0132: The Importance of Innovative Healthcare Solutions with Tom Lindsay

Ea interviews, episode 132 inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week. Join Mario Ficcini for today's expert authority effect interview. Ladies and gentlemen, I am excited to.

Have Tom Lindsay here today because we.

Have a problem in the healthcare industry and there are so many small businesses that don't have it, don't know what to do, don't know where to start and if they do start, get caught up in the process and, and just get lost.

So I'm excited to have Tom Lindsey here. He's going to be sharing with you right after we thank our sponsor.

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He is, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Tom Lindsay. Tom, how are you doing today?

I'm doing fantastic, thanks Mario, how are you?

I'm feeling great and I'm excited to learn myself because this is such a prevalent problem we have here in the healthcare industry and I know I've been confused by it in the past. So how did you even get into it and how are you really helping people?

Well, I've always sort of been in the space. I got started in my career back in 1993 and in what's called the PEO industry or professional employer organization industry. So we went into business to help small and midsize employers be better employers, let them outsource all those functions to us. And so part of that was providing employee benefits. So I've always provided, you know, group health benefits to small and midsize employers throughout my career. But the big change for me came in 2016 when I sold my shares and resigned from the company that I had co founded in 2004 and I became.

A employer of three. Basically at that point I, I started a sales organization to sell the services that I'd previously provided as the COO and CEO. And I didn't have access to healthcare at that point. I lost my, you know, I had COBRA from my previous job but the premium was super expensive and starting a new venture, my income wasn't what it used to be and I just, I couldn't find affordable coverage. I was all of a sudden kind of in this new small group space and it wasn't long that when I let my, my employees go and just became a sole proprietor, in essence a one man band and then it was impossible.

How did that make you feel when you had, let's say, a different type. I don't want to say lifestyle, but I mean, for all intents and purposes, you had a different setting in your previous job, and now you're doing it on your own, and it was a drastic shift. How did that make you feel?

Sure. Well, it was a big change for me. I was, I was scared. You know, I had always been.

The, the CEO. CEO had lots of employees. And, and I, I, I look at it like sort of finding out that you were being, being you had been adopted. Right. Like, all of a sudden I'm like, well, who am I? I'm not the COO anymore of the company that I co founded. Who, you know, who am I? It's like an identity crisis. And it was scary to be out on my own without, you know, a lot of capital and huge cash flow and.

And health insurance was just one of the problems that I had, but it turned out to be actually the biggest problem that I had.

Do you find that certain industries are more concerned about it than others?

About health care? Yes, for sure. You know, kind of the white collar industry is, is more concerned with health care than blue collar in general. Lower, lower paid employees, I think, have just come to the realization that they're resigned to the fact that they can't afford the benefits and so they typically just go without.

Life isn't what it was back in the. Jeez. It's hard to, hard to believe. Almost 100 years ago.

Yeah, and even 10 years ago. I mean, 10 years ago, health care was much more affordable than it is today.

What do you think constitutes the changes that, I mean, we're talking apples and oranges business from 2010, 20, 30, 50, 70 years ago to what's going on now. What do you think constituted that change? Was there one or was it a small progression?

It's, it's kind of been a progression. But there's two things I would say. One is just the, the consolidation of the healthcare industry has reduced competition and led to a situation where.

You know, the prices just keep rising, the benefits get worse, and there isn't a lot of, there aren't any options. We just had to suck it up and live with it. The other thing is the Affordable Care act didn't make things affordable. In fact, it has made things less affordable because one of the mandates was that insurance companies have to spend at least 80% of the premium on benefits, which means the other 20% is what they use to pay operating expenses and make a profit. Well, that might Sound great. But what happens when they want to increase their profit? The only way they can do it, it's not by really reducing costs, it's by increasing premium. So you, you increase premium and now you make a bigger slice of the pie. And you can do that without actually adding new customers. Right.

It's true. I know Jay Abraham said there's only really three ways to increase a business. And it's increase the cost per transaction, cost per transaction, the frequency of which they're buying, and like you said, the overall cost.

