Uncovering The History Of Health Insurance with Chris Ecos.

Hey. Hey. Andy Neary here. Before we dive into today's podcast episode, think back to how you came upon this podcast. Maybe it was through a post, a share, or one of your own peers shared this podcast with you. I don't take any ads. I don't take any sponsorships. The only way this podcast grows is through word of mouth. So if you would be so kind to share this with a peer, with a teammate, with a friend, a family member, I would be forever grateful to you. This is how we impact more business professionals, and this is how this podcast grows. All right, let's dive into today's episode. Hey. Hey. Welcome back to Bullpen Sessions. I am really excited today. I'm reconnecting with a gentleman who was a part of my past in the industry, and I've had a chance to reconnect with him now that Amy and I have moved back to Wisconsin. And this is going to be an exciting episode because Chris, who I'm about to introduce to you, has put together a really cool presentation about the history of health insurance. And I wanted to have Chris on because I think for the benefit advisors out there who are selling today, I'd be willing to argue most of them don't have a clear picture of why this industry has gotten to where it is today and how health insurance in this country has operated for the last 60 to 70 years. So with that being said, Chris Ekus, welcome to Bullpen Sessions.

Hey, thanks, Andy. Glad to be here.

Well, Chris, we're going to talk about the history of health insurance, and when you and I grabbed coffee, I coined you the health insurance historian. So we're going to talk about. About how the heck we got here. But before we did or before we do, let's just level set. There's probably a lot of people listening in that aren't in the Wisconsin market that may not know who Chris Ekis is. As you can see if you're watching the video, he is rubbing dirt in me right now by wearing a jacket with his Ohio State alum logo on it, which we'll talk about. But where were you born and raised?

Yeah, I'm from Ohio, Andy, but I moved up here right after I graduated from the Ohio State University.

And I know you grew up a pretty good athlete.

Well, that I would. I'm sure I have some classmates and teammates that might dispute that. But yeah, I had the pre, I think, typical upbringing in small town Ohio. I was on the football team and. But also I was on the track team and had a great experience. I was Captain of both those teams my senior year. And it was just a tremendous experience.

That's awesome. And I know if you're not watching the video, Chris, you're. You said 68, is that right?

I'm about to be 67.

Yes, 67. If you've met this guy in person, he does not look 67. He looks about 55. So it's obvious health is still very much a priority in your life. Well, a little interesting story. Most people don't know about you. And one of the things that ties a lot of our guests on the bullpen sessions together is they they're in the insurance industry, but they have a past playing college and. Or pro sports. And though you were a football and track athlete in high school, you went to the Ohio State. Notice I said the. The Ohio State University and played a very different sport. Talk about that.

Yes. So, Andy.

We still had a phys ed requirement when I was at Ohio State University to fulfill in order to graduate, and didn't do any of that my freshman year. And on my sophomore year, I figured I better get those covered off and thought I would try something that I'd never been exposed to before. And so the fencing club or fencing class going on outside of, essentially outside the weight room and in that area of the. Of the building. And I thought, oh, I'll try that. And I was. Took it for a class 1/4. I. Then I followed up with the fencing 102 or 201 the second quarter. And in spring, the season for the team had ended up and they were having their spring practice. And I talked to the coach and said, what about it? And he said, yeah, we'd love to have you on the team. So I was actually on the team my junior and senior year and earned my varsity letter at Ohio State.

Well, I could tell you, Chris, I've had football players, baseball players, basketball players, soccer players on this podcast. I've never had a fencer. And I know there's a lot of people listening that are like, all right, I need to understand this, because to the layman, you see two people standing face to face and what appears to be jousting. Right. And playing with, as I said, offline, playing with sorts. Give us a little background, a little history on. Or just a 101 on fencing for us ignoramuses who don't really understand the sport.

Yeah. Don't feel isolated out there, Andy. A lot of people, including myself, were in the same situation and basically or essentially breaks down. There's three weapons in fencing and we call them weapons, not swords. And there's foil, which most people think of with fencing foil. They're all derived from activities that you would have had in medieval times with your weapons. And foil is a very thin blade, and you have to get all the way to the torso in order to score a touch. And foil, because that is how it would have been with that type of weapon to inflict any damage on somebody. Epe, which is what I fence, was a little different. It was much thicker, bigger guard on the. For your. Your hand, because the entire body was the target. And so that being derived from, you can literally inflict any pain and damage onto someone hitting them anywhere with an epee. And then the one that's probably the most interesting to watch for someone that doesn't have experience is saber. And saber, unlike the other two, is a cutting weapon, meaning that you slash across the person with a saber. And saber is derived from the target being anything from the hips up, because you would have been on a horse when you're using a saber. And today, all three weapons are scored electronically. You score, you are on a copper strip which has the markings on it of the various positioning that you have to be in the autobalance on there. And. And then you hook up to a power cord that. That's attached to a reel that extends out when you move out, and back and. And then back to the desk where you light up either red or green if you scored a touch on someone. So it's pretty elaborate that way, but makes it very simple and relatively easy to understand. Certainly while you're fencing, it's easy to understand with the lights and you have a director that sort of is the referee, so to speak, during the action.

