What This License Is
The Alaska Health line — formally the accident and health or sickness line of authority, and referred to by the Division as Accident, Health and Sickness since Senate Bill 132 took effect on 1 January 2026 — authorizes you to sell health, disability, dental, vision, Medicare supplement and long-term care coverage in the state.
It is a standalone line with a standalone exam (level 02). Because Alaska has no combined Life and Health exam, choosing Health alone genuinely means one exam rather than two — and the reverse is also true: adding Life later means a whole second exam, not an upgrade. The one saving grace is the fee combination, which lets you sit Life and Health in a single test-center appointment for a single exam fee. If both lines are in your future, see the [Life & Health guide](/insurance/alaska/life-and-health/licensing-guide).
A caution about naming. Three labels are in circulation right now: the Division's "Accident, Health and Sickness" (Bulletin B25-09), NIPR's "Accident & Health or Sickness", and Pearson VUE's outlines, which still print "Accident & Health". They are the same line of authority. Do not let a mismatch on a screen convince you that you selected the wrong thing.
Exam Options & Format
Health is level 02 with Pearson VUE, two parts in one appointment. The March 2025 outlines give the general part 50 scored plus 5 pretest and the Alaska-specific part 40 scored plus 10 pretest — 90 scored and 105 items. The 2023 handbook says 60 and 50, for 110. Times, which appear only in the handbook, are 1 hour 15 minutes and 1 hour.
The Alaska part is built the same way as every other line's: about 30 questions of common-to-all-lines material — licensing, trade practices, claim handling, the director's powers — and about 10 questions of accident-and-health-specific content. That structure has a practical consequence for anyone taking two lines: you answer the same common core twice, so the marginal study cost of a second line is smaller than the question counts suggest.
The Division publishes pass rates, which is unusual and useful. For calendar 2025, Health first-time candidates passed at 56% at test centers (66 of 117). Across all producer lines the online cohort outperformed the test-center cohort — Life was 70% online against 58% in person, Property 87% against 60% — though the online groups are small enough that the gap is suggestive rather than conclusive.
Most Tested Topics on the Alaska Health Exam
Alaska's health law diverges from the national baseline in a few crisp, testable places — most of them about how fast an insurer has to act and who decides an appeal.
| Concept | The Alaska rule |
|---|---|
| Clean-claim payment deadline | 30 calendar days — AS 21.36.495(a) |
| Paper vs. electronic claims | No split. Alaska applies the one 30-day standard to every clean claim, however submitted |
| Late-payment penalty | 15% annual interest, running from the day after notice was due (AS 21.36.495(c)) |
| Requesting more information | The insurer must ask within 30 days, then pay within 15 days of receiving what it asked for |
| External review | Alaska runs its own state process, and the independent review organization's decision is binding on the insurer (AS 21.07.005; 3 AAC 28.966) |
| Medicaid expansion | Yes — effective 1 September 2015, by executive action; Alaska was the 29th state to expand |
| Marketplace | Federal healthcare.gov — Alaska has no state-based exchange |
| CHIP program name | Denali KidCare |
| Long-term care free look | 30 days (AS 21.53.050(a)) |
| Medicare supplement free look | 30 days (3 AAC 28.490(e)) |
| LTC producer training | 8 credit hours one-time, then 4 hours every 24 months (AS 21.53.066) |
| COBRA threshold | 20 or more employees — federal, and Alaska adds no smaller-employer mini-COBRA |
The two items that catch experienced producers are the absence of a paper/electronic split and the binding external review. National prep material trains you to expect two different prompt-pay clocks, typically 30 days for electronic claims and 45 for paper; Alaska has one clock for both, and a question offering "45 days for paper" is offering you the national answer, not the Alaska one. On appeals, the reflex answer is that an external reviewer advises and the plan decides. In Alaska the Division assigns a registered IRO on rotation and the IRO's decision binds the insurer, except to the extent other state-law remedies exist.
One more worth carrying into the exam room: the LTC obligation in AS 21.53.066 is a producer requirement, not a carrier one, and it has two halves — an initial course of at least eight credit hours and an ongoing four hours every twenty-four months. Candidates routinely remember the initial certification and forget the recurring half.
