In The Thick of It

I would tell business owners, and this is what I tell them

all the time, is the best time to look for somebody and to

get advice is before you get into throws over renewal.

Because the most common complaint we hear from companies is I got

my renewal and I have to make a decision in the next week or two

and that's not enough time to actually do a strategic deep dive.

A good advisor is going to be able to set a roadmap out

for you at least three years, three to five years.

And it's a living and breathing document.

And every year we update it, it needs to be updated

to reflect the goals of the company and where we're going.

Welcome to In The Thick of It Toolbox,

the special series where inspiration meets implementation.

Here we don't just share success stories,

we equip you with proven tools and strategies from seasoned founders,

turning entrepreneurial dreams into actionable plans.

Prepare to be enabled and empowered on your journey.

You're not just listening to a podcast, you're gaining access

to an essential toolbox for your business success.

Let's dive in.

One of the most complex challenges founders

face is securing great employee benefits.

If you've ever had to select health, dental, vision and other

insurance plans, you know how overwhelming it can be.

The choices you make have an impact not only

on your team members, but their families as well.

Today, Chris Hamilton from Hotchkiss Insurance joins

the show to give insights on establishing practical

and cost effective health insurance for employees.

As a founder myself, I fully understand

the pressure behind choosing employee benefits.

This discussion opened my eyes to new strategies I wasn't aware of

and I'm confident you will learn something new, too.

Well, joining me in the studio today is Chris Hamilton,

partner and practice leader at Hotchkiss Insurance.

Thanks for making the drive over from Fort Worth.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

So our topic today is going to be around benefits

and health insurance and all the fun stuff that we've got to

figure out as owners and employers.

And just kind of my own personal journey.

When I started the business, initially it was just me

for the first couple of years, so that was easy.

And then as we started bringing people on, ill be honest,

the whole idea of insurance was overwhelming.

It was intimidating.

And I had this mindset that, oh my gosh,

theres no way we could afford this.

So im just not going to do it.

And what we ultimately ended up doing was we offered

everybody a stipend each month and said, hey, its up to you.

Go find out what works best for your

family and use this to pay for that.

And that worked okay up to a certain point.

The people that we were bringing on

were comfortable with that situation.

In some cases, maybe their spouse had health insurance through

their company, and their stipend was just bonus for them.

But we reached a point where we had somebody leave

because they needed traditional health coverage.

We had at least one, if not a couple of hires that we weren't able

to actually bring on board because we weren't offering it.

And ultimately, I said, okay, now's the time we've got to do this.

And so I don't know how often you see a situation like that,

but this is a topic that's near and dear to my heart just because

of the up and down that we went through with it.

And so I'm eager to, to get into this.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, Scott, that sentiment that you just shared

with me is something I hear very commonly.

It's interesting because that stipendous, there's a program

that's out there that is becoming more popular today, but the

sentiment that you shared, that you have employees that leave

or you have a hard time attracting employees, particularly as

companies get to a certain size and you have to bring in

technical expertise, and typically, you're competing against

larger companies that have a real, really robust benefits

package.

And so companies get to this stage where,

how do we solve this particular issue?

It is expensive, not just for companies,

but the employees that work inside the company.

Oftentimes, it's one of the most expensive things they

purchase just for the right to have insurance.

And oftentimes for a midsize employer, what I see, on average,

the cost to cover spouses and children, family rates

are often more expensive than their car payments combined,

sometimes as much as a rent payment or a house payment.

And that's just for the right to have insurance,

and then when they actually go to use it.

So when you think about most midsize employers, the type of coverage

that they're buying that makes it affordable for the company is

typically going to be higher deductibles than a Fortune 500 company.

So then these employees now have to pay out of pocket when they go

seek medical care, and the system doesn't have to be that way.

There's a lot of inefficiency and waste

in the current system that when designed properly,

you can bring the cost down for both the employer and the employee.

And I think that's the real opportunity.

Yeah, I'm eager to dig more into that.

But let's get a little bit of your background.

How did you find yourself in this space.

Yeah.

If you would have come to me 20 years ago,

even 15 years ago, and say, this is what you're going to be doing,

I would have thought you were crazy.

It was really kind of a light bulb moment that I had my backgrounds

in corporate finance and I did that for about 15 years.

And I worked with midsize.

And towards the end of my finance career, I was working with really

large companies on m and a transactions, cross border work.

And it was around the time that the ACA

was getting ready to be phased in.

And one of the largest brokerages

in the United States was a client of mine.

And I actually did financing for their acquisition work.

They were going around the country and buying up firms like mine.

And so I saw an aggregate level how insurance brokerages made money.

And they were telling us the ACA, the Affordable Care act,

is going to be a huge boom to our industry.

And here's why.

When they laid it out, I thought, oh, that's interesting.

But that also seems kind of, there's this

bifurcation between what the clients want and the way you make money.

And so I began asking a lot of my clients

because I see their financial statements,

how do you guys manage this health insurance expense?

Its really expensive.

For a service business is typically number two behind payroll.

For a company that manufactures or produces a product

is typically number three behind cost of goods.

Payroll, then benefits.

And the answers I got from really sophisticated CFO's and CEO's was

there's not really a way to manage this cost.

It's what the brokerages and the carriers

tell us our cost is going to be.

And so as I researched this more and more,

I realized theres a lot of misaligned incentives.

What the brokerage community brings, the way they monetize the client

oftentimes is at odds with what the client actually wants to achieve,

which is lower costs and better benefits.

I think the way people get paid, the way people make money, the way

the monetization happens inside of an industry, whether its

banking, private equity, insurance, it really dictates the advice,

it affects the advice and the outcome that the end client ends up

receiving.

So just to get this straight, you got into this business

by looking at your customers financial statements and asking

questions about why these costs were the way they were.

Yeah, I started asking questions and doing research and what

I realized when I talked to a CFO or business owner.

They say I want lower health insurance costs,

but I don't know how to get there.

And when I look at health insurance it's a lot like

the rising cost of health insurance is like looking at a thermometer.

You put thermometer in your mouth,

and you show you have a 101 degree fever.

Right?

Well, what's causing that fever?

Is it Covid?

Is it flu?

Do I have an infection?

You got to diagnose what's causing the fever

before you can actually treat it.

And with health insurance, the rising cost of health insurance

is directly correlated to the rising cost of claims.

Okay?

So as healthcare claims rise,

these insurance companies are for profit.

They don't want to lose money.

And as their claims costs rise,

they have to raise your premiums to help pay for that.

So you have to dig a layer deeper.