You know, it's interesting because, you know, so what I'm hearing you say, right, is like, if you think in other sports, baseball, runs, basketball's points, football, it's touching a points. Soccer, it's goals. Hockey, it's goals. What you're saying is in fencing, it's touches. Correct. And you know, it's one of those sports. Right. If I'm flipping through the Olympics, you know, they might have that on in that specific time, right? It's a Summer Olympic sport, correct?

Yes.

And I never thought. What's interesting is you never thought about the fact they're actually hooked up via cords and they're. They're standing on a copper plate to be grounded, correct?

Yes, correct.

Because there's actually electricity involved.

Yes, yes. Because they. In order to make sure that there isn't an inadvertent touch. If you hit the floor, whatever that flooring is, outside of the copper mat, you want to make sure that the light then doesn't go on. And it's interesting. There are other elements of it, Andy, that are precision measurements to make sure that somebody doesn't have an advantage. But in fencing, the higher score loses. So If I had 10 touches against me, I lost because that's not a good. A good scene. And so it was just great. And we had a real diverse group of guys at that time. It was. The team was. There was a separate men's team and separate women's team. Today they're combined as they are at other schools, and just had a really interesting group of guys. We had black guys. We had guy from Hong Kong. We had a guy from Korea, we had a guy from Iran.

Guys from the cities. Me from a small town in Ohio. It was just. Just. Just so interesting. And. And we traveled a little bit because at Ohio State, we had a pretty good budget. Thank you. Football team. And we had a pretty good budget. And we fenced against people that were.

Phenomenal. Global fencers. I mean, they would come to Eastern Europeans, and other Europeans would come to schools, particularly like Wayne State in Cleveland, or, I'm sorry, Wayne State in Detroit. Cleveland State and Cleveland. Notre Dame had a lot of Europeans. And so you'd be out there fencing people that had been in the Olympics. And by the way, you knew from the other team if they had European fencers on there, because they were the ones that were in the parking lot smoking a few cigarettes before the bouts.

And they were in their mid-20s, and you were like, okay, I don't have.

A chance against those guys. That's awesome. And. And that sounds. That's diversity. Before diversity was a thing. Wow.

That's right.

Yeah. Quick question for you on that, because you grew up playing high school football and you were a track athlete, which are built a lot on strength and speed.

If, you know, fencing is very much mental as well. It's. It's like a human chess match. Was that a tough transition for you, going from a sport where you could just muscle yourself through it versus a sport like fencing where you had to be much more, again, thinking and. And playing the game of mental chess.

Right. I would say that most people don't realize that the physicality and the challenge of that is. Is greater than you would think that it is. But what it really comes down to being effective and a talented fencer is finesse and nuance.

That precision of being able to.

Create those kind of feints and get people to react to that and then for your subsequent reaction to their action is just.

Is just really a challenge. And those that were best at it were not only gifted athletes, but really, really understood the finesse that. That it took to be an outstanding fencer. Yeah, not me so much.

Well, but that's. I mean, I can only imagine the lessons, though, that came out of fencing at that level and competing with guys from Europe who were probably fencing at a whole different level. Right.

Throughout their lives. Yeah. Playing football and track. They were fencing.

Yeah. You did bring up Ohio State football. So we're recording this the day before Thanksgiving, that the big game is on Saturday. This will go on air after the game has happened. So this is your chance to make a prediction. Chris, what's your prediction for Saturday?

I've got. I'll say the Buckeyes. It'll be less than a touchdown. And it's. It's that school up north, Andy. There is no name for. We don't refer to it by name.

So I got to tell you, you know, as a Wisconsin Badger fan, we have Luke Fickle. Right. Former Ohio State alumni. And my prediction is, whatever happens with this sign stealing scandal, Harbaugh is heading to the NFL when the year's over. Therefore, Michigan's looking for a coach. I have that fear that they may come after Fickle, but I also have that hope that there is no way he would ever consider Michigan.

It would be hard to imagine. But Luke Fickle is the real deal. It's been a tough year in Madison, but not unexpected. And he is. I can't. I wouldn't anticipate that he would make a job.