Testing Online with OnVUE — What Alaska Candidates Should Know
OnVUE, Pearson VUE's remote-proctored delivery, is live for Alaska insurance exams and has been throughout the current cycle — the Division's own CY2025 exam performance file reports separate online result lines, so this is not a theoretical option. In a state where eleven of the twelve sites the handbook lists sit on college and vocational campuses and vast regions have no site at all, it is frequently the only way to test without buying a plane ticket.
What you need. Windows 10 or macOS 14 or higher, a webcam and microphone, and a stable connection of at least 6 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up. That bandwidth floor is the catch in rural and village Alaska, where satellite links routinely fall short of it; no Alaska-specific accommodation for that is published, so test your connection before you pay. Run Pearson VUE's system test from the Alaska OnVUE page in advance, on the same machine and the same network you will use.
Check-in. Begin 30 minutes before your appointment. You will need one valid government-issued photo ID whose name matches your booking exactly — this differs from the test center, which demands two forms of signature identification. Create your Pearson VUE web account with your legal name as printed on that ID; a nickname on the account is a common and avoidable cause of a refused check-in. You will photograph your workspace, and a VUE-certified proctor monitors you by webcam and microphone throughout.
The attempt cap is the rule most people miss. Effective 15 October 2023, candidates are allowed four OnVUE attempts per exam. Waiting periods escalate between them: 7 days after the first attempt, 14 days after the second, 30 days after the third. After the fourth attempt, every subsequent attempt must be taken at a physical Pearson VUE test center. There is no equivalent published cap or waiting period for test-center attempts.
Two economic caveats, and both are sharper in Alaska than elsewhere. First, there is no fee combination online — the two-exams-one-fee deal is explicitly test-center only, so an Alaska candidate taking Life and Health online pays twice for the pairing a test center gives away. Second, canceling or rescheduling online requires at least 24 hours' notice (the test-center window is 48 hours, by phone); miss it and you forfeit the fee outright, with no partial tier. Weigh those against what a test center actually costs you here: for a candidate outside the road system, the alternative to OnVUE is a flight.
What It Costs
The Health line costs exactly what any other Alaska line costs, because the $75 biennial license fee is flat for any or all lines. The variable costs are the $89 exam fee per attempt, the $47 fingerprint processing fee, and the unpublished amount your fingerprinter charges to roll the card.
Two ways to spend more than you need to. Filing a paper application when the transaction is available electronically adds $50. And taking the exam online when you intend to sit two lines forfeits the combination fee — at a test center those two exams share one fee.
Eligibility Requirements
The bar is 18 years of age, bona fide Alaska residency before a resident license issues, and a passing exam score (AS 21.27.020). No education prerequisite exists for this or any other Alaska producer line, and the Division's own resident-license page lists the steps without one.
Selling long-term care adds a qualification after licensure rather than before it: AS 21.53.066 requires the initial eight-hour certification before you sell LTC products, and four hours every twenty-four months thereafter. The Division's product-specific training page treats that as a condition of selling the product, not of holding the license.
Keeping Your Health License Active
Important CE details: 24 credit hours per two-year license period, of which at least 3 must be insurance ethics (3 AAC 23.100). Holding more lines of authority does not raise the number. Up to 8 hours carry forward; no more than 8 hours may come from management, marketing and sales training, and those hours cannot be carried over.
24 credit hours every two years, at least 3 of them insurance ethics. That is the whole of the general requirement (3 AAC 23.100), and it does not increase if you add lines. Eight hours may be carried into the next period; management, marketing and sales training is capped at 8 hours and cannot be carried; ethics hours that do carry over count only as general credit.
For Health producers the recurring item to diary is the LTC four hours every 24 months, which runs on its own clock rather than the license cycle. Alaska also exempts some licensees from CE entirely — nonresident licensees under AS 21.27.020(f)(5), holders of temporary and limited-lines licenses, and anyone licensed by the Division before 1 January 1980, a grandfather clause the Division describes as covering licensees continuously licensed since 1979 or prior. Credits are tracked through NAIC State Based Systems, which is also where you search approved courses.
Quick Reference
Official Links
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