What's driving the claims costs higher.

And when you look at the carriers,

so you go look up any of the big publicly traded insurance companies.

There's four of them in America, Blue, United, Cygna Net.

And if you look at how they make money,

this was the light bulb moment for me.

I saw the way they made money was largely driven by claims.

And so I'll just pick on Cigna for a second.

If you go look at Cigna's financial statements,

they just recently published them.

Three quarters of their income comes from pharmacy.

They make more money in pharmacy than they do,

than being an insurance company.

Well, what drugs does Cigna research and develop, manufacture,

distribute?

They don't.

They set the price for insurance companies.

So if you're with a Cigna, and you could just say this for

any of the insurance companies, when they're overcharging

themselves for medications and putting that profitability

back in their back pocket, and then they come back to the

client at the end of the year and say, your claims were

high.

This is just one example.

Therefore, we have to raise your premium.

So when I look at this and I think about, how do I reimagine

what this health insurance ecosystem should look like?

To remove a misaligned incentive, I shouldn't let a carrier

control the cost of medications because they profit from it.

Is there a different way to design

this and get those same medications?

That 30, 40, 50% less that savings goes back into the insurance plan,

which results in lower premiums for the employer,

which then, in turn, allows them to do something good

for their employee, not something to their employee.

I think that's an important point to make, because oftentimes

when costs go up, employers are shifting costs to the employees.

They're raising the premiums for the employees.

And so the business has a bad outcome,

and the employees end up with a bad outcome.

But the inverse is true.

When something good happens for the business,

we can now do something beneficial for the employees.

So lets dig deeper into that.

If I understood you right, youve got ways to help them

reduce the claims cost that then results in lower premiums.

Is that exactly right?

Okay, so man, whats the secret sauce?

Walk us through that.

So I think the first thing is understanding how everybody

thats involved in the health insurance program gets paid.

So if you look at, lets talk about the carriers first.

So there was a provision in the Affordable Care

act called the medical loss ratio rebate.

I'm getting a little technical here, but this is gonna make a lot

of sense for owners and CFO's business people that are hearing this.

That essentially requires health insurance companies

to pay out eighty five cents of every dollar they receive in premium

for our healthcare.

Well think about that for a second.

If I have to pay out eighty five cents,

at least $0.15 left, my profit margin is capped.

And so if I'm the CFO and a CEO of a publicly traded

insurance company, and I need to show a return to my shareholders,

do I want 15% of a million dollars

in premium or 15% of a trillion or a quadrillion?

So immediately out of the gate, their incentive is to figure out how

do I get healthcare costs to go up, how do I get the premium to go up

so I can take a bigger chunk of the pie, or 15% of a larger number.

The insurance companies are actually intentionally inflating the rates

because they're capped on how much profit they can make.

That's right.

And so they need a willing participant

to help them inflate those costs.

So what did they do?

And anybody that is interested in this, if you just go look

up United Health Cigna and track their stock price back to

January of 2010 to today, you're going to notice it tracked

really closely with the s and P 500 average for about till

2013.

And then you see there's this bifurcation.

All of a sudden the carrier starts

significantly outperforming the s and P.

In a couple of these cases, it's five and six fold.

What the s and P has done and what happened in that time period

is these carriers went out and they vertically integrated.

And so they started buying pharmacy benefit managers,

they started getting into healthcare provider space.

So many of the doctors that employees walk into today

are probably owned by a health insurance carrier.

Oftentimes not all the time, but they own a pretty significant

part of the supply chain and they're doing

the exact same thing that I mentioned with pharmaceuticals.

They're marking up.

They're capturing that value.

And if you were to talk to an executive at an insurance carrier,

they say, well, it's part of creating value for the membership.

But I look at the problem differently.

If the value is being created and passed on,

you would see lower premiums, but in fact, you see rising premiums

and rising profitability, rising stock prices for the carriers.

So the value that's being created by vertical integration is

being passed on to shareholders, not to the policyholders.

I think that's an important distinction.

Isn't CV's or Walgreens owned by one of the big insurance companies?

Yep.

CV's caremark owns, actually, CV's owns Aetna.

So it's the reverse.

It's the reverse in that situation, yes.

Okay.

And then Cigna owns Express scripts,

which is the largest PBM in the United States.

And then Unitedhealthcare has a division called Optum.

And that's, if you look at Cygnus is owned

in a separate entity called Evernorth.

So when you're looking at their financial statements,

you won't see express scripts or ESI.

You'll see this division called Evernorth.

And then with United Healthcare, when you're looking at their

financial statements, you're going to see this division called Optum.

And Optum in Evernorth is where they do all

of their vertical integration and the monetization.

So it seems like there's a conflict of interest here.

Yeah, undoubtedly, yes.

And so when I saw that, I thought it was really this

light bulb momentous, sitting down at dinner with the CFO

of this large national brokerage, and he was talking

to me about how this monetization was going to happen.

And I realized in that moment, as a snap of light bulb went off,

I thought, this is an opportunity.

The market wants this, the clients want this,

but what's out in the market is not delivering it.

There was this chasm, if you will, and if somebody could step

in and fill that gap, they could create a good business

that could do something good for employers, which would

in turn allow them to do something good for their employees.

I guess that's what happens when you have

to pass a bill to see what's in it.

That's right.

You don't get to explore these unintended consequences.

Well, so again, we've exposed this conflict of interest, this

vertical integration, and how they're, I'm going to just say,

manipulating the spirit of the ACA to make these record profits

how does an employer reduce their cost in this world that we

live in?

Yeah.

So the number one thing that we are seeing happening in

the marketplace today, when an employer goes out and

they buy insurance from one of the major carriers,

they're typically, if you're depending on the size, most

midsize businesses are buying what's called a fully

insured policy.

You pay your premium to the insurance company,

and regardless of what happens over the course of that year,

your rates are guaranteed for that entire year.

And that seems really safe for employers because,

you know, you're guaranteed what your cost is going

to be every single month for that twelve month duration.

But the issue comes at renewal.

The carrier is going to look at what they spent on your healthcare.

It's called a loss ratio.

If I paid $100,000 to the insurance company

in insurance premiums, but they paid $200,000 out in cost,

guess what, my rates are going to go up.

And so what we're seeing happening now is this shift,

because when you're buying a fully insured product,

you're letting the carrier manage everything.

They pick the network, they pick the pharmacy benefit manager.

We give employees this shiny id card and we turn them loose

into the ecosystem, into the economy to go buy healthcare.

And oftentimes there's a lack of information, price, quality.

