PDPs: to shop, or not to shop? That is the question.

If you're a Medicare agent, you know the dilemma. Stand-alone Part D plans have become the great unpaid — or nearly unpaid — labor of our industry. And every year around this time, agents quietly wrestle with the same decision: do I keep shopping PDPs for my clients, or do I finally stop?

Quick word on where I'm coming from. I've personally sat down with more than 6,000 Medicare and ACA agents in individual meetings — my team has met with just as many. This summer alone we attended 25 Medicare agent events across the country. At RetireFlo, we've processed millions of drug lists on behalf of agents in all 50 states (yes, we finally have an agent in Alaska — welcome aboard). And before RetireFlo, I served as VP of Operations at Seniority Benefit Group, serving 25,000 MA and Supplement beneficiaries, including thousands of PDPs.

I've heard every possible take on this question. They sort into two camps.

Camp 1: The Masochists (said with love)

Shop the PDPs. Do the work for little or nothing. Why? It earns goodwill, opens the door to cross-selling, and keeps your client from wandering to the agent down the street who will shop it.

My dad, the president of Seniority Benefit Group, has a great analogy: shopping PDPs is like a nice restaurant giving out free bread. The restaurant loses money on bread — but nobody comes for the bread. They come for the experience, and the bread is part of why they come back.

Camp 2: The Time Protectors

Don't shop them. Save yourself boatloads of hours during the busiest eight weeks of your year. Train your clients to shop on Medicare.gov instead — empower them, don't enable them. And the bigger-picture argument: every time we absorb significant unpaid work, we signal to carriers that we always will. Why would that ever change if we keep proving it?

So who's right?

Both. It's a sticky wicket, and anyone claiming there's one obviously correct answer hasn't sat across the table from as many agents as we have. I've met wildly successful agents in both camps.

But here's what I'll say with total conviction:

Whatever you choose — decide now, communicate it transparently to your book, and stick with it all the way through AEP.

The agents who get burned aren't the shoppers or the non-shoppers. They're the waverers. The ones who announce in October that they're not doing PDP reviews, cave for squeaky wheels in November, then field an angry December call from the client who took them at their word.

Both paths will produce some friction. That's the business. Set the precedent, hold the line, learn from it, and posture for next year — because this trend is not getting better.

If you DO shop them: guardrails, not open bars

For Camp 1 agents, the best move is making your generosity structured. Free bread, yes. Unlimited breadsticks on demand at 9pm on December 6th, no.

Build rigid guidelines around your process. Many of our agents require beneficiaries to complete a RetireFlo intake before they get a PDP quote. No intake, no quote. It filters for clients who are serious, and it ensures you're working from clean, complete, current information.

And get a fresh drug list. Every. Single. Year.

We hear this from agents constantly: “Well, I've got their drug list from last year, so it's not that hard.”

I understand the instinct. I also want to lovingly tell you that last year's drug list is expired milk. Nearly nine in ten adults 65+ take prescription meds, and more than half take four or more. Doctors add, swap, and adjust all year long — while plans reshuffle formularies and tiers every January 1st. Between the client's regimen changing and the plan's coverage changing, the odds that last year's list tells this year's story are slim. After processing millions of drug lists, I can tell you: a year-old list is almost never the current picture.

And a stale list isn't just sloppy — it's a grievance waiting to happen. Imagine catching a CMS grievance on a plan you didn't even get paid to write. That's not free bread anymore. That's paying the restaurant for the privilege of baking it.

Fresh list, every year. It protects your client and it protects you.

Honesty Hour

I believe in agents. I've met too many sharp, hardworking, client-obsessed professionals to believe otherwise. The PDP dilemma is real and it's not going away — but it's absolutely manageable for agents who approach it with intention instead of improvisation.

Before AEP kicks off: pick your camp. Write down your policy. Tell your clients. Hold the line.

To shop or not to shop — either answer can be right. The only wrong answer is not answering at all.

How are you going to manage your PDPs this year? Drop it in the comments below.