On today's episode of Gathering McKens. I'm an entrepreneur that Wolfe problems in our health care industry, that were caused by our health insurance industry. When's the last time your doctor checked in with you via text? When the last time your doctor cared enough or had the time to check-in with you to make sure your health care journey was going the way that both of you had decided it should go. The health care world is so corrupt. It's so difficult to navigate. It shouldn't be that way.
We should be able to get the health care that we need and deserve. What's up, everybody? I'm Chaz Wolfe, gathering King's podcast coming back to you here today with not only a king on the stage, but my brother, Harlan Pickett, another radio voice, a podcaster, the health and medical insurance man of the hour. We're we're looking to get into it really deep. Agitate some thought here today. Harlan. Welcome to the King stage. Hey. Thank you so very much.
It is a honor to be on gathering the king's podcast, brother. I am so excited to be here. You know, I just have to because we were just talking about it off air, but I gotta I gotta point it out for the listener that how I I could not say Harlan Pickett knowing your your your Texas tone there that even just were like, you know, thanks for being a, you know, all of it, just your your accent, the the name, the fact that you're in Houston, It just it just brings me joy.
It just makes me it makes me smile. Makes me feel a little bit of a little bit of home. Even though I'm not from Texas, I feel like kind of maybe I'm a texan somewhere in there. Anyway, Harlan, tell us what kind of business that you got, brother. Alright. Well, a little bit different. I'm an entrepreneur that saw problems in our health care industry that were caused by our health insurance industry. And quite honestly, I'm an insurance broker.
I've been in the industry since 2007, because of multiple issues I saw my clients go through, I said, you know what? Health insurance is not the answer. Because it's actually preventing people from getting access to health care, because insurance, health insurance, and health care are two different things.
And so we started building very unique designed plan options to get people away from insurance companies that were dictating which doctors they could see, when they could see them, and how long they could see them. Right, quite honestly, it's it's a difficult situation for people to understand because we've been brainwashed so much in this country that we believe health insurance is necessary for health care, and that's just not the case. Health care is necessary for health care.
So that that's what we do is we build custom health plans. You know, I think that you're spot on here, not only in what you do. I love what you do, and we'll get there, a little bit more semantically, but as far just just up above, principally. Like, you're right. I think the majority of Americans think, oh, man. I gotta make sure I got those insurance benefits.
And whether they're working for somebody or they're trying to provide, benefits for their employees, it we're just we're just we just never thought outside of the box of what if I don't. And off the air, I was telling you a story, you know, that Julian and I went through in the last couple of years, so maybe we'll get to that here in a little bit, but I think we're gonna agitate some thought here around how people think about this. Would you agree? Not a absolutely because so think about this.
You're running a company, and you once you get past 50, Chaz you may or may or not know this, once you get past 50 employees, you're required by law to provide insurance to them. Not health care to them. You're you're required to provide insurance to them. Right. That then becomes overnight. Your 2nd to 3rd largest profit and loss time. I mean, you're you're paying for something right now that most of your employees are not even using, by the way. That's right. And they're very unhappy with it.
In in fact, a lot of times you're unhappy with, but you don't know any different. You don't have any idea what to do, and you believe that there's no way to control those costs. And if you're talking to a traditional broker, and I know lots of them out there, and I used to be 1. If you're talking to a traditional broker, They're gonna tell you, hey. There's nothing I can do. Yeah. It's a 15% increase. Well, I thought we had a good year. I I really didn't think the rates were gonna go Yeah.
But they're only going up 15%. I'll tell you what, I'm gonna go to bat for you. I'm gonna take care of you. And they come back and tell you, I did it. I got them down to 12. You did that for me? Man, that's why I like you, buddy. That's why I'm never gonna have anyone else because you got it down to 12 for me. Thank you so much. Yeah. How many of you heard how many out there that you're the CEO, CFO? You've heard that story.
And you probably weren't even involved, and that's what's unfortunate you're leaving it to the HR department to make strategic decisions, money decisions that should be in your hands not in your HR sense, they're not trained for that. These are strategic decisions that should you should be making, not them. Yeah. Like you said, a pretty a pretty high line item, on the P and L. Okay.
Well, we're gonna get into, you know, just the ability to think differently about health care and insurance here soon. From from a place of Harlan, like, what's deep rooted? You've obviously been an entrepreneur for a long time. Why do you do this? Why do you do entrepreneurship? Why are you a business owner? But then also why health care. Okay. So let let's let's go back to Wyman Entrepreneur. Because after 19 years in corporate America, corporate America decided it didn't need me anymore.
I got laid off. Like many of you out there are probably experienced. I got laid off. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. The greatest thing ever. You know, it it's interesting because I there's people that I worked with. That are I'm I'm I turned 57 in just a couple of days here, and that is, fifty eight would have been the age I could have retired at. And I would have had enough time by now to retire full retirement and their retired fifty eight years old of age.