You know, for the thing. And.

That'S it.

I mean, it usually comes down to do you want to go get more customers or do you just want to charge the ones you have more?

Exactly. And that's what's been happening. And Obamacare or the Affordable Care act incentivized the insurance companies to charge more to not really care about how much the premium is or how much the services are. Right. Because you just charge premium. You charge the premium that you need to charge in order to make your, your margin. And the more you charge, the more you make.

I know what question I'm going to ask you for the wheel of whatever. It's going to be a good one. Okay, but so, so we're in agreement that there's problems with the health care industry. And I'm glad you're on the side of helping the small business owners and entrepreneurs that are out there. Tell me, what are some of the biggest success stories and transformations you've been able to give someone? You know, they were in a horrible spot before and then they got in touch with you. Where are they at now?

Yeah, there's.

One particular individual who recently we helped who had just been going without. And now.

Because of what we've been providing, a medical cost sharing arrangement, they have access to affordable health care and it's essentially 60% less than what they have to pay to get the equivalent in health insurance. Plus that's just for the monthly payment. Right. Plus the out of pocket expense is less through the medical cost share arrangement versus the equivalent in an insurance policy. So there's lots of stories like that that we have. I myself, I am one of those stories where, you know, when I, when I left my job, I, I went without for almost a year because I couldn't find anything that was affordable. I went to the exchange and it's ridiculous what's available that what you get in for the cost is just a terrible value. And it wasn't until my, my business partners, my new business partners introduced me to this medical cost sharing concept that I was able then to get affordable health care.

Excellent.

I can tell you. I'm sorry. One, one, go ahead. So one of my, one of my good friends is a lawyer who has a law firm, about 13 employees. Their premium for family coverage was going up to $2,500 at a renewal. And we came in and were able to lower that cost to around 800. So from 2,500 for family to 800amonth. That's a lot of money. And it allowed them to, you know, pay the full cost of the, of the health care and, you know, save the employees from having to pay any portion of it themselves. Yeah.

And you're not just talking a monthly one time basis that's 17 to $20,000 over annualized.

Yeah, that's a lot. I'm not that quick with the math, but it's a lot.

That's huge. That's, that's real, that's real big for. Because, because what do you think that means to the small business owner?

Well, it's the difference between, it can be the difference between surviving and not surviving. It can be the difference between growing your business or not growing your business. Right. Because you can take that money and reinvest it in the company into marketing, you know, in, into improving the product or service that you deliver to your clients. I mean, it's, I mean, it's life changing.

I was thinking of exactly that. I mean, it's just astonishing because a lot of people don't realize what entrepreneurs go through. And you're absolutely right because it could be a make or break moment or it could be a hey, we're going to grow this quarter or not moment or, I mean, it's so advantageous no matter how much it is. And you're able to do that for people. That's the cool part.

So.

I don't want to get into the political side of this, but.

What do you think is going to happen over the next five or 10 years? Maybe 50. Do you ever see it going back to the way it was where everyone's got benefits, everyone's got everything covered and it's basically the uptick after World War II, where companies were just booming left and right and we had about 50 years of that?

Well, I.

I can definitely see it going to single payer with the attitudes that we have among, you know, the new wave of politicians and the youth who seem to think that, you know, socialism is a great idea and a, and a viable economic system. So I, I can see us going Single payer at some point in, in the not too distant future, which won't be a good thing. In fact, I was just reading an article yesterday by the foundation for Economic Education about a doctor who.

Was working for a government funded clinic through a contract and had to spend four years in that, in that position. And when, you know, she, she started off in the job.

You know, feeling like, okay, this is my, my civic duty, this is how I give back to the community. I, I, I take this position in a rural.