I can go buy.

I guarantee you, everybody can tell you the difference between

an iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 or the latest television model.

People research that.

You can go read reviews and you understand the pricing.

Theres multiple ways to pay for it.

You can use cash credit, you can put on a payment plan,

those sorts of things, right?

But to go in to have a baby delivered or

to get an MRI or colonoscopy or even just a basic doctor visit,

nobody really knows what that costs.

And usually the first question that youre asked when you walk

into a physician's office is, hey, whats this going to cost?

Whats the first question they ask you?

Who's your insurance company?

That's right.

What world are we in?

The insurance is going to dictate the price?

What is the visit cost?

Let me determine if I want to use insurance or not.

And so that's the mechanism that we have to work through.

And so what we see a lot of employers that have gotten fed

up with the cost of insurance, they want to start

taking some of that control BaCK and get visibility.

So the way to move away from that

traditionally has been to partially self insure.

I say partially emphasis on that because you're never going

to be fully self insured, unless you're Amazon or ExxON MobilE.

But if you're a mid sized business,

you're never going to be fully self insured.

And so thats a pretty daunting proposition

for a business owner whos trying to run a business.

They dont really want a whole lot of risk.

They want to give that to somebody else.

So the way we make that palatable is that we group employers

together to buy insurance at scale.

And so you might have a small employer who doesnt feel comfortable

getting into an insurance program like this on their own.

Well, we combine them with 300, 400, 500 other companies nationally.

Now, youre talking about the law of large numbers.

Its almost like the same way you manage a retirement plan.

Do you want to bet on an individual stock or do you want

to invest in a high quality mutual fund that maybe

is diversified over three or 400 other companies?

And so you can offset your health insurance risk doing that.

And in doing so, thats just what unlocks the gate, if you will,

to design the plan with vendors that do not have

misaligned incentives, their incentives, theyre compensated.

Their performance is measured on the outcome that they promise.

So talking about kind of pooling this makes a lot of sense.

You've got some people that are going

to be more prone to higher claims.

You've got other people that are going to be less prone

to higher claims, and overall, it reduces the cost.

I get that that sounds kind of like a peo in the payroll world,

but I know y'all, I don't think y'all are in the payroll business.

So am I thinking of that the right way?

Is there some similarity?

And if so, what is that and what's the difference?

Yeah, that's actually a really good question.

The most common comparison that I hear to a peo.

So I'll give you the biggest difference.

The PEO is using scale to diversify their risk,

which that is a very good thing.

The one thing that I think peos fail

at is they turn the keys back over to the insurance company.

So depending on the PEO, they may be using Blue Cross or UnitedHealth,

and they're just continuing to turn over

all of the management, all the contracting

to the big insurance company, who's then in turn monetizing it.

So they have one part of the equation, right, but it's like it's

locking your front door but leaving the back door wide open.

And so really what we see is you have to get the significant

risk dispersion in a large group, and then you have

to design the right kind of program to manage the cost.

So talking about size for a minute,

I guess a couple parts to this question.

One, I'll go back to my early days where

I was just giving people a stipend.

At what point does an employer have to provide

some sort of benefit like true insurance coverage?

And then what size organization do you need to be to get

into that law of large numbers bucket that you talked

about to be able to get that better pricing on your own?

Yeah.

So to your first question, and it's going to be state dependent.

Some states have different rules, but in Texas, once you have 50 full

time equivalents, so I think the equivalence is the important part.

Once you have 50 full time equivalent, you might have

70 employees, but many of them are part time.

When you look at a trailing twelve month,

does the equivalency work out to 50 or more?

That's when legally you're required to offer

Affordable care Act type coverage, medical coverage.

And as it pertains to some of these other unique mechanisms, the most

common form that we're using is using a group health captive.

And that's just a fancy word for kind of like a cooperative,

if you will, companies coming together,

being owners in the insurance company, and they're buying at scale.

Typically to get into that arrangement, you need about 50.

But there's some other unique ways to do this

for employees or employers that are down into the 20 to 50 space.

So typically to start doing some of the more creative stuff,

you're gonna want at least 20 employees.

So that's kind of where that kicks in.

Okay, when does somebody like, what is the thing that prompts

people to call you or a company like you like, is it they're

getting their benefits for the first time, or is it, hey, I just

got my premium renewal for the next year and it went up nine and a

half percent.

Is there some other event, like, if I'm a business owner,

when should I call a broker like y'all?

It's typically those two events.

They're starting a company, they need some sort of coverage

to be able to attract employees like you're talking about.

And it's also most common leads.

Oh my gosh, we got a 30% renewal.

We have no idea what to do.

We just need to get some advice.

I would tell business owners, and this is what I tell them

all the time, is the best time to look for somebody and to

get advice is before you get in the throes of a renewal.

Because the most common complaint we hear from companies is I got

my renewal and I have to make a decision in the next week or two

and that's not enough time to actually do a strategic deep dive.

A good advisor is going to be able to set a roadmap out

for you at least three years, three to five years.

And it's a living and breathing document.

And every year we update it, it needs to be updated

to reflect the goals of the company and where we're going.

And one of the things I really try to understand

when I meet with business owners is talk

to me about what your goals are for the company.

Forget the insurance.

The insurance will tie into this eventually.

But lets talk about what are your growth plans

for your company for the next three to five years

and where is that growth going to come from?

Where im working backwards to is manpower.

And I want to understand who do you need,

where do they come from, what do they expect?

And then can we build a plan to meet that?

And oftentimes I meet with employers,

they're not ready to move into a group health captive.

They're with a traditional fully insured carrier.

But they want to know unbiased advice,

what do I have today and how do I get to this promised land?

And for some employers it is going to take a few years to do that.

You said something a second ago I think is really, really important,

and this applies to a whole bunch of different areas of business.

Im going to paraphrase, but you basically said,

dont wait till the last minute,

dont wait until youre actually already in your renewal cycle.

We had somebody on to talk about banking recently.

You dont go to the bank to get a line of credit when you need it.

You need to go to the bank and get the line

of the credit before you need it, and that way youve got it.

And what you said there just totally makes a lot of sense.

On average, how much can people expect to save

in a scenario like we're talking about here?

Yeah, that's a great question, one that I get often.

I think the way to measure the success of a program is

to look at it over a three to five year horizon.

In any given year.

Theoretically it could be more expensive than staying

in a traditional plan because there are going to be ebbs and flows.

So I think on average what we see with our

clients is typically a reduction of ten to 15%.

I've seen as high as 50% reduction.

