About O’Neal Insurance Group: A Black-Owned Medicare Agency

A Black-owned Medicare agency that answers its own phone

O’Neal Insurance Group is an independent, Black-owned Medicare agency. We are not a call center, not a lead-generation site, and not tied to a single carrier. When you ring (877) 808-2900, you reach a licensed agent, not a queue.

We help people compare Medicare Advantage, Medicare Supplement (Medigap), and Part D prescription drug plans, and we do it at no cost to you. Most of our clients come from Nevada, Mississippi, and Illinois, though we are licensed considerably more widely.

Being a Black-owned Medicare agency is not a marketing line for us. It shapes who walks through the door, what questions they arrive with, and how much explaining we are willing to do before anyone signs anything.

How we are paid, and why you should ask

This is the question people are most reluctant to ask and most entitled to an answer on. Our services cost you nothing. Agents are compensated by the insurance carrier for the plan you choose, not by you, and your premium is identical whether you enroll through us or directly with the carrier.

More importantly, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services caps what an agent may be paid, and the cap is identical for every Medicare Advantage plan. No carrier can outbid another to win your enrollment, so an agent does not earn more for steering you to one plan over another. The published figures are further down this page.

That rule is what makes an independent Black-owned Medicare agency genuinely useful rather than merely well-intentioned. We have no financial reason to prefer one carrier, so we can compare them honestly — and tell you when the best answer is a plan we do not sell.

Where we are licensed

James O’Neal holds resident and non-resident insurance licenses in 30 states and the District of Columbia — unusually wide reach for a Black-owned Medicare agency of our size. Our deepest local knowledge is in three markets.

Nevada. Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Henderson and Summerlin, across the Clark County provider networks. Nevada also has a Medigap birthday rule that most beneficiaries are unaware of.

Mississippi. Jackson, the Gulf Coast from Gulfport through Biloxi to Pascagoula, Hattiesburg, Southaven and the DeSoto County suburbs.

Illinois. Chicago and the surrounding Cook County communities, where the Illinois birthday rule gives a narrow and frequently misunderstood window to change Medigap policies.

You can verify any agent’s license yourself through your state’s insurance department. We would rather you did.

Black Medicare Plan Agent/Broker States I am licensed and authorized to offer

What to Expect During Your First Meeting local near me in: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Chicago Illinois, Indiana, Kansas Kentucky, New Orleans Louisiana, Henderson, Summerlin, North Las Vegas, Michigan, Jackson Hattiesburg Petal Gulfport Laurel Gulfport Biloxi Pascagoula Ocean Springs Moss Point Mississippi, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, D.C., District of Columbia, and Wisconsin.

Medicare Plans Carriers: We help you with comparing all your coverage options, enrolling, and joining

Medigap, Medicare Part C, Advantage plans, Health Insurance by States; we offer agent/broker phone, Google Meet, and Zoom meeting help. Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.

What working with a Black-owned Medicare agency looks like

The first conversation

We start with your doctors, your prescriptions, and your budget — in that order. Before we discuss specific plans, Medicare marketing rules require a recorded Scope of Appointment that covers the product lines you agree to discuss. That form protects you and commits you to nothing.

The comparison

We price your actual medication list against each plan’s formulary, check every physician you want to keep against the plan directory, and compare the annual out-of-pocket maximum rather than just the premium. Two plans with identical monthly costs routinely differ by thousands of dollars once your real prescriptions are entered.

After you enroll

The Part that separates a Black-owned Medicare agency you can call from a phone number you dialed once. We review your plan each autumn when the Annual Notice of Change arrives, because formularies, networks and copays move every January. If your plan is no longer tight, we say so.

We also help with the unglamorous parts: a denied claim, a replacement Medicare card, an Extra Help application, or working out which enrollment window you are actually in.

What we will not do

We do not cold-call. We do not turn up at doors uninvited. We do not offer gifts to persuade anyone to enroll, and we do not tell people a deadline expires today when it does not.