I cannot imagine how horrible my career with the fin that had to stay in that place because I was paid just enough and had just a good enough benefits. I bought at the time to not leave. I had to be told we don't need you anymore. Yeah. And I'm telling you, what a blessing What a blessing it was because that entrepreneurial spirit that I always had I had no choice now. Right, yes. I had no choice. What are you gonna do? Still gotta feed the family.
Yeah. So away I went, the wife and I actually started a catering company first. Okay. I'm I'm a pit master. I'm from Texas. I'm a pit master. Shocking. Right? Of course. Yeah. I'm a pit master, so we ran a catering company for a number of years. Just kind of a weird way I got an insurance. This is ridiculous, by the way. This is ridiculous. Who in the world gets in the insurance world like this? Part of my wonderful severance package was a year's salary and benefits for a year.
Now always being in corporate America, I had no idea what insurance really cost for an individual. So when time came that our insurance was running out and I started getting quotes from insurance people, from these insurance agents, evil, ridiculously corrupt insurance agents in my mind. Yeah. They were all quoting me. Well, I didn't know how good this was back then. $800 a month for my family of 4. $800. Like, I've never paid more than, you know, 200 bucks For this, you're you guys are crazy.
You're crooks. There's no way it costs this much. So in my infinite wisdom, I had decided I would sell myself insurance. So I studied for 2 weeks, took the test, pass the test, got appointed with insurance company, went out and quoted insurance for myself and said, oh my gosh. This stuff cost a $100 a month. That's how I got an insurance. How ridiculous is that? Right? Wow. So so you ended up selling your own policy realizing that, it was the real price. Yep. Thought, well, shoot.
I might as well sling it to everybody else. Well, what I found out is there's no one to explain to me what's happening. When people leave corporate America or they they go out for the first time and have to buy individual insurance, no one explains what it's gonna look like. No one explains other options out there. No one could there was no one to explain to me.
They just said this is what it is because, unfortunately, and those of you out there that are in industries Chaz there's a lot that are very difficult. Health care is very difficult. Insurance is very difficult to understand. I mean, try to read a policy sometime. It's ridiculous.
But when you're in that type of industry, it's very unfortunate, but many, many people that are in it do not spend the extra time to understand and they don't understand it so that you can explain it to the lay person, explain it to somebody who's not in that industry. And because of that situation, I saw my calling. I said, okay. I'll be just I'm just gonna be an insurance guy, but I'm gonna explain to people what's going on.
I'm gonna explain to him why it is the way it is and give them options that may be a little bit different. Now I really thought I was doing things different back then, and I really wasn't. I didn't know any better. I was so young in this industry. I was listening to the insurance companies. I believed them. I thought they were good guys. I was naive. It took me a lot of years to figure out that they were not our friend.
But when I did, it's like somebody hitting you over the head with how evil they are. And, yeah, if if you're working for an insurance company out there and especially if you're one of the buccas, by the way, a bucca Chaz, so you know, is Blue Cross United, Cigna, and Aetna, Bucha. K? Those are the big cartail of insurance companies that control how we access health care in this country, and they are not your friend.
And even if you are a self funded plan, if you're a company out there that is self funded, and you have one of those companies controlling your plan, you're not getting the benefits you think you are. Go out and look at all the lawsuits out there against these guys from not managing these these plans properly. They're for profit. And, unfortunately, they're not just making profit. They're profit tiering.
But my journey taught me these things, and it made me very, very passionate about helping people in a very different way but it was it was not very unconventional in the way that I got here because I did not wanna get here. It was an accident that I even got in the insurance industry. Once again, it's a it's a weird journey. There's a lot of other stuff that happened in there, Chad, but I'll I'll tell you.
It's it's been a It's been a wonderful experience of growth to figure out all the things that are going on and help people, get really the access they deserve to health care. Yeah. And we're gonna do that here today as well. We're gonna extend your reach, you know, to the listeners. And so I think Chaz, I mean, first off, entrepreneurs, it's not like unless they have a spouse that's working for a big company, they're in the same boat that you and I are. They're providing their own way.
They've got a personal plan, or they have no plan. And we're gonna talk about maybe some of those things. Not so much from the benefit of, I mean, yeah, if they if they wanna reach out to you and and get some of your plans, I think great. We'll give them an opportunity to do that. You're clearly a a guy that's passionate. And if they don't have anything, they should do it with you.
The I think the baseline here is that we're we're gonna show something to the entrepreneur as a a new way of thinking or an agitation of thought that I think is just a higher level of thinking. And I think it can also be applied in business too because, really, what the foundation that you've laid for us is that what you think may be true possibly isn't. Is is there a possibility that these big names that you know of could be doing something different than what they tell you?
