyway? And are we still going to have jobs? And oh my gosh, the rate increases will be unbelievable!

One thing’s for certain: All bets were off when we were conducting our annual Health Market Study and putting together this year’s Health Insurance Selling Guide.

So what we’ve done this year is a little bit different from the way we normally approach our annual health insurance package. First, we published the results of the 2010 Agent Media Health Market Study – but we kicked off this year’s Health Insurance Selling Guide with a breakdown of the reform bill’s key components, what they entail, and when they take place. We also offer a more complete version of this timeline, which includes information about the Medicare and Medicaid-focused provisions.

And on our podcasts page, you can find our interview with Kathy Donovan of the Insurance Solutions Group of Wolters Kluwer Financial Services, who talked about what’s happening more immediately with the health care reform bill.

I may be tired of health care reform – but I bet you’re not.