We will not recommend a Medicare Advantage plan to someone who travels constantly and needs Original Medicare with a Medigap policy. We will not talk anyone out of a plan that is working simply because another one pays the same commission.

If you have been called by someone claiming to be from Medicare and asking for your Medicare number or your bank details, that was not Medicare. Hang up and report it to 1-800-MEDICARE. Those are the standards we hold ourselves to as a Black-owned Medicare agency, and most of them are also the law.

Compliance and your protections

Medicare sales are tightly regulated because the market has been abused. Every agent must be appointed by each carrier they represent, must complete annual certification, and must record a Scope of Appointment before any plan-specific discussion.

Enrollment calls are recorded and retained. You have the right to see every plan available in your ZIP code, not only the ones an agency happens to be appointed with, and you have the right to a straight answer about which carriers an agency represents. Ask any Black-owned Medicare agency — or any agency at all — that question before you begin.

We are not connected with or endorsed by the United States government or the federal Medicare program. Nobody who is will ever tell you otherwise.

Why people look for a Black-owned Medicare agency

Some clients come to us specifically because we are a Black-owned Medicare agency, and it is worth being direct about why rather than pretending the question never comes up.

Health outcomes in this country still differ by race in ways that are well documented, and a good many older Black Americans have had experiences with the medical and insurance systems that taught them to be careful. Sitting across from someone who does not need that explained from scratch saves a conversation, and sometimes it saves the whole appointment.

There is a practical dimension too. Plan networks are not distributed evenly across a city. Knowing which hospitals and clinics people in a particular neighborhood actually use — and which ones a given plan quietly leaves out — is local knowledge, and it is the kind a national call center does not have.

Other clients come to us for reasons unrelated to any of this: a neighbor’s recommendation, a search for a local agent, or a poor experience with a television advertisement. That is equally fine. A Black-owned Medicare agency still gets measured on whether it put you in the right plan.

What we would say is this. Choose an agency based on whether it will pick up the telephone in February, when there is no commission in it and your claim has been denied. That is the test that matters after the paperwork is signed, and it is the one nobody asks about in October.

Questions worth asking any agency

Whether you work with us, a Black-owned Medicare agency elsewhere, or a national firm, the same short list of questions will tell you most of what you need to know.

• Which carriers are you appointed with — and which plans in my ZIP code can you therefore not show me?
• Will you price my actual prescriptions, by name and dose, against each plan’s formulary?
• Will you check each of my doctors individually against the plan directory, including the medical group?
• Who do I call in March if a claim is denied or a drug is refused?
• Are you paid the same amount regardless of which plan I choose?
• The actual numbers
• What an agent has to do every single year to keep selling

An agency that answers all five plainly is worth your time. One that deflects on the first or the last is telling you something useful, and you should listen to it.

For what it is worth, our answers are: we are appointed with the major national carriers and the regional plans in our licensed states and will tell you on the call exactly which; yes; yes; you call the same number and get the same person; and yes, identical, because CMS sets it.

Medicare reference charts

The charts below cover the ground most questions start from.

The actual numbers, since we said you are entitled to ask

Most agencies stop at “the carrier pays us.” A Black-owned Medicare agency has no more reason to be vague about it than anyone else, and the figures are published anyway.

CMS sets a maximum broker compensation amount every year and publishes it. For 2026 the national maximum on a Medicare Advantage enrollment is $694 in the first year and $347 for each renewal year after that. For a standalone Part D drug plan it is $114 initially and $57 on renewal. A few states are set higher — Connecticut, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia at $781, California and New Jersey at $864.

For 2027 those national figures rise to $725 initial and $363 renewal on Medicare Advantage, and $130 and $65 on Part D.

One point of precision worth making

It is often said, including on this site until recently, that CMS sets the commission so every carrier pays the same. That is close but not exact, and the difference matters if you are relying on it.

What CMS sets is a ceiling. A carrier may pay the full amount, less than it, or nothing at all. What the ceiling guarantees is that no carrier can outbid another to win your enrollment, which removes the largest incentive to steer anybody anywhere.