And I'm not here to say otherwise, but you are. And I think that that's great. I think between the agitation of our thought, you might experience in in in your, expertise. I think that we'll be able to give to them a a a unique picture. So inside of that, I want to also capture some things that you've done in business for yourself just helping other people, but some really good decisions that you've made along the way here.
So let's first talk about what you're saying here as far as, like, you know, maybe the insurance industry is causing the health care problem. Give us a little bit of understanding there and why do you feel that way? Okay. That that's a that's a great question because I had to see a problem with the way things are working now or the way things have worked in the past. To understand there there was a problem. Right? And that problem just didn't come from me. I didn't just have an issue.
I had helped 100, if not thousands of people, get health insurance. And I was listening to them. The problems became very financially difficult for people. When you think about that financial or medical Debt is still the number one cause of bankruptcy in the country, and the fact that about 80% of those people had health insurance You realize there's a fundamental problem there. Right? There's something going on.
What is causing these people that have protection to all of a sudden be in this situation. And when you think of it in the You're saying that the number one reason for bankruptcy is medical, delinquency. Medical debt. And and medical debt. And 80% of those people had health care or health insurance. Health insurance. See, what did you just do? You just called in health care, didn't you? Why? Well, that's what we do. Yeah. I I wanna point out to you how okay.
I'm I'm fixing to go off on a tangent here. Sorry. This is this is me. It's so ingrained in our in the US mental system that these are the same is we just finished the first part of open enrollment for individuals, right, health care dot gov. Where did you go sign up? Health care.gov. That's the federal website. Right? You cannot buy health care on health care dot gov, not one Iota, not an ounce of health care Chaz you ever buy on health care dot gov. All you can get is health insurance.
Then in many cases prevented prevent you from getting that health care, because you get denied the right to go see a doctor you wanted to see. You get denied purchase. Right. You get denied because they're not in network. Or you do see a doctor in network, and they refer you to a facility in network, and you're going to have this surgery. And then the insurance company says, nah, you don't need that. Wait. What? This is life altering potentially life saving. No. You don't need that.
The insurance company just decided what was medically correct for you. They just decided. Not you and your doctor where it should be, the insurance company. Tell me in what world that is right. Yeah. Well, just to put a little extra little drip in there, the person that you're describing, the insurance company, who is determining that need or not Chaz a financial incentive to not pay. Now there's a purpose for insurance. Generally speaking, like, back it all out.
Like, insurance is a is what the thing that we all pay for that we hope that we never use. Okay. Fine. But in that moment, they're financially incentivized to act when we're the other, and you can't deny that because it is what it is. They either pay out or they don't based on their payouts. They have a profit at the end of the year. Insert your story. Yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, it it's unfortunate, but that's the way it is.
You you can literally go out there and find 1000 upon thousands of stories of people that have been denied, all the way down from something as simple as an image. No. You cannot get this MRI. What? I can't get an MRI. So you're just gonna let it go. Now you need to go to physical therapy. Okay? Well, here's the problem.
And there's plenty of data to back this You don't go to physical therapy without the MRI because a physical therapy could further damage what's going on unless you know what's actually going on. Right. So how can I, as the doctor, recommend something? There's nothing wrong with physical therapy. I think physical therapy is a great first step to avoid your surgery. It happens it works in many cases.
But without knowing exactly what's going on with the structure of certain things, it's not a good idea. Because you don't know what to do. Yeah. What's the same reason why when someone falls, you don't hurry up quick and get them to stand up. You'd you don't move. Right. Right. There there's there's so much in inter intertwined in there. And seeing this over and over with clients, seeing them denied things, seeing them. Yep. Uh-uh. Another big one is is track medical travel.
So whether we We had a client that was picked up by helicopter because he was in an accident. Right? So life flight came and picked up. The passenger The passenger was in critical condition. He was unconscious. Okay. He was driving. He was unconscious. It turned out Ollie Howe was a broken leg. And a concussion. But he got a ride too. The helicopter was there. They denied his claim. They said you should not have been You you did not have a serious note to go. He was unconscious.
Yeah. Instead, we want the hold on. Don't don't put him on there. Send the ambulance. He's unconscious. He couldn't say no. Don't put me in there. My insurance ain't gonna pay. Yeah. $80,000 bill. $80,000 bill insurance company said, no. We're not paying that. We're not paying that. You you you only had a concussion in a broken leg. That is not reason. To have that kind of helicopter ride. You don't get that. Yeah. These are the kind of things. Right? How did he have any control whatsoever?
There was none, but they don't think of that logically. And, you know, the the other thing we see is now when I say the insurance company decides whether or not something's gonna happen. There is process. Now some of you may have heard some of the lawsuits that are out there right now because AI is actually making a lot of these decisions now. AI is determining whether something gets paid or not. But in a lot of cases, especially more serious things, it will get a doctor's eyes on.
