Fighting for Fair Healthcare Access Means Overcoming Certain Challenges

P I n g. Alright. What are we two to eleven. Don't let me win. Alright. Deal. What are we talking about today? What are we going over? We're talking about, anything you want. Health care, business, life. Alright. Oh, he's bringing it out. There we go. I'm coming. Two one. What about your playing days? I'm gonna talk about that. Oh, twos. Oh. Alright. Three two. Woah. That was a good one. Threes. We're pretty evenly matched. I think so. And you don't even do this every day like like we do. Ah. A four four? Four four. The podcast is meant to celebrate the people that are doing everything they can to improve access to care, experience while getting that care, and then outcomes for our patients. Alright. So Chris is a part of tell us a little bit about Hotchkiss. Hotchkiss Insurance, family founded, owned by a group of partners now, independent fiercely independent, largest independent firm in Texas that's not private equity backed or publicly traded. So we got a big big scale. Such a lucky shot. Right now, health care costs way too high. It reminds me of that that clip back in the day. Rent's too high. Well, health care is too high, too expensive. And, there's people there's companies like Chris here that are challenging the status quo, bringing education and information to the industry that is changing the way we consume health care, which we need more of. We need more of. Game point. Don't let me win. You can't let me win. Good game. Good game, man. Thank you for being here. Yeah. I appreciate you having me. This will be fun. Yeah. Super cool environment for you guys. Are you ready? Yeah. Let's do it. Let's do it. Alright, man. You ready for this? Let's do it. The question is, is everybody else ready for this? I don't know. I don't know if they are. Cool. Let's rock. What's up, everybody? It's David. I'm your host of Highway Health podcast. Appreciate you being here. I love doing these, and I appreciate you supporting me and my guests during these shows. Today, we're gonna talk about what we always talk about, improving access, experience, and outcomes for our our patient community. There's a lot of different areas, that impact those three things. And, that's why I'm excited to have the guest on we have today. His name is Chris Hamilton. He's a partner at Hotchkiss Insurance. And we're gonna talk about the things that we're all battling with, access to care, the experience, the cost of care, And now Hotchkiss, how Chris are partnering with employers, but also partnering, with patients to improve all of those elements. Chris, welcome to Highway to Health. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. This will be fun. We won't talk about the ping pong match earlier, and who came out the winner because sore subject, for me. But, we start every podcast the same. And, we talk about healthy habits and what you've implemented in your life, maintain mental, physical well-being. It's so important. You've got a family. You've got a business to perform at a high level. We've gotta we've gotta be healthy. So what do you do? What's a healthy habit you've implemented? You know, I've always worked out. I think it goes back to playing football as a child, from I played PB through college. And I had a coach when I was in college. He was I wanna say he was in his early seventies. He's a legend here. Sam Shields, if you look him up, he's a legendary coach here here in DFW. And I I remember having a conversation with him when I was graduating, and I said, hey, coach. What's the secret? And if you saw Sam Shields, he was jacked. He's seventy year old, but he had the build of yeah. Solid muscle. He worked out. He was a marine. He he would get up at four o'clock in the morning, work out. He was finishing his workout as we would show up at five o'clock in the morning for training. That's awesome. And I'm I'll never forget the lesson that he taught me that at that moment. He said, look around this room. All these guys, they're gonna continue to eat the way they've eaten, and they're gonna stop training. Don't do that. Always keep moving. That's the secret. And that stuck with me. And so I work out seven days a week, not intense at all seven days, but I'm I'm doing something seven days a week. And I I think having rituals Yeah. So knowing what you're gonna do. So for me, when I wake up first thing in the morning, it's kinda become cliche now, but I feel like it starts my day off well. First thing I do when I roll out of bed, I walk in, I jump in a cold plunge, and I sit there for two to three minutes. And, what I've noticed from that is I feel like it gives me it calms me down. It gives me clarity. It's a great start to my day, and, I feel like that's a healthy habit that I've implemented over the last probably eighteen months, and I notice when I don't do it. Yeah. I bet. I feel like when I do it, it's it kinda resets my nervous system, and it gives me a sense of calm all day. Alright. So that's something I've I've wanted to start doing. How do you do it? Do you have something set up that it keeps it cold? Is it I mean, tell me you don't have to plug anybody. I don't mind if you do, but what's your system? How do you have it? So I started this time of year. It was probably close to two years ago, actually. I I went on to Amazon. I bought one of the cheap pod Yeah. Things that you set out on your back porch. And when it's cold outside, the water stays cold. I mean, there were times, especially last year, I'd go out and I'd have to have a hammer and break up the ice Really? And I would get into it. And then as this last, spring, as it started to warm up, I realized I'm gonna have to figure out a way to do this during the summertime. And so I started looking into cold plunges, and they're super expensive. Yeah. They are. But I found a company in Austin that it's a it's it looks somewhat like a a chest freezer Oh, yeah. That you store deer meat in or whatnot. And they had converted it into a cooler. It's got a a cooling unit, and it's got a a sanitation unit, and it's wrapped in wood, so it looks pretty cool. Okay. And I just lift the lid, jump in, and it keeps the it keeps the water cold. It'll go down to thirty five degrees. I keep it about forty one, though, for me. That's And, and it was half the price of the big name brands that you see out there, and it's been awesome. It's something that I've done. And when I