A New President

It is time, plain and simple. Obama must go, he has not performed and in the world in which I operate if I do not perform, I get fired. So should he.

We need a leader who happens to be President, not a President who has no leadership skills (sorry Obama, that is you).

Obamacare, terrible, must go....Economy, terrible, must be stimulated...Bernanke, come on you are smart, but this whole economy and the puppet government is starting to make me worry that Atlas Shrugged, the movie, is coming true. As a producer who generates revenue and jobs, this economy in the U.S. and the government trying to "do" everything has proven one thing...the government can't do much of anything profitable or right. Fire them too.

Obamacare seems to be NObamacare

Well I remember seeing the bumper stickers when he was running for office (from folks that did not care for Mr. Obama) that said Nobama....seems now that is NObamacare.

Seems in appellate courts the unconstitutional argument is gaining ground, and we have a full blow Depression #2 coming in the U.S. if not the world (just check out the stock market gyrations over the week of Aug8-12 2011)...

So I think (just my opinion) that reform will happen, but not super-sized like Obama guaranteed, but super-small sized as I suspected from the get-to. In my company we have seen a MASSIVE migration to high-deductible health plans and health reimbursement arrangements/health savings accounts. Insurance carriers hate them because they actually work and drive down premium costs, over-billing, double charging and unnecessary utilization...it is the fix in this country and with NObamacare, it will end up being the only solution from which we can draw.

I blog about this all the time, and it seems to be coming true almost on accident - again economy, stock market, clueless leadership on Capitol Hill and White House.

Let's see what happens. Check on your company's plans with out Geeks at www.healthinsurancegeeks.com.

Where is Health Reform?

I don't know, ask Obama and his cronies...we will have the US government's debt downgraded shortly, we can't keep up with the debt load, and somehow I am to believe that the government could do something creative with healthcare. GIVE ME A BREAK PEOPLE!!!!!!!! COMEDY! COMEDY!

I seriously would love to sit across from Obama, I would laugh out loud. We should fire half of the folks that work on the Capital, downgrade their health insurance offerings, allow insurance companies to sell cross state borders so we have tons of competition, and oh yeah I forgot, privatize Medicaid and Medicare. The government 100% should not be involved in these things period. They can't run anything profitably because most folks in government have never run a company that employs workers and actually has to break even or show a profit to keep the doors open....welcome to my world people.

Regulate health insurance companies a bit more and have them run the show for ALL OF THIS within parameters that the government can "set up."...then stay the hell out of our insurance please.

I am done now.

The Types of Companies that Appreciate What we do at HealthInsuranceGeeks

We have had a tremendous first few years of growth at Health Insurance Geeks. It has been augmented with the political climate in Washington, the economic collapse of 2008, and what seems to be the "new" thing to do at growing companies - make money, save money and become MUCH MORE FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE!

These are all great things for us, as we have been beating a specific drum for many years and it seems as though companies just started listening to our beat when savings and efficiences became priority number 1.

I hope this is just the beginning of the new landscape for how we purchase health insurance in the United States, how health insurance carriers are governed, as well as the limited involvement in the actual management and rationing of healthcare by the government.

We have seen a dramatic uptick in the amount of corporate customers (specifically companies with 75 employees give or take a few) who are listening with wide open ears now to our language - CONSUMERISM. Employees and employers are now learning more about the true cost of healthcare, and purchasing plans from carriers that are both sigfinicantly less premium, while offering the exact same level of coverage for the big ticket catastrophic items we all insurance against to begin with in the U.S.

So long as we focus on "what is my copay" we are on a health insurance escalator that will not go down....as we move away from copay-based plans, we will happily begin lowering costs, be on a downward escalator, and will see all of the constituents in the supply chain - doctors, hospitals, labs, ambulator centers/imaging centers, rehabilitation centers, etc... - begin to be incented for quality, and no longer quantity. It will also mean less of all of those constituents as the unprofitable will die. I guess that is how things should be in the real world.

Health Insurance Geeks & Technology Companies

So we started our company and knew we wanted to be different. Somehow my co-founder and I started our careers during the HMO invasion in New York City and worked for a company that was at the forefront led by someone still called a visionary. That company was Oxford Health Plans. Good or bad it taught us how to be innovative, create a vision, and to always go waaaaaaaaaaaaay above and beyond. It was just the way at that company during the time we worked there.

That said, we also knew we would build our own version of something in the bloated, stodgy world of health insurance, and frankly, we never felt the health insurance companies ever did anything efficient. Having spent the greater part of 10 years building great efficient models within large commercial banks, we learned also that banks too were pretty bloated, though they were at the same time looking for quick scores. They could not bear to wait a few years to see progress....so that brings us to Health Insurance Geeks and how we started and what our mission was to become....be different, think big, never lose focus of who got you here THE CUSTOMER, and always take the methodical patient approach of completely changing a paradigm. We did this with a small dedicated staff, and also found that the very companies that too were breaking ground in technology, love us too....the great market of digital technology, internet advertising, mobile technology....basically anything utilizing all of the great laptop/mobile creations of the last 10 years and how to drive new companies towards it.... we have a stable of technology companies as our customers and boy are we lucky that is what happened. It has spawned a frenetic growth spree, and just when you think you do not want to raise money and take your model to the rest of the United States, you find investors knocking on YOUR doors....not how it was in the beginning when we needed capital, but my co-founder and I decided to reach in to our own pockets, use our money...talk about skin in the game. We got scalped, thank God! Teaches you how to run a lean and mean company but beat the competition, and to always look for a better, more efficient way.