I don't think so. And Badger fans need to understand patience.

This is a turnaround here. And the talent level there isn't very good right now, so they got to give it a year or two. But, yeah, I'm excited. Every Ohio State fan I've talked to that knows I'm a Badger fans, like, yeah, when we heard Wisconsin hired Fickle, we were like, oh, wow.

Yeah. Yeah, he's the right guy.

Well, let's transition to health insurance.

Yes.

Something you've been a part of for 30 plus years. And you're here in Wisconsin with me. You've been up here in the industry for over 30 years. So you've got a really cool presentation about the history of health insurance. And my goal for the rest of this episode, for everybody listening in, here's what we're going to talk about. Number one, how did we get here as an industry? Two, why is our system unlike any other in the world? And three, why does it matter to you as an advisor? But before we get there, Chris, I'd be curious what led you to want to develop this presentation in the first place about the history of health insurance?

I would just. Andy, I've always been.

Interested in history, number one. And number two, I just had heard things about where little bits and pieces about how our business evolved and our industry evolved. And then of course, the Affordable Care act in 2013, well implemented in 2013, was such a dramatic event that.

As I saw more people coming into our business that came in after the Affordable Care act or during that time, it just occurred to me that there was just such a gap in knowledge.

Of how we got there, including myself. And like a lot of us in the business, and.

We have ideas about and information and knowledge of this development, but we're oftentimes wrong about the dates, oftentimes wrong about the sequence of these events. And it's just as we were approaching and thinking about, as I was thinking about the 2024 election, I was just thinking about wouldn't it be as I hope this should be and I hope it is at the top of the agenda, the political parties. I just felt this was something, a story and a message that needed to get out there.

Yeah, no, I've had a chance to see it from a high level, and it's very interesting. So I think if you're tuning in right now, what we're going to talk about here as far as the history, Chris, I'd say from ACA on, we'll leave that alone. I think most advisors have probably been a part of the industry long enough to at least they were there when ACA came about or have a good pulse of why it came about and what happened. But let's, let's go way back. I mean, we're talking mid 19th century, probably before insurance policies existed. What was health care like in this country back in the, back in the 1800s, because you refer to hospitals as the factories of death. Talk about that, right, Andy?

Because what I do, even during my presentation, I ask people to imagine the most dangerous place you can be on Earth in, in the turn of the century, in the early 1800s. And of course, people think of being exploring the jungle wilds of Africa or paddling deep into the Amazon, something like that. But the reality was dangerous place on Earth was here in hospitals in America. And as I said, there were factories of death people. The knowledge level of medicine was barely any more than what the ancient Greeks had with Hippocrates. Seriously. There were a few revelations over the centuries, but they had little more knowledge than what Hippocrates had back in ancient Greece. And so it was deadly. And people that had resources, they didn't get their care in a hospital. They got their care either at home or at the home of their physician. And.

Even with the discovery of anesthesia, all that in the early 1800s, all that did was mean that you weren't in pain while you were dying, you had your limb removed or whatever other surgery you had or other reason for anesthesia. You just weren't in pain, but you didn't survive.

Yeah. It's almost like if you were hospitalized, it could only lead to one result, death. And what's interesting is you talk about it being the factory of death nowadays. I think people also get very misled by the looks of a hospital. Right. Drive by any hospital in this area especially, and you're hard pressed not to find a crane that is adding a new addition onto the hospital. And these things are palaces now. And I think people have this perception because of the beauty of the hospital. It must provide the greatest care on earth. And that's just not the case. Right.

Well, I had someone once describe that. Do you know what it says over the door of the worst performing transplant center? It just says transplant center. It doesn't say it's the worst one. And so you need to find resources to be able to evaluate quality and care.

Yeah, well, and. And this could be for a whole nother conversation. I think the average consumer just has the belief that if it's a higher priced service, it must mean higher quality. And what they don't understand is healthcare is not like buying a car or tv. It's some of the best healthcare out there, is also some of the most affordable because of how efficient they are. And so that's definitely an educational piece we have to push out to consumers more often than we are. So here we are in the 1800s, Chris, we're dealing with the factories of death.

What were some of the changes that occurred at that time in the hospital system to ensure that you weren't coming for one result, which was to die.

Yeah. The real pivotal moments came in the 1860s when Louis Pasteur, the French scientist, and a brilliant English surgeon named Joseph Lister and others discovered that microorganisms were the cause of disease. And it was really at that point that medicine became a science. And once it became a science, then there were the ability to really attach certain things, and we saw immediate changes.