And so it's really case dependent on what are the demographics of

the employees, what sort of utilization is already going within

the plan I would tell you the ones where we get the biggest

savings are the ones that have the highest utilization, meaning

they're getting a large increase and it's because of an acute

situation going on.

There's members undergoing treatment for cancer.

They're taking really expensive medications.

When I say expensive, if it's less than $80,000 a year for one person,

that's not super expensive.

And where they get real expensive is when they're 100, 5300 thousand,

half a million dollars a year for one medication, for one person.

That's when it gets really expensive.

And that's, to me, meat on the bone.

There's areas of improvement that we can attack

immediately going into a renewal with these sorts of plans.

Trey.

And as far as the networks, when you put somebody on one

of these plans, if they're coming off a blue cross, are you able

to put them into that same network, or is it completely different?

I think about if we were to make a change,

what would that mean for our employees who already have their doctor

and other medical partners that theyre already working with?

Yeah, so most of our clients are using a major network.

So name off the four were using one

of those four major networks on the id card.

The trick is we dont let the network be the administrator

because then Blue Cross doesnt want to compete against themselves

or Unitedhealth doesnt want to compete against themselves.

And so we skew to working with independent administrators that have

that network, and we can use that network for contracted rates.

So members want to have a logo on their car that

they recognize and that when they walk into a doctor's office,

they're going to recognize.

And there's a predetermined price that's going to be paid

for the vast, pretty much anything that

members going to need, just like they are today.

And the low hanging fruit.

When I think about just use a round number, 100 employees.

You have a company with 100 employees, 95 to 98 of those employees.

Everything's going to work the exact same that it has,

because they're just going in for a physician visit.

Maybe it's a sick visit, a checkup, and they take a maintenance

medication, very inexpensive, the vast majority of the time.

Not the needle mover.

The needle movers are the three to 5% of the population

that have something big going on.

It's cancer, it's end stage renal disease.

It's taking a very expensive medication.

Maybe they've got some chronic health conditions.

And those are the members that we need to wrap our hands around

and help them figure out what's the right place to go?

How do we source your medication?

Those sorts of things.

We're sending them through areas where we've

got direct contracts to get their care.

And oftentimes the employers are asking, well,

how is this going to affect the employee?

Well, when we can take a claim that typically would cost 250 or

$300,000 and we're able to ratchet that down to 80, take a

medication, for example, very common example, and the insurance

company is going to be able to save very significant amount of

money.

We waive the cost of care for that member.

So we give the member a choice.

Continue doing this the exact same way.

Sometimes it's just switching the pharmacy that's allowing us

to source the medication for them and buy it the way you have.

It's subject to your normal benefit program, but if you're willing

to go through this alternate channel, it's free.

And so now you're providing this benefit that

even many Fortune 500 companies don't provide.

Because if people are willing to engage in this,

I call it a shadow system, but it's basically,

it kind of layers over the big network that they've got.

And it's driven by concierge, medical concierge

that is going to help coordinate that care.

If they're willing to engage in that, because there's a significant

cost savings of the insurance program, we just make it free.

And so now you have people that are able to get expensive surgeries,

they're able to get expensive medications, just about anything.

Thats a big needle mover on the scale.

Cancer infusion is another one the plan saves.

The member has an incentive.

We actually have clients that when they engage in that

concierge program, the insurance program, which is the employer,

save so much money, theyre actually willing to

give a cash incentive to the members to engage in it.

So you think about a member thats undergoing cancer treatment,

and they may be getting infusion,

thats 40 or $50,000 a month for chemo.

That same exact medication can be sourced and sent to the clinic,

not letting the clinic procure it because they make money doing that.

So were able to ratchet the price of that medication down.

And you think about somebody whos undergoing cancer treatment,

theyre going to hit their out of pocket max.

Theyre probably going to have some out of network costs or out

of network benefits and out of network, out of pocket costs.

And so whats not only medically devastating

is very traumatic for them.

Am I going to live or die?

But then now Im out of work my paycheck is affected now

and Im having to fork out all this money out of pocket.

And kind of the alternate option is my medical costs

are going to be waived, my out of pockets are waived,

and on top of that, my employer is providing this

additional financial benefit to me in my time of need.

So its really just taking the benefits program and kind of

taking the status quo and flipping it on its head.

Yeah, that is fascinating.

But its frustrating to know that this is an option

because its not the world that many people live in.

Well, I think its important to tie that together.

So we talked about the carriers and how they make money

and I think this is why, you dont see why.

Now ill tell you this,

this is the fastest growing area in our industry.

What I just described to you.

And I travel the country teaching other brokerages

like ours how to do this for their clients.

And its very enlightening and its rewarding

to see that this is picking up steam.

And I recently read Malcolm Gladwells tipping point

for the first time.

And I realized thats whats happening in our

industry right now with this specifically.

And youre seeing lawsuits.

Wells Fargo was recently sued for breach of fiduciary duty to their

employees based on their benefit plan and so was Johnson and Johnson.

And youre going to start seeing more of these lawsuits popping up,

which is going to further accelerate

this type of programming Im talking about.

But I think its important to look back to who are the people

we trust that give us the advice for the insurance plan.

Its the brokerages and how do the brokers make money?

And since the inception of the insurance industry,

brokers have been paid a percentage of the commission

or a percent commission based off the premium.

So if its 5% on medical and medical goes from half a million

to a million dollars, my comp just doubled.

So whats the brokers incentive in this?

None.

Let rates continue to rise.

And hey, im sorry mister employer, your rates went up 20%.

We shopped the market.

We did the best we could.

Sorry.

And as they walk out.

But, yeah, but I got a raise off to the golf course, right?

That's the traditional brokerage industry right there.

And on top of that, the real money for these brokerages comes

in the form of what's called an override.

It's a spiff, it's a bonus that's paid at the end of the year by

the insurance carrier to the brokerage for not only keeping business

with that particular carrier, but adding business to it.

So there's a number of different metrics that they look at.

But if they set targets for these brokerages,

if you can meet this number, we're going to dangle this big carrot

in front of you and we're going to give you a very large bonus.

And for these big publicly traded carrier or brokerages,

it's eight figure bonuses and they're

publicly traded and owned by private equity.

They answer to those shareholders to meet

quarterly and annual earnings guidance.

So it's really important to them that they get those bonuses.

So the system again is misaligned.

The carriers are paying.

To play with the brokerage community is to go along, get along.

I pat your back, you pat mine.

