What the Louisiana Accident & Health Line Covers
La. R.S. 22:1546 names this line "accident and health or sickness", and it carries individual and group medical, disability income, Medicare supplement, long-term care and the accident and specified-disease products alongside them. It is one line of authority on the single Louisiana producer licence issued by the Louisiana Department of Insurance, whose Commissioner is elected statewide rather than appointed.
The Louisiana health market has a shape the exam tests. Louisiana expanded Medicaid under the ACA with coverage beginning 1 July 2016, delivered through Healthy Louisiana, the state's managed-care programme run by the Louisiana Department of Health. Children are covered through LaCHIP. And Louisiana runs no state-based exchange — individual buyers use HealthCare.gov.
Louisiana sells both routes into this material. Series 102 alone is 100 questions and $36; the combined Series 103 Life, Health and Accident or Sickness is 150 questions and $58. Since there is no pre-licensing coursework on either path, the combined exam costs forty extra minutes and buys a second line of authority — and saves the $75 amendment fee you would pay to add Life later. The Life guide argues the same case from the other side.
And there is a reason to read the surplus lines section below even if the idea seems remote. Louisiana restricts its Surplus Lines credential to producers who already hold either Property & Casualty or Accident & Health — and have held it for two years. Most people assume surplus lines is a P&C-only world. In Louisiana it is not, and this licence is one of the two keys.
Exam Options & Format
The Louisiana health exam is PSI Series 102 — Louisiana Examination for Health and Accident or Sickness Insurance: 100 questions in 120 minutes for $36. No pretest or unscored items are disclosed in the content outline or the bulletin.
The passing standard is a raw 70%. The outline prints "Minimum Passing Score … 70% Correct", and La. R.S. 22:1545 puts the same rule in statute: "the applicant shall pass the examination if he achieves a score of at least seventy percent." Most PSI states report a scaled score. Louisiana does not, so seventy of the hundred is exactly the target.
Your result is immediate. The score appears on screen and a report is emailed; a failing report carries a section-level diagnostic. The Personal Lines guide covers what that report tells you, the one-year score validity, and why Louisiana's retake rules are among the most forgiving in the country.
Retakes are quick and uncapped. There is no mandatory waiting period — only the fact that you cannot rebook the same day while scores process — and "there is no limit to the number of times you may take an examination." Each attempt is a fresh $36. The Personal Lines guide covers results and retake strategy in full.
There is no remote option: "Effective 7/8/24 remote testing will no longer be offered as a testing option." All testing is in person, and unusually the Louisiana bulletin prints its test-center addresses — nine of them — which the Property guide sets out.
Most Tested Topics on the Louisiana Health Exam
Louisiana's health questions cluster where the state legislated its own numbers rather than taking a federal or national default. Each row is anchored in the Revised Statutes:
| Concept | The Louisiana rule |
|---|---|
| Clean claim, electronic | 25 days to pay (R.S. 22:1833(B)) |
| Clean claim, paper | 45 days to pay — Louisiana splits by medium (R.S. 22:1832(A)) |
| Late-payment consequence | 12% per year interest on a clean claim not paid on time (R.S. 22:1832(C); 22:1833(D)) |
| External review | Binding, through an Independent Review Organization; requested within 4 months of the final internal denial (R.S. 22:2436; 22:2439) |
| Federal COBRA threshold | 20+ employees |
| Louisiana continuation — who | Group coverage not subject to federal COBRA, with a prior continuous-coverage condition (R.S. 22:1046) |
| Louisiana continuation — how long | Up to 12 months (R.S. 22:1046(G)) |
| Louisiana continuation — cost | Up to 100% of the group rate — Louisiana adds no 2% administrative load (R.S. 22:1046(F)) |
| Medicaid expansion | Yes, effective 1 July 2016, delivered through Healthy Louisiana |
| CHIP programme | LaCHIP |
| Marketplace | Federally-facilitated — HealthCare.gov, no state exchange |
| LTC training gate | 8 hours once before selling, then no less than 4 hours every renewal period (R.S. 22:1575) |
The prompt-pay pair is the highest-yield block, and the electronic figure is the one that catches people. Twenty-five days is short — shorter than the thirty most split-deadline states use — and it sits against forty-five for paper. Learn them as an unequal pair: 25 electronic, 45 paper, a twenty-day gap that is Louisiana's way of pushing the market toward electronic filing. The remedy attached is 12% per year interest, a specific and memorable rate where many states cross-reference some other index.
The continuation numbers are the second reliable cluster, and two of the three run against the federal pattern. Duration is twelve months — not COBRA's eighteen. And the premium is up to 100% of the group rate, where federal COBRA permits 102%: Louisiana does not authorise the two per cent administrative load, so a candidate answering "102%" is answering the federal rule inside a Louisiana question. Note also the trigger, which is not employer size as such but whether the group is subject to federal COBRA at all — Louisiana's statute fills the gap beneath the federal threshold rather than running alongside it.
Surplus Lines — the Door This License Unlocks
Here is a fact almost no Louisiana health producer knows. Louisiana's Surplus Lines credential can be built on an Accident & Health licence. The PSI bulletin states the prerequisite verbatim: a Surplus Lines candidate "must also be currently licensed as a Property and Casualty or Health and Accident or Sickness producer with two years' experience." Most states treat surplus lines as a property-casualty world exclusively. Louisiana names exactly two qualifying credentials, and this is one of them.