So it is perfect that bloated insurance companies are getting tee'd up by the current administration with talks of reform and more reform....btw, we will never have a complete reformation, but rather bits and pieces over time that will erode the current way of doing business. Think insurance companies always put the customer first....how about this tidbit, many NY and NJ area health insurance companies are pulling their low-priced high-deductible plans, because they ARE WORKING and driving down premium, and creating consumer directed models, but are screwing up their PROFITABILITY....these clowns....

So anyone reading this can probably smell the passion right through the computer, I live, breath, read, listen to anything consumer-directed because it is the way we are saving and delivering for our technology and non-technology companies alike....any time of business that likes to break through and think out of the box, owes a chat, call, email, something to www.healthinsurancegeeks.com....we lead our prospects and customers right to the fountain of premium "youth".....

High-Deductible Health Insurance Plans

Our tribe here at Health Insurance Geeks has been growing exponentially, and it has been rewarding, as we have been pounding our drum to a different beat for years now.

I read often of dips and events that create new industries or explosive growth for outliers, and it appears we have been the benefactor of just that....we waited patiently and kept our mission, and now it is paying off big time.

Some of our clients who are stuck in the old way of thinking or are not ready for the proactive work necessary to move to a consumer-directed health insurance model with a high-deductible health plan, but I can say this...ALL of our clients have had it front and center by us, and they are simply the best solution to our quagmire here in the U.S. with respect to affordability of health insurance for the skyrocketing prices of healthcare services.

The lobbyists in Washington would never open the backroom doors they do all of their negotiations in, but lets be honest, the whole problem is profit and greed. As an entrepreneur who used his life savings to build something he believed in, and made it a success on a model where our earnings are substantially less (less premium means less income for us) I can say it can be done. We as consulting brokers have also been scalped many times over the last 17 yrs as far as how and what we earn. It is funny that pharma advertising has not become illegal like it once was? Health Insurance carriers have not been forced to operate as nonprofit, nor have all of the hospitals? Have Mercy, if that happened, the CEOs would not be able to afford their helicopter leases and the 30,000 sq foot mansions in the Hamptons.

Hey I am a capitalist like the next guy, but first and foremost someone who loves his clients, and loves what he does...as long as I can put my 4 kids through college and take care of my family and continue to love what I do, I can't ever see profit and greed taking control of my motives. Unfortunately, I have been involved in venture capital transactions and spent lots of time around senior executives in banks and insurance companies, and my LORD, I never heard the word customer...it was always EBITDA, or something relevant to how we continue to make more and more money, and the customer seemed left out....

That is why Health Insurance Geeks (www.healthinsurancegeeks.com) has done so well, always, always, keep the folks who made us, our customers, FIRST.

Consumer-directed Plans

Well it is interesting to me as an expert in the field of company-sponsored benefits, specifically group health insurance, that most carriers are selling against the solution to the quandary in the U.S. - consumer-directed health plans.

As somoeone who understands underwriting as well as anyone, I guess this is simple, health insurance carriers do not possibly want to offer something for 25-50% less premium (consumer-directed plans with HRA or HSA and high-deductibles) as they will STILL get stuck with high claims....remember folks, 5-105 of a company's employees drive 80-90% of claims volume. That means a few employees and/or their dependents can blow up an employer's health plan even if they have say 100 employees.

So simply the insurance carriers, whether charging 400/single employee for a copay plan, or 175/employee with a high-deductible plan, they will still be on the book for a portion of a huge claims (remember these clever guys reinsurance claims over a specific level, say 25k, 50k, or 75k and build that additional stop loss premium in to a group composite rate...)....so maybe Obama and his henchmen need to negotiate better with the Republican Congress and figure out a way to back stop, stoploss for carriers in exchange for them lowering their rate base and passing the real problem in the U.S. (chronically ill patients either not managing illnesses well - think Obesity, Asthma, Heart and Diabetes all in one cluster, or someone who just has huge claims and is catastrophically ill - cancer et al).

The real problem is not healthcare in the U.S., but how to better manage the 5-10% of the population who is consuming enormous amounts of costly healthcare in an inefficient system....if the government truly wants to help, folks who are chronically ill should be mandated to quality based medicine, and the providers in those systems should be compensated MORE, yes MORE, to manage better.

That folks in a nutshell is the solution, but we have these idiots in Washington arguing about things that are not the solution....universal care, single payor, government or no government...none of it matters, evidence-based medicine does....less hospitals, though BETTER hospitals and the same for physicians....more physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and places like Walmart walk in clinics and CVS minute clinics for the routine cold - GTEAT solutions.

We the people demand a solution, not the eggheads in the government.