And so you have seen in recent years a shift from brokers earning

commission of the premium, a percent of the premium, to charging a

per head fee, which I think is the right direction to move because

if you get an increase in your premiums, I shouldn't get a raise for

that.

I don't think that's fair.

But the override is a big driving factor.

Still to this day, the bonuses have actually gone up.

One of the things you mentioned there was,

and again im going to paraphrase it was something about they

get bonuses based on the growth of the account.

We talked earlier about how these insurance

companies have all this vertical integration.

Are they also getting into some of the secondary

benefit things like HSA, FSA, long term,

short term disability or are they really out of that space?

You mean the medical carriers?

Yeah, yeah.

You are seeing carriers moving into that market.

Its kind of a natural extension of their business.

I mean theyre heavily pushing what we call them ancillary lines

of coverage that would be dental, vision, life, disability.

And theyre using those policies as kind of bait, if you will.

They want a bigger share of the pie.

And so theyve gone out and purchased

companies that specialize in those.

And some of them have homegrown, but you know,

they offer a slight discount on medical if you're

willing to bundle the rest of this together.

Okay.

Speaking from personal experience,

when we first offered the traditional healthcare to our team,

my plan had been I'm going to take a high deductible plan

and I'm just going to stuff a bunch of money in HSA.

And as I'm going through my enrollment,

the HSA box on my screen is grayed out and it won't let me click it.

And I call and I'm like, hey, what's up with this?

And they said, oh, as a 2% owner,

you're not allowed to participate in this.

And so given that our audience is primarily owner founder types.

Are there other options for us, or are we just kind of stuck in that?

You can participate in the HSA,

you just can't participate on a pre tax basis.

Ah, so you can still.

I think hsas are fantastic.

I own one.

I've owned one since 2008, and I think they're probably one

of the best savings vehicles out there in it.

Above and beyond.

A mean, if I had limited dollars,

I would fund my HSA before I funded a 401k.

Because if you think about it,

an HSA is essentially a 401k that can be used for present day needs,

medical, dental, vision for your family.

But if you don't use it, you can use it in retirement

and distribute from it just like you would a 401.

But I say that on one side of the mouth,

but the other side is, I don't think they're right for most people

because the vast majority of the average

workforce is not going to participate in them properly.

They won't put the by the HSA policy because it's the cheapest plan,

but they won't put the money aside so that it's there when

they actually need to go get a prescription or go see a doctor.

And for those reasons, usually when I'm looking at the data

and I show it to an employer, yes, it's highly participated,

but look at how many people are not participating in contributing.

They're buying it for the wrong reason.

I think you said they're buying the HSA.

I think what you meant was they're buying the high deductible plan,

but not funding the HSA.

I use HSA interchangeable.

So high deductible plan paired with an HSA.

You're right.

Okay.

So as an owner, you said you can still fund it, but it's not pre tax.

At that point, should I just put my money in my money market account

at the bank, or is there real incentive to actually fund an HSA?

You know, one of the benefits of the HSA is going to be you have

the ability to invest in mutual funds just like you do before one k.

So I think that's a benefit.

I'm not going to be able to give you specific tax

advice because you still may be able to get some sort

of preferential track tax treatment for it.

I think you just need to talk to a CPA about that.

I just know from a payroll tax perspective, you're not going

to be able to participate with a payroll deduction pre tax.

Got it.

Okay.

Makes sense.

Well, outside of helping reduce people's insurance cost.

What are the best benefits packages comprised of these days?

So one of the things that we're seeing more and more,

and we do this with a lot of our clients, is being able to.

When you think about the experience that you have when

you walk into a traditional primary care doctor,

you're typically, it's hard to schedule an appointment.

When you get an appointment, the lobby is full

and the doctors are herding people through like cattle.

And you usually get two to seven minutes with a doctor.

Most of the time is spent with a nurse and a tech,

and they're looking at their laptop,

including the doctors typing on his laptop while he's talking to you.

And you're not really getting dedicated,

focus one on one attention with that doctor.

And if you are, it's not very long.

And so most doctors are there to triage and then refer you on,

either get you a prescription or refer you

to somebody else that's more expensive.

And the one of the biggest things that we're seeing picking up steam

today is concierge medicine, or we also call it direct primary care.

There are a lot of doctors that practice today,

even at the big hospital systems here in town.

They're getting burned out.

Their patient loads are high.

They see four to 5000 patients a year,

and they want to get back to practicing real medicine,

not what the administrators are telling them.

Get the patient in, get them in, get them out.

And so they're moving out of these high volume practices.

And instead of billing insurance policies to get paid a nominal

office visit, they're actually working on a subscription basis.

So you pay a flat fee every single month to see these doctors,

and they're available 24/7 on an unlimited basis.

And so when you go in for a physical, you're spending 60 to 90 to

2 hours with this doctor that's looking at you holistically.

You have this issue, but let's get back

to the root cause of what's causing it.

So they're actually practicing real medicine.

And as opposed to having thousands of patients they see a year,

they might only see a few hundred.

And so I call it Netflix for doctors.

Essentially, it's, you know, use as much as you want or as little.

It's the same cost.

And a lot of employers, because it's not real expensive,

they're pulling this into the employer sponsored health package,

and they're providing a real

neat benefit that a lot of companies are not offering.

And so it's an easy way to differentiate

your benefit package from a large national company.

You're going to tell your employees you have a dedicated physician.

Like, this is your doctor.

You can still go to any doctor that you want, but this guy

is available or the gal is available to you on speed dial.

They're there to help you year round,

and it's just a different experience.

Interesting.

Obviously, that's not every doctor, right.

So you've got to find a practice that

operates that way in your local area.

Doctor Justin.

Yeah.

So metro areas are pretty easy to find.

Now a lot of that area is picking up steam.

There's a lot of doctors that are getting into that business model.

One of the other things, and I actually do this.

I have one that's in person in Fort Worth,

but I have another that I work with is completely virtual.

And some people, when you think virtual, it's highly discounted.

Like, well, what can that doctor actually do?

And it's surprising.

When they need tests, they can order your labs at a blood draw center.

Like, whether it's labcorp or quests

right around the corner from the house.

Those results are sent to the doctor.

They can interpret those.

If you've got a really acute situation,

you can go into an urgent care, but all those results are going

to be sent back to your concierge doctor.

And really, the way to look at a concierge doctor, whether they're

in person or virtual, is they're your healthcare quarterback.

You have something weird that happens.

This legit happened to me last week.

I had an in office procedure done

at a dermatologist, had a biopsy done.

And this is giving an example of the value of this.