So the honest version is this: the cap is identical across Medicare Advantage plans, most carriers pay at or near it, and you are entitled to ask any agency — this Black-owned Medicare agency included — whether any carrier it represents pays it differently from the others. We will answer that question.

The renewal structure is the part that shapes behavior most. Renewals are capped at half the initial amount and continue for as long as you stay enrolled. An agency that moves people every year to collect a new first-year commission is doing something visible and self-defeating. Keeping you in a plan that still works pays better over any sensible horizon.

Medicare Supplement policies sit outside this structure entirely, which is why a Black-owned Medicare agency should be asked about them separately, because Medigap is regulated by the states rather than by CMS. Commission there is set by the insurer and varies. That is another fair question to ask, and the answer should not be evasive.

What an agent has to do every single year to keep selling

A state insurance license is only the first requirement. Selling Medicare Advantage or Part D adds a second layer that resets annually, and it is more demanding than most people assume.

Every agent must complete annual training and testing on Medicare rules and marketing requirements, and must score at least 85 percent to pass. That has to be done before the agent may market the coming year’s plans. On top of it, each carrier runs its own product certification, which must also be passed, carrier by carrier, every year.

That is why agents become hard to reach in late summer, at this Black-owned Medicare agency as much as anywhere. Anyone representing a dozen carriers is sitting a dozen sets of examinations before October.

The license and the appointment are separate things, and both matter. A license is issued by a state and says a person may sell insurance there. An appointment is a contract with a particular carrier and says they may sell that carrier’s products. An agent can hold a valid license and still not be appointed with the carrier whose plan they are describing.

Both are checkable, and they apply to every agent at this Black-owned Medicare agency. State insurance departments publish license lookups, and most show carrier appointments and any disciplinary history alongside. It takes a few minutes and we would rather you did it than took our word for anything.

None of this makes a Black-owned Medicare agency good. It is the floor, not the standard. What it does mean is that when a Black-owned Medicare agency tells you it represents twenty-three organizations, that claim has a paper trail behind it — and you can pull it.

Ask all of it before you commit to anyone. A Black-owned Medicare agency that cannot answer plainly how it is paid, what it is licensed to sell and which carriers it is appointed with is not one you should be handing your Medicare number to.

Check any of this independently.

You should never take an agency’s word for how Medicare works, including ours.

• Medicare.gov Plan Compare — every plan sold in your ZIP code, priced with your prescriptions
• SHIP National Technical Assistance Center — free counseling in every state, from people who sell nothing
• National Association of Insurance Commissioners — look up any agent’s license and complaint history.
• Social Security Administration — Extra Help with prescription drug costs

Where to start

• Meet James O’Neal — the licensed agent you will actually speak to
• Book a no-cost appointment — in person, by telephone or by video
• Medicare Simplified — the full beginner’s guide if you would rather read first
• What Medicare Advantage costs and how Medigap works
• The five Medicare deadlines that matter

Or call (877) 808-2900. There is no cost, no obligation, and no script — just a Black-owned Medicare agency that will tell you the truth about your options, including when the truth is that your current plan is fine.

For over the last 38 years, The O’Neal Insurance Group a Black owned Medicare Plan Agency for Life, Health, and Insurance Agency has helped thousands find the lowest rates and the best Medicare Advantage HMO or PPO and Medigap/Medicare Supplemental plans to protect themselves and their families in over 30 states by providing free help/guidance, education on how to instantly compare plans options doctors network and enroll onlime or over the phone into a individual and family ACA, Medicare, Health, Dental, Insurance Coverage that meets or exceeds their needs.

One last thing worth saying plainly. Choosing a Black-owned Medicare agency should never mean settling for a smaller list of plans. We compare the same carriers and the same county menus any national firm would, at the same cost to you, which is nothing. If a Black-owned Medicare agency cannot show you every plan in your ZIP code, that is a reason to keep looking — and it is a question we are happy to answer first.