Health clinic that's government funded and then I can move on after that. Well, it turns out that that experience was so horrible for her as a physician and she could see how horrible it was for the, the patients as well because of all the bureaucracy, the, the paperwork, the, just the administrative nightmare because it's being run by non physicians and it was all about compliance with regulation and not about patient care or even the physicians, you know, their own mental health and their own well being. Right. And so that, the article, the title of the article is something like, you know, why, why I now think government is not the solution to health care, to the healthcare problem.

So hopefully that doesn't happen. Hopefully the, the, the marketplace takes care of solving the problem and we're definitely moving in that direction. There's a lot of change afoot. I mean you look at just what Amazon and JP Morgan and what they're doing with Berkshire Hathaway and that partnership with Haven and you look at what Amazon's doing on their own and you, you look at what Walmart's doing, there's a lot happening that, and things like this, like medical cost sharing, you know, it's helping to solve the, the health insurance affordability dilemma. But what we have to do is eliminate the middlemen in the, in the system who are causing costs to rise and who are not incentivized in any way to, to make things less expensive for, for us, hopefully that can happen and mitigate the need or obviate the need for government to.

Continue to try and solve the problem.

Well, I think there's a lot of people that are helping like yourself, which is appreciated and people are smarter now than ever with quicker access than ever to anything. And I think it's a good thing because there's going to be a lot less situations where people, you know, the days of the only a single TV was the only news information and only one person control. I mean it, it's one of the things that people are upset about is, and I still laugh about it, the news is like coming up at 6, you're not going to want to miss this.

Someone from American Idol just updated their Instagram. I'm like, that was three hours ago. It's not even news. We are the news now.

Definitely. Yeah.

And I think that's very empowering.

It is. And, and we don't need government like we necessarily need them without the information age, without the Internet. Right. Because we, there's, we have access to information. You can get price transparency now if you look for it and ask for it. We don't need to wait for Congress to pass a law.

And actually in this case it's the Trump administration executive order requiring the Health and Human Services to require hospitals to list, you know, make pricing transparent. That's happening in 2021, which is great. But you don't have to wait for that. It's available now. And you just. What we need to do is we need to have a cultural change as consumers. We need to get engaged in the process instead of just being these drones, you know, we go to work, our employer provides health care. We don't, you know, we think about it one time at the enrollment, open enrollment, and we forget about it until we have to go to use it. And then somehow we think, you know, we expect everything's just going to get paid for. You know, you don't really learn about the benefit design or what's covered and what's not covered until you go to use it. And we're just totally disengaged. And we need to become engaged health care consumers like Dr. Josh Luke talks about in his book called Health wealth for you, which is an excellent book.

And that's what's going to cause change is by getting engaged as consumers. And like you said, that information is now available for us to do because of the Internet and technology.

So with your theme of breaking free of from the Matrix.

Yes.

What would you say to Expert authority world are like three things they should consider. If they, if someone has no idea about healthcare or they Learned about it 5 years ago or something going in. If someone wants to get it today, this week, this month, what are three things or more, what should they consider going into it and be asking what are some things you can empower them with?

So if you're a small, let's say you're an entrepreneur, you're self employed, you only have a couple of choices. You can go to the exchange and it's open enrollment now on the exchange. So you can go look there, you can look for an association policy or if you have, you know, two or three, four employees. You can go to an insurance agent or broker and have them look in the fully insured small group market.

The result of those efforts are going to be the same. You're going to find super expensive, terrible benefits and you're just going to get frustrated. So the next thing you should do is, or if you believe me, you can just skip all that and just go look for a medical cost sharing or, or health sharing arrangement to, to join and be a part of. Now that's, it's not, it doesn't work for everyone because they have pre existing exclusions. Typically for the first three years there's limited.

You know, reimbursement for expenses related to a pre existing condition. So it, it may or may not work depends on the severity of the pre existing condition and the amount of treatment that you're required for it. If that's the, you know, if you do have a situation like that, then you know the exchange is your best bet because you can't be denied coverage. Right.

So that's what I would say. I would, I would. You know, maybe you've already gone out and looked at what's available in the insurance realm and now you take a look at what's available in the non insurance, medical cost sharing or health sharing world.