So a doctor will look at it. Here's the problem with that. Let's say that you have a cancer diagnosis. You're saying you're on acologist, oncologist may even be a specialist for what your particular cancer is. It goes to the insurance company. True story. A pediatrician that works for the insurance company is now reviewing, and he says, nah, this doesn't look like the proper treatment to me. I think you should do something else.
Based on your wide experience in oncology, are based on the fact that you wanna save the insurance company money. Which one of those is it, doc? But these are real things. These are happening every single day, and that is actually a lawsuit that's out there right now. That exact scenario is a lawsuit against an insurance company because that's exactly what happened. And the individual did not make it. Individual, the treatment was finally approved, but it was too late.
The individuals could not be treated at that point. Wow. Well, okay. So you've you've said something that that triggers the story that I'd mentioned to you at a time. You said that, you know, really it's it's them determining it, but it's also, you know, that $80,000 helicopter ride, it's like, we'll we'll why was the helicopter ride $80,000 to begin with? Right.
And that's because, well, when the insurance pays for it, they can charge $80,000, you know, because if he had been in critical condition, Basically, it's a twist of the arm and charge whatever you want, and the insurance company pays for it. And so I I'm gonna tell this brief you know, scenario here that Julian and I went through, and I want your opinion on it because, there was just a couple of years ago. We're extremely healthy family.
We have, what I now know of is something similar to your product that you have, basically a medical share, which basically means I'm not insured unless it's just some really catastrophic thing. I'm basically self insured, but I have a but I have a group behind me that that can save me in a in a bad scenario. Okay. Cool. So we go in. We we've never had major stuff really happening. Julie's pregnant. She's having our 3rd miscarriage, at this time.
And has to be ambulance in the middle of the night, you know, emergency, D and C, like, really bad scenario. Like, really, I I was holding my lifeless passed out Wolfe in my arms, one of the scariest moments in my life. And we we, you know, we check out from a couple of days later. And, of course, throughout the loan throughout the process, it's, hey. What what insurance company do you have? I said, oh, we don't have one. Oh, really? Okay. So cash pay, you know, the way down.
I'm like, this is gonna be so interesting to me because I've never been in this scenario. I've just I've heard of the medical debt. I've heard of these huge absorbent bills. And so this is really interesting to me. I'm just like, we're just gonna play this out, see how it works. And, we get the the bill. It's it was a $40,000 bill, but because we're cash pay, it was, like, 3000 something dollars. I wrote a check, and and we moved on. And it was just like, wait a second.
So if I had had insurance, you would have charged this amount, but because I don't, you charged the real amount Is that what you're saying to me? Harlan, help me out here, bro. What Yeah. Sense does this make? Yeah. Absolutely. So, each hospital has a book. That has prices in it. Mhmm. And they're kind of imaginary prices, but they're prices. And Chaz is that's the rate that you were told. Okay? Right. That $40,000 is the rate that they could charge.
Now they also have the rate for each and every insurance company. Okay? Each insurance company's rate is different. And within each insurance company, there's different plans, and each of those plans is different. And so what ends up happening is the same exact procedure can have literally hundreds of different price points for the exact same procedure. And then there's one other price, the cash price.
Mhmm. And typically Chaz cash price is going to be the lowest or within the lowest, say, 4 or 5, sometimes the insurance company may have done a real good job. Sometimes there might be a reason that, there's other things below it. Medicare Sure. Can have an impact on Chaz. But, typically, at the very bottom is gonna be the cash price. Now there's a few reasons for Chaz, but there they make a lot of sense. For anyone who's a business owner out there, this Wolfe make perfect sense to you.
Chaz you charge somebody less if they're gonna pay you today? Whether they are if they pay you 6 months from now. And guaranteed. Which in my hand. So I just it's in my hand. Right? There's not gonna be a negotiation. There's gotta be anything else You're gonna give me this money right now. Yeah. It's mine. Yep. Typically We'd all agree that, yes, there's a there's a there's a play for There's a place for that and the administration of it's a whole lot less. Right?
Yep. As we've seen Obamacare come out Chaz we've seen, the the big platform of Medicare Advantage Plans. They're they're just all over the place now. The administration side of hospitalization doctor's offices health care period has exploded to the tune of about 1900% increase in 10 years.
And The majority of that is on the billing side where all of this everyone has different billing So whether you're sending it out for Medicare, you're sending it out for Medicare Advantage, whether you're sending it out for a commercial plan, individual plan, you've gotta have a certain knowledge for all of those things. And so we've seen an explosion on the admin side.
So so many times Chaz bill, if if I'm taking cash and I don't have to have a bunch of people deal with this, I can take so much less because I don't have all the administration that I would have. That's right. One of the guys in in the hospital world told me that typically there's 5 billing people forever bed in Austin. Wow. Think about that. 5 billing people for every single bed in a hospital. How heavy is that That mean it's more than there is nurses. Right?