It was a Friday and they cauterized the spot,

but it wouldn't stop bleeding.

And it kept bleeding.

And it kept bleeding.

And it's now Saturday and it keeps bleeding.

And I just called up my doctor and said, I'm having this issue.

I can't get it to stop bleeding.

She's like, hey, jump in the car,

come to my office, I'll take care of it for you.

And she fixed it for me on a Saturday.

Like, what would have been my alternative,

to go to urgent care or go to an ER?

And that's just a really neat thing to be able to get taken care of.

It wasn't something I was gonna be able to solve on my own.

Yeah, that's.

I personally don't wanna work on Saturdays, so I'm grateful

that there are doctors out there that are willing to do that.

That's.

Well, so you shift the model, though.

So think about a traditional doctor.

How are they incentivized.

I always talk about how people get paid.

I'm a fan of economics.

It's just a study of human behavior is really what it is.

And incentives are their behavior towards incentives or disincentives.

A traditional doctor gets paid a fee

by an insurance company to see a patient.

So what's their motivation?

Get a patient in and churn as many of them as I can as quick as

I can because I can drive up what I did, my reimbursements.

And then they also want to put as many codes as they can.

So get one person in.

How many codes can I add to this?

I just boosted my payment.

Well, think about concierge physician.

What's their incentive?

They're going to get the same amount whether you're

in their office 100 times or one time or zero.

Their focus now is customer service.

And how do I keep you happy and healthy and out of my office?

I tell my doctor this all the time.

I know she wants me to live a long time so I can continue paying her.

You want to make sure I stay alive.

I love that.

All right, I'm going to draw on another personal example here.

We get our health insurance and all

of our benefits through our payroll partner.

We're not with a peo, but our payroll company.

They've got everything hooked in and man, it is just dead simple.

We onboard a new employee, boom.

There's all their benefits, enrollment right there in the same system.

We off board an employee, boom, everything just gets taken care of.

What does the administration look like for the employer

when they work with someone like y'all?

It's a very similar when you start thinking

about the employer and employee experience.

We build those plans inside of that

technology platform that you're using today.

I mean, I'm not specifically the one that you're using today, but

inside that platform, so that when an employee goes in, you onboard

a new employee, they put their demographic information, they go

through the enrollment, the systems are talking, and from a day to

day perspective, it's going to work very much like that now on the

back end.

So you probably cut a check to an insurance company today.

And I'm talking about if you're in a captive

or you're partially self insured today you're cutting a check

and you're sending it off to an insurance company.

Regardless of how that money is spent, it's gone.

Whereas we're educating employers on how to take that payment

they're sending to an insurance company today,

pay themselves, open up a bank account, put the money in there,

it's on your balance sheet, not the insurance companies.

And as costs come through the plan,

they're taking that money out of that bank account.

And then the goal at the end of the year is you're going

to end up with 20% to 30% of that budget left at the end of the year,

which is like a company HSA.

Now that I think about it,

that money rolls over can be used in the next plan year.

Our clients that are having the most success

are using that strategy for the first two to three years.

They end up with a war chest of money on their balance sheet,

and it now allows them to go back in,

reducing employee costs to insure their spouses and children.

Or we're going to add additional benefits to the plan,

or we're going to do something.

We're going to provide coverage that we've not provided before.

We're going to pay for the concierge doctor.

So.

But from a day to day perspective,

using enrollment in the technology system and getting it

to integrate with payroll is very much the same.

Okay, what's the number one thing you wish

business owners knew about this.

They have more choices than they realize.

And the number one thing that I,

my market is primarily owners and CFO's.

Our industry primarily sells through human resources.

And human resources professionals are exceptionally important.

They're often undervalued in many

organizations for what they actually do.

Insanely, critically important part of your organization.

But oftentimes the real onus to solve the problem

of rising costs and how to get this really under control.

It sits at the ownership level,

and there are many companies that owners don't want to take

an active part in the process of evaluation.

Because the way you as an owner think about the financing

of this transaction, what it's doing to your business, not today.

What does it look like three, 5710 years from now?

And what could it look like?

That's an ownership conversation.

And the companies that have the best success managing this

are the ones that have ownership, that are willing to get involved,

at least at the beginning and the end.

What I mean by that is get involved

at the initial discovery and vision setting.

This is what's out in the universe.

This is what your opportunity is.

Let us do the work with your HR department and then sit

in that finalist meeting to look at what are the real options.

Because oftentimes what happens is an advisor will go do the

work, owner won't sit in the meeting, and the board gets

scrubbed of two of the best options because somebody in the

room doesn't understand it fully because they don't have a

finance background or they don't understand economic value

over time.

And so ownership, getting involved in the process,

at least at the beginning and end, is critically important.

I totally get that.

I think about our sales cycles, and if we don't

have the decision maker in the room that has the full picture,

it makes our sales cycle harder.

You're obviously looking at it from a different perspective,

but that makes a ton of sense.

Well, man, do you ever see a day where

affordable Care act gets rolled back?

Major overhaul, because it sounds like there are so many

unintended consequences that have come out.

Is that a likelihood at all?

Ooh, I don't think so.

I don't think so.

I think the.

I don't have a tinfoil hat on, do I?

No.

Okay.

I just want to make sure I don't have a tinfoil hat.

But I'm just, I'm a realist.

When I look at what the law is, how it's affected the economy,

and what I mean by that is 15 years ago there were a dozen

or more health insurance companies.

There's now four big ones.

And when you look at hospital systems,

doctors typically don't work for anybody but a hospital system now,

they're so they've consolidated vertically.

Everybody's vertically consolidated.

You go into any city, there's one or two dominant hospital

systems where there used to be ten, now there's two or one.

And so there's a lot of power controlled by very few people

in anything that touches healthcare or insurance.

And it's getting bigger every day.

And there's a part of me that, as I look at this,

if you're the government, it's easier to control fewer people.

If you've got hundreds of thousands of different entities

running around, it's like ants on a dirt mound.

But if you want to put people in line and control them,

the fewer people, the bigger they are,

and the fewer there are, the easier it is to control.

I think that was the intent, and I really think the ultimate intent,

because single payer had been attempted

in our country several times and had failed miserably.

It wasn't passed, it was just not popular.

I think this was the initial domino kicked over with the goal

of getting us to single payer, create a problem that can't be solved.

The government always swoops in with some sort of solution,

and there are a lot of people that make an argument for.

I think there's two paths that we're going to go down.

And you're really seeing it today in the industry.

This is my prediction.