Well, I appreciate you for sharing because I know there are people that are just like, I have no clue, I don't care, but I should probably do something. Yeah, that's who we want to help.

Yeah, I mean it's, it's kind of, you know, going without any kind of access to health care is, you know, can be dangerous. I mean if, if you're young and you don't have any assets and you know, something significant were to happen and you file bankruptcy, I mean it's not the end of the world. Right. But as you, you know, you get married and you start having children, you get, you start to gain some, some wealth, you want to protect that. And one of the ways to protect it is to not go without either.

Help, not have to go use it all on a doctor bill or two.

Exactly.

Or 17.

Yep.

If need be. But we hope that doesn't happen to anyone and they don't need it. But I appreciate for what you're saying because it's, everyone needs to be knowing this and I know entrepreneurs and.

I'm glad there's experts like you that are available to help people that aren't focused on it.

Well, thank you.

And that was a pretty good way of saying it. I Stayed on target. Yay.

We like to focus on what we like to focus on and the rest is just, you know, I'm sure you've experienced that too, right? You just want to do what you're good at and the rest is whatever.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's why people go into business because they're passionate about a particular thing or good at a particular service. You know, that's what they go into business to do. It's not to worry about, you know, employees and, and compliance with, with regulations and buying health insurance and you know, all that's just noise in the system that, that distracts you from doing what you set out to do and you know, but all necessary.

But like you said, you don't want to wait till the day you need it and be going, never looked at this. This kind of sucks.

Yeah, exactly.

Paying how much for it.

Yeah, that's why that's so hard. That's such, that's a good, I mean it's such a hard pill to swallow, right, when you, you're like, I'm healthy and, and here, you know, I'm paying a, you know, fifteen hundred dollars a month for family coverage and I never go to the doctor. And you know, millions of people are in that situation. Right. And it, and it just gets, and then even when you do have that coverage and when you, then when you do need to use it, you still have to pay. You've got co pays and deductibles and co insurance and it's like, what am I, what am I paying for? It's, it's a terrible value. That's basically what it boils down to. And this has happened over the last 10 years, right, where, where premiums have skyrocketed, the deductibles have gone up, but wages have been fairly flat and it's just not keeping up. So every year it's more and more and more of your take home pay going towards medical care. And there was a report that said that I think it's by 2030, like millennials will end up having spending 50% of their, of their take home pay on health care, which.

That'S not sustainable. So.

Dare I even tease? Factor in taxes and all the other expenses.

Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, what's that?

It's laughable now until it happens.

Yeah.

And, and you, but you can see the trajectory. We're on the trajectory for that to happen. This is, this is not hyperbole. This isn't, you know, hypothetical.

This is the way Things are moving. So that's why health, health, you know, medical cost sharing, health sharing has taken off. It's, it's since the passage of the Affordable Care act, it has grown significantly. There's, you know, something like one and a half million participants in these non insurance alternatives and there's billions of dollars every year being shared among the various. And sharing is, you know, the terms that they use to.

Because you can't use insurance terminology. So you can't say, you know, claim or plan or benefit or, or premium. So that's why there's this other set of terms like, you know, share and sharing. And.

I just love red tape. It makes everything so much easier and clear.

Yeah, that's back to our government discussion.

You know, there it reminds me of one of my favorite comedians, Chris Rock. He goes, instead of calling it insurance, shouldn't we call it in case. He goes, and in case doesn't happen, shouldn't I get my money back? Like that's, that's true. I was like, well, maybe we should rename it I mean, perfect opportunity if they already are. And I mean. Well, I appreciate you for helping us navigate through some of this. We're going to thank our sponsor and come back for the end imperfect action round.

Oh, you know what?

No, we're not.

I'm going to ask you the wheel of whatever question first. Then we're going to thank our sponsor, then come back for the imperfect round. So I actually have a wheel that will be on the show. I'm going to imaginary spin it right here. And it just landed on the question I you gave me 2012 minutes ago.

Nice.