If you've been in a hospital or been to visit someone in a hospital, you may see a couple nurses, or you may see a nurse and a helper that comes in to maybe do some blood draw or something, but you don't have near as many people coming into your room Chaz you do have administrating that It it's nuts. Yeah. There's a lot that goes into the semantics of it all, but I think the the biggest The biggest takeaway for me as an entrepreneur was, look, man. I mean, there's a huge play into health.
Like, I I there are there are many families who have things going on in their bodies, ailments, disease, and and they can't just not have insurance. Or Right. At least that is what they think. Right. Maybe there's other solutions for them. I can't speak for them, but for for me and my family, us being you know, we we're we're vigilant on being healthy.
Individuals being not not, you know, wanting health care when we need it, but providing healthier to ourselves every single day and what we eat, what we don't eat, how we exercise, all that stuff. So that way, this whole racket, which I just it felt like a racket. I was just, like, unbelievable. This is crazy. Like, I'm thankful that I got to just write the check. Super grateful for that.
But, I mean, Harlan, this was this was a scenario where I'm like, this I see that gap of 3000 to 40,000 going It's all it's doing is paying the 5 billing people per bed, and everybody else on the on the on the health care side. It it does not benefit the individual at all. No. Not at all. It's it's not you didn't receive different health care. See, execute. You did not receive a different level of health care because you paid 3000 versus 40,000. Think about that. No difference.
So what does that mean? What what does that tell us, Sanchez? What does that tell us? It tells there's no correlation between the level of care and the cost of the care. Right. What else is out there that way? In in other words, it completely flips on the head. You get what you pay for because that's not the case in health care at all. And, typically, lower costs actually mean better care because of the way that the plans are designed in a way.
I mean, there's a there's a movement out there called direct primary care. And, Chaz, what direct primary care is is membership based. So it's doctors that allow you to pay a monthly membership fee Right. Anywhere from 52, say, a $120 a month. And then you can go to that doctor anytime for zero cost. You have that doctor's cell phone. You Chaz you can text that doctor. Let me tell you. It's a beautiful experience. That's what we use ourself. The very first time I met my doctor. She said, hi.
I'm Michelle. Not him, Doctor Jones, not him, Doctor Pickett, not him, doctor, whoever, I'm Michelle. Right. Yeah. That's perfect. What a different experience. Whenever after I first met her, a couple of weeks later, she sends me a text. She goes, how are you doing today? Oh, this is some kind of weird auto thing. I'm like, I'm okay. She's like, great. I was just thinking about you. I'm looking forward to our meeting in a couple of weeks. To follow-up on the things we discussed.
Yeah. What is she telling me? She said I need you to change my diet a little bit. Need to, you know, I'm very blessed. I don't have any major medical issues. Extra pound or 2. But anyway, I wanted to know, hey. How can we I'm from Texas. Alright. I like chicken fries, steak, and brisket, and stuff like that. Yeah. But we talked about how I can kinda what you were talking about, Jess. What can I do to be healthier without having to get on a bunch of pharmaceutical? Yeah. That's right.
She wanted to know. She's just checking in to see how's that journey going for you? Yeah. What can she do to help? When's the last time your doctor, anyone out there? When's the last time your doctor checked in with you via text? When's the last time your doctor cared, and, or had the time to check-in with you to make sure your health care journey was going the way that both of you had decided it should go.
Do you have any input in Chaz, or are you waiting weeks, if not, must, to see a doctor, to only get 5 to 7 minutes with them and they don't listen to you? And your frustration level keeps getting higher and higher and higher. Chaz a entrepreneur Chaz a business owner, Are you sick and tired of being in a system that really doesn't care about your health Chaz only cares about profiteering? Because that's where it's at.
And that that is an unfortunate place, but that is why medical debt is out of control, Chaz, and that is why the traditional system Ma'am, people keep saying it's broke. Told you this beforehand, the system is not broke. The system is working exactly the way it was designed to work by the people that designed it. It is absolutely, enriching those that was designed to enrich and bankrupting those that was designed to bankrupt.
Including, this is an interesting one too, the moral bankruptcy of doctors. Doctors are having to make decisions that are go against their morals. It go against their beliefs. Yeah. But because of insurance and health systems, they're being dictated to what they can do and what they can't do and it's morally bankrupting them. This is what's causing such a huge burnout towards physicians. Wow. Yeah. There's a lot of angles here of the problem. I think you've articulated it well.
The frustration of it, I think we've all experienced. Even if even if the listener has never experienced, you know, maybe some of the deep things we've talked about. Yeah. But they've just gone into the office. And for a normal checkup, dude never lifts his head up from the pin. You know, Chaz it answered all his questions, you know, checks my heart rate and then leaps. You know, we've all experienced that. Right. You've given us a little bit of the solution.
You said, you know, part of it is, you know, kinda our alignment of being healthy and being preventative. Okay. Fine. We're not neither one of us are specialists in that, although we agree. The second step then, you've said is get a different type of health care plan, where which is where you're talking to a doctor, you're in a medical, community, membership. You get access that you maybe don't have before, but there's a third piece, which is basically what you do.