You've got single payer, which is the government's going

to create a Medicare for all type system,

and there will be a private insurance market for that.

There will be supplemental policies that get you first in line

in preferential treatment with doctors and that sort of thing.

So single payer.

But then this other is the free market, which people talk about.

Free market has failed in healthcare.

Like, what have I described today?

That seems like a free market to you?

None of it.

No, there's not adequate competition.

There's not transparency of price or quality.

People can't shop the way they do for anything else.

It's not a capitalistic system.

It is capitalistic, but it's not free market.

But what you are seeing this kind of alternate path

is employers that have said we've had enough.

You saw it with Berkshire Hathaway, Chase bank, and Amazon,

and youre seeing it with a lot of employers

that are standing up and saying were not going to do this anymore.

There are even big companies now that are trying to take on

solving the problem, and that is inserting competition

into their health plan, working with people that have aligned

incentives that are getting major reductions in their costs.

And thats catching on like wildfire.

And im optimistic that thats going to continue to grow

because the employers are setting the example of what can be.

Do you think that trickles down at some point?

I dont know if its psychological shifts or I dont know if

there are some changes to laws, but do you see some of that

coming down from these massive Fortune 500 companies

and getting down into smaller businesses like mine?

Its the opposite.

Its completely the opposite.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

I had a client early on in my career, a large publicly traded entity,

and to get them to make a slight change in their copay structure.

You thought we were trying to turn the Titanic.

I mean, they deliberated multiple meetings on can we change the copay?

$5?

And here's the thing.

I can walk into a midsize employer, speak directly to the owner, share

this vision, the cost, the plan for the next three to five years.

And I've had owners say to me, thats what were doing.

Were going to do it and were going to put all of this into our plan.

Were going to help our employees, were going to benefit from this.

Theyve saved hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars,

and its money that gets reinvested back into their business

and they are part of YPO or theyre part of other

organizations and they spread the word and those owners

take a similar approach inside of their businesses, and it

grows that way.

And then its trickling upstream.

The beta test was on small employers, mid sized employers.

And I mentioned Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway.

The venture they created was called Haven,

and it was created to disrupt and fix healthcare

for their companies and be an example for the country.

But they disbanded after several years.

And at that shareholder meeting, after they disbanded it,

Warren Buffett said something to the effect of,

I'm going to butcher his quote, but he said there are too many

powerful interests to fix this problem at a national level.

Wow.

And the solution really is a grassroots effort.

If you think about healthcare,

nobody's traveling to New York to have a surgery.

They're getting it done down the street.

They're delivering a baby down the street.

So let's create an insurance program that is trying

to help people locally and then it can grow at scale.

And that's really what we're seeing.

And the last point I'd make to kind of Warren Buffett's comment

about too many powerful interests.

If you look at the lobby, the lobbying dollars that are spent in

Washington annually, and I've gone back and looked at the data for

the last decade, the healthcare lobby, which is going to be insurance

companies, big pharma, the hospital lobby, those are the three big

players.

They've spent two and a half times what oil and gas,

big oil and defense contractors have spent combined.

You are kidding me.

Add up.

I'll send this to you as a follow up, but add up what defense and oil

have spent in Washington over the last decade, times it by 2.5.

And that's what healthcare has spent in Washington.

Wow.

Thats hard to believe.

Thats its public data.

That is crazy.

Well, for somebody thats listening to this,

and theyre going, man, I need to do something.

What are the terms that they need to go research

for themselves to get better educated?

I think the big one, and it is probably,

I think the first thing they do is they need to find somebody

thats aligned with their goal, that can show them alternatives.

If somebodys going to show up with four insurance quotes

and that's all they bring, is one of the big names, fully

insured, you probably need to talk to somebody else

because there are a lot of us out there that are showing

alternatives, giving a vision and strategy of how to get

there.

And then based on the questions that employer has,

that owner has, CFO has, I think that's where I would jump off.

But I think the biggest thing that I would recommend

if somebody wants to kind of do their own homework

is to look into group health captives.

That's the term I would Google.

Group health captive.

Group health captive.

All right.

And there's a number of them out there.

I mean, going back to something we were talking about earlier

where you said don't wait until you're already in your cycle.

If I'm already into my plan year, apart from the hassle

of changing and people's deductibles kind of getting reset,

is there anything that legally or contractually prohibits somebody

from changing in the middle of their plan year?

If you are on a traditional fully insured plan,

your rates are guaranteed for that full twelve month cycle,

but you can terminate with 30 days notice.

So it's easy to terminate.

And actually that's typically how clients work with us.

There's two ways.

The best time to go in and look

at something is just after your renewal.

And I know there are brokers out there,

they want to get in and they want to quote and get into the fray.

I think it's a waste of time for inviting other people

in because if you're just going to the traditional market,

the care is going to give every broker the same rate.

Hire a broker, an advisor that you feel is going

to represent you well and has a strategy that aligns

with yours and hire them and empower them to go do the work.

If you're not happy with your renewal, bring somebody in just

after it's finished because all the information is still fresh

on your mind, all the data is still relevant, it's not dated yet.

And then have somebody do a workup on it and figure out

where their missed opportunities.

Knowing this data and what we experience, what would you recommend

that we do and use that in interviewing advisors, because a good

advisor is going to give you a strategy before they're hired.

I don't need quotes to get hired.

I need to give you the strategy.

I need to show you what I'm going to do for you.

This is the areas of opportunity.

Hire me to go do it and if that message resonates with an employer,

hire them and then let them go.

See mid year, if it makes sense, if nothing,

get far enough ahead of the renewal cycle that that

option is available to you going into the renewal.

That's the two ways that we do it for clients is

oftentimes we'll switch them mid year.

I'd probably say about 40% of the time they're switching mid year.

Many times they want to keep their same renewal date,

and so we'll do it at renewal.

Is there anything that is coming down the pipe in terms

of regulations or other changes that owners need to be aware of?

The biggest one, and this is a big one, and it was put in motion

by the Consolidated Appropriations act that came out of the COVID era

regulations, and that is a fiduciary obligation that employers have.

Employers, if you have an employer sponsored plan, you have the same

fiduciary obligation as you do if you're offering a 401k plan.

And so I mentioned two big lawsuits that dropped recently.

Johnson and Johnson's being sued, and so is Wells Fargo,

and it's for breach of fiduciary duty.

And what specifically being cited is this monetization

thats happening by the carrier and the owners

and the CFO and the HR staff allowed that to happen.

They werent doing their due diligence of the broker

making sure this plan is in the best interest of the employees,

not the broker, not the carrier.