If you were in charge of the insurance industry and, or president and, or whatever you need to be to make something like this happen, what do you think is a winning solution.

That we haven't seen before?

Wow, that's an awesome question.

So let's see if I were president. Well, the problem with being president is there's not a whole lot you can do because it takes an act of Congress and you know, it takes legislation that has to be passed by the House and Senate in order to really affect change. So I mean, both sides will love.

You, so that'll be easy.

You'll be one and done, if you even make it.

But what, what, what the Trump administration has just done is pretty monumental with the, with the price transparency rule that they had the Health and Human Services pass or create, which is taking effect in 2021, where now hospitals have to.

Publish their prices because that's been a huge part of the problem is that nobody knows. Even employers who are, who have self funded plans that the insurance companies administer, they don't even know how much the services cost because those negotiations between the insurance company who administers the plan for them and the providers is all done confidentially. And you as an employer can't even get access to that. So you don't know. You have to wait and see. It's like pay passing, you know the Affordable Care act when Pelosi said oh well you got to pass it so that we could read it so that we can know what's in it. That's how healthcare has been from a pricing standpoint. There's zero transparency right up to this point. And, and so I guess back to your question, that's a long winded answer to your question of what would I do as, as president, at least that's how I took the question. I think just pulling back on doing more to allow private.

Access to health care like oh well actually now that we're talking, now that I'm talking, I know what I would do. I would allow.

Medical cost sharing and health sharing members, people who participate in these non insurance programs to use health savings accounts to pay for the monthly membership fees for those.

That would be a huge help because then you could take, you know, these, take your take money, put it into a health savings account which is a tax free account and then use that money to pay for this non insurance alternative which is having a huge impact on helping lots of people get healthcare.

Interesting. I like, I like that and I've.

Never heard of that.

It's remind me of like a IRA or something where it's, you're putting into it and it's also the tax free but it's for medical.

Yeah, they're great, great vehicles. Health savings accounts are great little vehicles but right now they're, they can only be used to pay for insurance policy premiums and other.

Health, you know, non, non reimbursed or not non paid health expenses that you incur. So you can't, you can't use that money to pay for your membership fees and a health sharing or medical cost sharing arrangement.

Maybe it'll get passed in the next few years or five or ten.

It's being worked on so hopefully.

Excellent. Well I appreciate the insight. Now we're going to thank our sponsor and we'll be right back for the imperfect action round.

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Are back for the imperfect action round. Tom, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Yep. Let's do it.

60 second answers, rapid fire. First one. What in your experience is the fastest path to the cash?

The fastest path to the cash?

As an entrepreneur, what can another entrepreneur do?

Well, that would be to build a list and to produce an information product that you can then sell to that list.

And that would be the quickest route in my opinion.

Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way they can fix it?

Well, my prospects.

Typically aren't.

Outsourcing to the right professionals.

They're not willing to spend the money that it takes to get the expert help that would really make a huge difference in their business in a relatively short period of time.

Excellent. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

To keep providing them with the things that they need and to keep communicating with them and getting to know them and to understand what it is that.

They need so that you can keep.

Providing it and retain them.

Excellent. You mentioned one earlier. You can add a couple more if you want now. But but what are some books that you would recommend to Expert Authority World?

Well, yeah, I talked about Health wealth for your from Dr. Josh Luke. Also a book called the Price we pay by Dr. Marty Makary and actually another book actually have right here, it's called big medicine by Dr. Alaina George. Those are amazing books that will really open your eyes to what's going on in the healthcare world.

Excellent. Well, I appreciate everything you've shared with us today. And where would you like people.

To learn more about you, go to gotpurehealth.com that's got purehealth.com you can also find me on LinkedIn under Thomas Rocklinsay. So those would be the two best places.

We're also on Facebook.

Got Peer health on Facebook.

Excellent. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure and I thank you again for sharing with Expert Authority World.

Thanks for having me.

All right, Expert Authority World, we have another great episode. I'll see you on tomorrow's have a great day.

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