And it it is for those emergency type scenarios. It is for, like, a health insurance replacement. Tell us more about that because I think that's part of it. Right? Yeah. Absolutely. So medical cost sharing, which you're very familiar with, we we do work on the medical cost sharing platform. That is something that's very important to us. Now one of the things when we started design when I started designing these plans Chaz I love the Christian based health care, which you're you're on Metashear.
There's all one called Christian Health Ministries. There's another method. There's one that's devoted for to the Catholic faith. The the negative side of those, if there's a negative side is that you have to be a person of faith And in some cases, go so far as I got a letter from a pastor saying that I go to church at least twice a month. Which is crazy. It is, but I I understand.
So what they're what they're really doing is they're watching out for their membership to make sure that they don't have any strange outliers out there. And that everyone's on the same page. Sure. Well, what we did instead is we partnered with an organization that is not faith based. Except for one thing, and that is you do believe in helping your fellow man. So your faith is actually in your fellow man.
You're you're not that you're worshiping your fellow man, but that you agree that the way that we help each other is by taking care of each other. And you also testify or you, you know, you you say I'm going to live a healthy lifestyle. Yeah. So what that means is when we had one of our members that pass was hospitalized and ultimately passed away by organ failure And on her unfortunately, on her death certificate, it said, organ failure due to severe alcoholism. Her need her bill was not paid.
K? She did not live up to her side of it. She did not live a healthy life she didn't do what she said she was gonna do. Yeah. Now Chaz you kinda mentioned before, the bill was astronomical. The bill was north of a $100,000. What a lot of groups would have done in that case is say, too bad. So sad. She didn't follow-up to her part of it, so her spouse has just left with that bill. Chaz is not what we did. Even though we did not pay any part of that need. We did go to bat for that family.
We were able to negotiate that down to less than $10,000. And so while there still was a bill there, and needless to say the grieving spouse was not, in a good place, We did keep them keep him in particular from going into severe medical debt, and we're able to at least do that side of it or that family. Not an optimal situation whatsoever. Yeah. But there is there is more advocacy on your side. I mean, you you're you've got some skin in the game in this case.
You do when you have traditional insurance too. You just don't realize it. One one thing to remember is the definition of insurance is the sharing of risk. That is the that is the legal term, the sharing of risk. Not the guaranteed payment of your claims. That is not in there anywhere. And even if you ever were to read your policy and you could make heads or tails of it, It truly says there is no guarantee of payment for anything, which is why they can deny what they do.
Yep. So just because you have a card in your wallet that says Blue Cross Blue Shield, UnitedHealthcare, Humana, Aetna, whatever doesn't mean you're guaranteed payment for all the things that you need. And that is once again the fallacies of some of the things that we live with. But what we do differently is we ask a crazy question So what are your needs? What do you want your plan to look like? If you could design something for your company or for yourself, what would be important to you?
We ask those questions. We take that into consideration, and we build customized solutions for businesses of any size are for individuals. Sometimes though, that includes health insurance, A part of health insurance, sometimes it doesn't. But if you've ever looked at a health insurance plan, if you ever were to get into that box, we caught the book of box, the book of black box. If you were to open that up, what you would actually see is nothing more than a health care supply chain.
That's all it is. All we're doing is building you your own health care supply chain taking the high dollar middlemen out and giving you direct access to health care, but not just leaving you on your own.
We're actually fundamentally changing the way you access health care by helping guide you down the pathway to to better care at high quality places, centers of excellence, the highly rated places, highly rated doctors that will get you the best care and not just put you back in the hospital over and over and over. One of our partners, the surgery center of Oklahoma, run by doctor Keith Smith, in the last 10 years. It's gonna be hard to believe folks.
In the last 10 years, they've had one infection. 1. Hospitals nowadays can't just have one a day. Yeah. And in 10 years, they've had 1. Doing thousands upon thousands of surgeries. That's what we look for. Centers of Excellence provide you the care you need and deserve. It's it's not just something, hey. I want some care. No. You deserve that care. So let's get you the care you deserve by customizing what you do. Then you're actually able to control your health care.
We're able to help your employees in a better way. Imagine a health care plan that's so good is drawing people to your company. People wanna come work for you. Right. Because of the health care that offer them. That's what's possible, and then you have a better control on that second or third highest cost line out, Adam, on your P and L every year. Yeah. If I'm an entrepreneur listening to this right now, and I'm like, okay. I get it. I like control. That's why I'm in business. Right?
I like to control my entire environment. To be able to control the plan. Okay. Fine. But I'm not a health care expert. So how am I supposed to know how to pick? Obviously, you'll help me, but what does that process look like? What am I picking? Well, that's a great question. What do you want? See, that's that's what a fundamental Chaz question. Right? What do you want? Because they've never heard that. If I if a traditional insurance broker common said, what do you want? They actually met.