And one thing that was cited multiple times in those lawsuits

was the allowance of prescriptions to flow through a plan that

were $10,000 a month when the drug could have been purchased

with cash through Mark Cuban's cost plus program for $50.

And that seems pretty egregious,

but it happens more often than people realize.

It blows my mind how much margin there is in these things.

Years and years ago,

I had an injury playing hockey and resulted in a surgery on my ankle.

And with that came all kinds of physical therapy.

There was the ER visit the night that it happened, all that stuff.

And for some reason just, I held on to all the eobs, the

explanation of benefits that came in the mail, and I

totaled it up, and it was close to like $80,000 from,

again, from that first ER visit through all the PT and

everything else.

And as I'm reading it, it looks like so much

got written off between the doctor and the insurance company,

and it's maddening that the system is set up this way.

Yeah, it's, that's a whole different can

of worms we probably don't have time to go through.

But yes, it is maddening how much waste inefficiency is built in.

You know, the last thing I would mention is, you know, when I think

about big insurance companies, they'll trade on two things.

One is everybody's in network.

So let's pause on that for a second.

If everybody's in network, that means all the really

good doctors are going to be in the network.

But doesn't that mean also the bad ones are in network, too.

How do I know which one my employee might randomly get assigned to?

What if there's a way to ensure that we're not going to go see

the bad ones and we're only steering them towards the good ones?

And if they are really good,

what if we were able to contact those physicians and facilities

and work out a prearranged price that was better than insurance

so that this $80,000 episode could be 20,000 or 30,000?

Insurance is inefficient.

If you walk into a doctor's office, you're going to see

for every physician, there's probably five to seven

administrative staff to do all the processing and paying

and collecting from insurance companies and whatnot.

There's a big administrative burden.

When you go to those providers and you say, what if I just paid you?

If the insurance pays you the day of the surgery or within seven days,

none of this jumping through hoops,

waiting 90 days to get paid, what kind of discount would you give us?

And it's surprising.

It's 50% to 70% off.

Wow.

Wow.

So, yeah, I just share my own personal story, since you shared one of

yours had a hip replacement in January of 2020, and the surgeon that

I was using in the hospital that I went to were going to build my

insurance, the network, because I remember I talk about how I have

this kind of other providers that are kind of on top of the insurance

plan.

So my provider in the hospital are in network with the network

that we use for our insurance company, but we're self insured.

But we have contracts directly with these providers.

And so my hip replacement, the hospital, the radiology,

the surgery, the anesthesia was about $60,000 if I used

the logo on my card, the network, but we had a direct agreement

with this provider in the facility and it was $20,000.

And so it's my plan.

It's my company's insurance.

We're the insurance company.

We're self insured.

So we save $40,000.

But me as an individual, my cost of care was waived.

I got a free surgery.

In fact, ive had two.

Ive had a hernia surgery and a hip replacement surgery.

No cost to me.

And just the 40.

And then the second surgery, my company saved about $25,000 on that.

So im $65,000 to the good that would have been counted against us

at our renewal if I was in the traditional model.

But if you go back in any company, not everybodys getting

in hockey accidents or needing a joint replacement.

But again, I go back to that hundred employee company,

theres going to be a handful of people that need that.

And thats a real benefit if its available to them.

And on that note, I think you said this earlier,

but I just want to make sure for the three to five people out of 100,

it's not, hey, sorry.

Thanks for playing.

Good luck.

You have options for thats right, yeah.

So the very first option thats available is theyve got

the same benefits theyve always had, but we layer on.

So I mentioned Mark Cuban cost plus all of our clients that are doing

any work with us inside of a captive are partially self insuring.

That's part of their plan.

And we have other points of other programs just like Mark

Cubans where go through that program, the medications

free, go through Walgreens, you're going to have your

normal copay or deductible, but go through this channel

where we can get a 50% or 80% reduction of the price of

the medication.

You get it for free.

And so now we're turning employees into true consumers.

They're aligned.

We're aligning their interests.

Wait a minute,

I have no cost if I'm willing to just change the pharmacy.

I'm getting this from like, yeah, that's a no brainer.

Why wouldn't I do that?

And then we kind of use that same process for just about anything.

You need an MRI, we can help you with that.

Need a surgery, we can help you with that.

You don't have to go through your normal, use your insurance card

and it's your co pays and deductibles that you've always had.

But what's surprising presented that option, 75% of

the time employees are going to choose the one that's best for them,

which also happens to be best.

But there's this, people think that

helping the company or the insurance company helping themselves

is a mutually exclusive proposition, but it's not.

They're actually, you can, if you do it right, they're aligned.

And creating alignment is where you're going to really get

the best efficiency in both financially and for the experience.

Well, this has been eye opening.

Chris, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing.

I have a feeling that people are going

to be googling a lot here in just a bit.

So, so thanks for sharing that and hopefully we can help people

provide better care and save some money while doing it.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I provide resources

for employers that are interested just learning more.

So the two things I would offer to the audience is,

I would imagine there are people around the country.

So I'm connected with about 90 other

advisory firms like mine nationally.

So if you're in New York or California or Florida or Oregon,

I can connect somebody with an advisor that can help them,

that has that same mission alignment that we do.

But I also share a lot of content, just exposing some

of the things that we've talked about and more on LinkedIn, TikTok.

And most of the content that I create is on YouTube.

So I have an education series where I break some

of these concepts down into a more granular level.

And really the goal is I don't own the solution.

I think we have an obligation to society

because I think about healthcare and insurance.

From a societal standpoint, it's really expensive.

There's about 17,000,000,000,020% of our

gdp is spent in health care and insurance.

And it's not an efficient use of our capital.

And I think about employers, if they're able to save money and put

that back into their business and give money back to their employees,

that's money that

helps spur economic growth in our local communities.

And so I think as advisors, and this is what I teach other advisors,

is that we have an obligation to take this to people,

to help their businesses, to help their people.

And so along that line, I share openly the ins and outs, the

secrets the industry doesn't want people to know, as well

as granular level details that they can take back to their

advisor and ask these questions, can we do this for

ourselves?

And so my goal is to just give it away

to help as many people as we can.

Well, I personally appreciate that and know

a lot of other people out there do.

So thanks for coming and educating us.

Absolutely appreciate you having me.

That was Chris Hamilton,

partner and practice leader at Hotchkiss Insurance.

To learn more, visit hiallccom.

again, that's hiallc.com.

if you or a founder you know, would like to be a guest

on In The Thick of It, email us at intro@founderstory.us