What surplus lines actually is. A surplus lines producer places risk with non-admitted insurers — carriers not licensed in Louisiana — when the admitted market will not write it. In a state with Louisiana's catastrophe exposure that market is large and consequential, and on the health side it reaches the specialty, excess and hard-to-place accident and health risks that standard carriers decline.
The prerequisite is a real gate, not a formality. You cannot obtain Surplus Lines as a first licence. You need an active qualifying credential and two years of experience behind it — so this is a plan for year three, not for the month after you pass Series 102. That two-year clock is the reason to note this now rather than later.
The exam is small; the fees are not. Series 112 is 50 questions in 60 minutes for $19 — the cheapest and shortest producer paper Louisiana offers, at the same raw 70% standard. But the licence itself is $250 to issue and $350 to renew, against $75 and $75 for every other producer line. That makes Surplus Lines by a wide margin the most expensive producer credential in Louisiana, and the fee asymmetry — a $19 exam guarding a $250 licence — tells you the state is rationing by cost rather than by difficulty.
The duty that comes with it. Louisiana requires a diligent effort to place the risk in the admitted market before going non-admitted (R.S. 22:436). Surplus lines is not an alternative to the admitted market; it is what remains after the admitted market has genuinely been tried, and "genuinely" is a documentation obligation as much as a search. The Property guide covers the admitted-market machinery — Louisiana Citizens, the FAIR and Coastal plans — that a diligent effort has to exhaust first.
One practical note on the amendment fee. Adding an ordinary line to an existing Louisiana licence costs a $75 amendment. Adding Surplus Lines costs $250, the same as an initial surplus lines licence. Budget for the credential, not for the amendment.
What It Costs
$36 to PSI for Series 102, $60.75 to IdentoGO for Livescan fingerprints, $75 to LDI through NIPR — about $171.75, with no course cost because Louisiana mandates no pre-licensing.
The health-specific cost most people miss is training rather than licensing. Before you may sell, solicit or negotiate long-term care in Louisiana you need 8 hours of initial LTC training, and thereafter "no less than four hours of training every two years." R.S. 22:1575 puts it bluntly: "an individual producer may not sell, solicit or negotiate long-term care insurance unless the individual has complied with the long-term care training requirements." Usefully, LTC courses approved for CE credit may also count toward your renewal hours — which is not true of the annuity gate.
What repeats: each retake is another $36, with no waiting period to slow you down. Renewal is $75 every two years, with a $50 late penalty. Adding a line later is a $75 amendment — except Surplus Lines, which is $250.
One more Louisiana training item worth knowing exists. LDI maintains a pet insurance training requirement alongside its annuity and long-term care pages. We have confirmed the requirement exists but have not read its hour count, so no figure appears here — check LDI's education menu before you write pet products.
Eligibility Requirements
Be at least 18, pass Series 102, file through NIPR with the signed background-check authorization, be fingerprinted when LDI instructs you, and pay $75. There is no education requirement: LDI repealed Rule 9, Pre-licensing Education, effective 20 November 2022 under Act 273 of the 2022 Regular Session.
Fingerprinting comes after the application, not before — the Casualty guide walks that process, including LDI's warning that prints submitted early "will not be accepted or reviewed." You are exempt if you are already actively licensed as a Louisiana resident and simply adding this line.
No professional designation waives anything in Louisiana. FLMI, CLU, ChFC, RHU, REBC and their relatives reduce neither the exam nor the CE requirement — R.S. 22:1551 is the only exam-exemption statute and it never mentions designations. The Property & Casualty guide covers the exemptions that do exist.
One sequencing point specific to health producers: the 8-hour LTC course is not an eligibility condition for the licence, it is a condition on selling a product. You can hold Accident & Health in good standing and still be barred from writing a long-term care policy because the training is outstanding.
Keeping Your Louisiana Health License Active
Important CE details: 24 hours per two-year cycle including 3 hours of ethics. An Accident & Health producer owes NO flood hours — Louisiana's 3-hour flood requirement is conditional on Property, Casualty or Personal Lines. Up to 10 excess general hours carry over. Long-term care adds its own ladder on top: 8 hours once before selling, then no less than 4 hours every renewal period.
Two years, renewed on the last day of your birth month for $75 through NIPR, with the portal opening 90 days before expiration and a $50 penalty for filing late. Note that the March 31 even-or-odd-year rule you may see quoted is the business entity rule, not the individual one.
24 hours per cycle including 3 hours of ethics — and no flood hours on this line. LDI's footnote is conditional: "insurance producers with the lines of property, casualty or personal lines must include three hours of education in flood." An Accident & Health producer is not among them. This is Louisiana's most misreported CE fact, and buying a flood course for a health licence is buying something the state does not require.
Carryover is capped at 10 excess general hours, and carried-over ethics credits count only as general education in the next period — you cannot bank ethics ahead. A course also "may not be repeated for credit unless a minimum of 24 months have passed between course completions."
The long-term care ladder is your real ongoing obligation. Eight hours once, then no less than four hours every renewal period, and insurers bear responsibility for monitoring producer compliance — which means a carrier can and will block an appointment over outstanding LTC training. LTC courses approved for CE do count toward your 24, so the ladder and the requirement can be satisfied together with a little planning.
Coming in July 2027: a new 2-hour legislative-updates component joins the 24. Not yet in force; plan for it in the 2027 cycle.
Miss the CE and the licence lapses under LDI Rule 10, and it cannot be reinstated until you have completed all the CE that would have applied had it continued uninterrupted. Past two years from cancellation you re-take the exams. The Property & Casualty guide covers the whole ladder.
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