Do you want Blue Cross? Do you want Aetna this year? Do you want what do you want? Do you want a high deductible or deductible? Right. Or your rates are going up. Well, what do you mean when you say what do I want? Cause I don't know. Well, let let's talk about that. Do you want, let let's talk about what's out there. Let's talk about medical cost sharing. Let's talk about building a a custom health plan.
Let's let's talk about care navigation Care navigation is where your employees truly have an advocate they talk to about what's going on with you. Your doctor says you need to get an MRI. Great. Here's what we can do. We can send you over here. And because the way our plan is structured, if you'll go down the pathway we recommend, It's zero out of pocket for all your services.
No cost for your doctor, for your specialist visit, no cost for your your MRI, no cost for that CT scan because we couldn't see everything we needed to see. And then, yeah, you're gonna need surgery. How about no cost for that too? And we're all and all that time, we're not there's no secret back alley you go into that you gotta know the secret knot. No. You're going to high quality centers of excellence.
To get the care you deserve and not have to worry about a low quality doctor or infections or thing. This stuff this stuff happened. Yes. It does, but we're gonna send you to the place Chaz you're most likely going to avoid all the negative things that happened in the health care world. But you you make a good point. I'm not a health care guy. What what do I not know? There's a lot you don't know, and that's why it's a conversation.
It's a conversation to get you to understand what's possible so that we then we can build a plan that works best for you and your situation. Part of it is I mentioned earlier, if you're a if you're a group of 50 or more, there's certain regulatory things you must comply with or else there's huge fines that you could Yeah. We're gonna make sure that all of that regulatory stuff is taken care of.
The compliance side of it I won't say it's just as important, but it's important because the fines can be astronomical. We're not gonna put you in that situation. You're not gonna have to choose 1 or the other. Right? You're not gonna have to say, well, I can be compliant, or I can have a good health plan. Nope. You can do both. So the compliance side is just as important to us. We have a company that we use that has all of the lawyers and you follow ACA guidelines and Arissa guidelines.
If you're out there within you know what I'm talking about? We make sure that it's a compliant plan, but it's so different and feels so different than those traditional plans. You you truly have that feeling. Oh my gosh. This is health care. You've finally got that insurance stuff out of here so I can have health care, and my employees have health care. It's a huge, huge difference. Yeah. I appreciate the, really, it's a distinguishment, but it's also just your your passion.
You can tell that you've spent time in the mud. And, and you're just trying to let people know. Yeah. I it really is. And, you know, unfortunately, there's There's one other thing. There's one key thing. Not everyone will understand this because unless you've hired a traditional broker, Then you don't get this side of it. As a traditional broker, we're paid by the insurance company. And maybe a few other things out there too.
Maybe your pharmacy, maybe the the claims, the TPA, were paid by all of them. Typically, we tell the employer, great news, You don't have to pay me. I'm getting paid by everyone else. So good news. It's free for you. Is it really? If I'm being paid by the insurance company and everybody else, which side of the table am I sitting on, Chaz? Am I sitting on the employer's side? Sounds like it sounds like you're incentivized. I'm there's no reason for me to sit on your side of the table.
I'm gonna sit on the side of the table with the people that pay me. Wolfe, guess what? There's about 500 a little bit less than 500 across the country to do something a little bit different. We don't get paid by any insurance company or any other way. The only person we get paid from is the employer themselves. We come to a consulting agreement, and we make a fair price on what our services are.
Sometimes they are a little bit higher than you might be paying your broker because all you know what you're paying your broker is what he told you, but Wolfe fully disclose all of that. We come to a true agreement on what our services are worth. And the only person we ever receive any compensation from is the employer themselves Chaz puts us on their side of the table We make sure that the plan's running the way it's supposed to run. We do regular checkups. We don't work with everybody.
If you're not willing to provide someone in your company that's gonna be what we call your health care champion. You need to have a champion. You need someone on your side in your company that really cares, and it's gonna be with us to follow how the plan works. If something's not working right or their engagement with their employees is not working right, We're gonna fix it now. We're not gonna wait till the plan year's over and say, oh, that didn't work. Let's try something new next year.
No. We're gonna stay on top of this at the beginning weekly, eventually monthly, but we're gonna follow-up and keep in touch with one another and be sure the plan is doing exactly what was promised because my compensation is on the line. If the plan does not work the way I guarantee it's gonna work, I'm not getting paid. Yeah. It's good. It's good alignment. I think that every entrepreneur wants to have good alignment.
As we as we're thinking about building our business and our and our teams even, I mean, we want a salesperson that works for us to be incentivized to sell the right things at the right margin. Like, you know, it it's we've gotta all be on the same page. I think that you've done just a great job. It's definitely new thinking. It's It's actually getting, I'm sure some thoughts, out there going, wait a second. I gotta pay you too. And it's like, look, you're already paying the man. K?
Probably more. You are. Who knows with with, with the way that the premiums are? Yeah. That's why they keep getting increases. Remember that guy that saved him? From 15 down to 12? He only got a 12% race. Yeah. Yeah. He just negotiated his own his own cost down. Yep. Harlan, I'm gonna wrap this thing up by asking you a question.
This might be a little bit unique because we we We didn't get a bunch into business, although I think that all the stuff that we talked about today is super valuable for entrepreneurs, and so that's why I went there. Looking at your own journey, I want you just to roll back the the clock. And I want you to to to pick the younger Harlan, pick out whatever age, And I want you just to whisper something to his ear, but I want you to tell us what you whisper to him. What is it? Stay true to yourself.
K. The the reason I say that is because I was recently asked a question if if you go back to your younger self, your high school self, what journey would you tell them to take? Yeah. And my answer was the same one. The same exact journey because the things that I've been through from corporate America to entrepreneur outside of this world to seeing the problems the that it turned me to who I am now. All of it was necessary, but I had to stay true to myself.
I had to let myself become the entrepreneur and the spokesperson in this kind of role that I was born to be. I did not ever dream of doing this. There was zero Chaz. I was gonna be doing this. Okay. I guess there wasn't. There was, like, point 0001%. But here I is. Right? But the strange thing is is this was not my desire. This was nowhere in my dreams. This was nowhere, you know, I wanna be an astronaut. I wanna be a freakier. I wanna be an insurance guy that changes things.
Nah. Who in the world wants to be an insurance guy. Right? So but by staying true to yourself, that means that what you're really here to do, you do. You do it, and you don't let nothing get in the way of that. Nothing. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. I've seen I've seen just the the journey that you've shared, and I don't know the whole story, of course, but you're you're not just helping people with their health care and health insurance options.
You're helping people understand things differently, and you're changing their their Wolfe, potentially.
And so I think that's that's what you'd been staying true to, right, whether it, you know, if you would have been in a different vehicle, I still think that maybe you'd still be helping people in that way, but it's cool that you've been able to express yourself in this in this environment, but I think that that message for the younger Harlan or for the younger entrepreneur or the younger Chaz, like, listening, it, like, it's all It's, it's authentic. Just say, hey. Who are you?
What's your identity? Yeah. What are you made for? And go for it. It really is. I mean, we all have options. We all have the opportunities, right, the the doors open and close. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I I think there's times when that door opens and we don't wanna go down that direction. I I'm not saying that I wanted to go down direction. There's a lot of people out there, especially traditional insurance that think I'm out of my damn mind. I might be. Here he is. Here I is. That's right.
Well, Harlan, how can the listener find you one if they're an entrepreneur and they just think you're super fun, with your Houston accent and, they wanna they wanna be with you here. Is in with you, or or if they if they genuinely wanna reach out and be like, hey, look, I'm an entrepreneur. I either need some sort of a plan for myself or for my employees. They wanna get more information. How can they find you that way? Well, the first place they could find you is on LinkedIn.
If you go out and look for Harlan Thicket, h a r l o n p I c k t t, you only find one of us, so I'll be pretty easy to find on on LinkedIn. The other way, of course, you can go out to our website, eaglecarehealth.com. That's eaglecarehealth.com. You can email me directly at hpicket@eaglecarehealth.com. There's a there's so many ways you can listen to me talk about all kind of crazy stuff on my podcast, health and Wolfe power hour. You can find that on all the podcast places.
You can also go to my podcast website, the hwpowerhour.com. That's hwpowerhour.com. Lots of different ways to get a hold of me. Love to share the information with people. It's, it's a tough place to be in. It, the health care world is so corrupt. It's so difficult to navigate, and it shouldn't be that way. We should be able to get the health care that we need and deserve, and it's just tough.
It it makes me It makes me sad that people have to go through so much to get the health care that they deserve. And let's do something different. Let's do something about it. Yeah. I love the agitation of thought. Always willing to do something new and different. So thank you for being here. Blessings to you, brother, on your on your family. All the people that you're helping, not only navigate the situation, but just do health care and health insurance differently.
Thank you for providing some of those options. And we appreciate you being here. Good, sir. Thank you. Yep. Thank you, sir. Thank you for listening to gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away. More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself, doing it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself.
What I have realized, not only in my own journey, from multiple businesses and multiple different industries, and now interviewing over 2 or 300 other very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is that it's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings exists, to bring together successful entrepreneurs. In fact, we are putting together 1000 Kings specifically who are grateful, but not done.
We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities, and here's what we believe, that in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignite within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy. So if that relates and and resonates with you, and you know that you need people around you, sharp, qualified other very successful business owners. I want you to go to gatheringthekings.com.
Want you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1000 kings. Talk soon.