do it, I'm glad I did it. The rush that you get when you get out of that cold plunge is incredible. It's awesome. So but I've always struggled with the logistics of it. It's like, we live out in the country. I thought about just buying a, like, a trough, like a horse trough. That's a great way. But then how do you keep it cold in the summertime? So I was like, well, we could stock bags of ice, but it's like, man, that's a lot. I better just go buy something. The one thing I found about healthy habits is they need to be simple. Yes. And they need to be easily repeatable. Yeah. And so the ice bag, you gotta go to the store. You gotta store them. You gotta pull them out every time. Yeah. If I had to do that in the mornings, I wouldn't do it. Right. I just I need to be able to get out of bed and just get in it. Jump in. Jump in. So I highly encourage it. It's it's I found it super helpful for me. I'll get the brand name from you. Absolutely. I'm I'm interested. My wife is too. You mentioned football and playing college football. Abilene guys. Yeah. I grew up in Abilene. You played at Hardin Simmons. I got a couple Abilene questions for you. Okay. Let's try it. Let's stick with football first. Your favorite football story. I love these stories, by the way, because there's something about sports, something about athletics that brings us together. So favorite football story? I had never heard of Hardin Simmons or Abilene. I grew up in outside of Southwest Houston. I went and, toured the campus, decided to go to school there and play football. And I thought being one of the better football players on my team, one of the best kids on the team, I'm just gonna walk in. It's division three. How competitive could this actually be? And I will never forget. I I actually have kinda forgotten because of what happened. I was just early on, I'm a scout team guy because I'm a brand new freshman. It's the start of the season, and I'm run I'm on defense, but I'm running a scout team offense. Yeah. And they call this play, and I'm gonna run out, and I'm gonna block our safety. And I'm thinking to myself, the entire team's watching. I'm about to make a name for myself because I'm at this point, I'm, like, two hundred and thirty pounds, and the safety is about a hundred and seventy five pounds. And I think to myself, I'm gonna kill this guy in front of everybody. Everybody's gonna know my name. And we run the play. I run out, and I see and you know this. You're coming out to block and the he and the safety and I lock eyes. And I'm like, oh, this guy wants some. I'm about to give it to you, buddy. And I lay into this guy, and he, he literally it's on video somewhere because we videoed our practices. He hit me so hard. I've never been hit so hard in my entire life. He cold knocked me out unconscious. No way. Unconscious. I'd I had I got a concussion. I don't remember that day. I don't remember getting up off the ground. I don't remember going into the locker room. I don't remember anything. The guy straight up knocked me out. Welcome to football. Welcome to football, but it taught me something. One, you better check your ego out the door. You think you're good? There's always somebody out there that's better than you. Be humble about it. Work hard, but don't underestimate somebody. Yep. You can never underestimate anybody. And that guy, he taught me the lesson the whole way. And and I and I I took that and thought, okay. I better figure out my place here. I'm gonna have to work at this because these guys can play. Yeah. It doesn't matter what level you're at. All those kids were all state, all region, all something. They were the best kids in their football teams in high school. Doesn't matter what level you're at. People wanna compete. Yep. And they will. Yep. I was I coached at that level, and, people don't understand. Parents definitely don't understand. If they're a little kid who's pretty good, he's starting on a pretty good team in high school, they think they can just go play d three. Yeah. You haven't seen d three. You better buckle your chin strap tight because there's some kids that can play. Yeah. They can. And and a lot of those guys come from d two, d one. They transfer down and they've got all the talent in the world. So Yep. Yeah. But don't judge a book by its cover. That's something in sports. I mean, to this day, I'm a basketball guy. You go to a YMCA, the guy with the goggles on, the guy with the knee brace on, that's the guy that'll kick your butt. Yeah. I mean, he's gonna bust you if you don't if you don't guard him. So, alright. Best Abilene restaurant. Oh. So it's been a while since I've been to Abilene, but when I was in college, there was a catfish joint. I think it was Catfish Corner. Catfish Corner. Yeah. Every Tuesday night, they had all you can eat catfish, fried catfish. And so the football team would go there and just dominate that place. They lost money that night. They lost money that night, but they always welcomed us because they knew we were coming every Tuesday night. Yeah. Barbecue, Harold's, right by Hardin Simmons. Yep. Has a great barbecue spot. No doubt. I didn't frequent this place, very much, but Perini's Yeah. Steakhouse up in Buffalo Gap. Legendary. Yeah. Legendary. In fact, from what I understand, George w used to have when he was in the White House, used to have their steaks flown in. Yeah. But I've been there a couple times and phenomenal. Oh, it's incredible. It's an experience when you go out there. Expensive too. Yeah. But you see Especially on a college budget, I bet. You show up on a ranch and you see the cattle that they raise, it's all you talk about farm to table. That's what it is. It's incredible. Yeah. Probably best steak I've had. And, yeah. I I mean, I grew up in Abilene. My family's been there for thirty years. I think we've been to Perini's probably four times in those thirty years, but it's so good. And, yeah, for all those Abilene listeners out there, I know there's, like, four of you. Go to Catfish Corner, which I agree. It's it's awesome. Harold's, you know, he passed, like, during COVID. I didn't know that. But still going. I think his son runs it now. Still good good spot. And then, on your anniversary, on your graduation night, whatever it is, special occasion, go to Purrini's. Best best food you'll have. Yep. Anywhere. As I've gotten to know you, this is what I've noticed. You've got an incredible passion for our industry, a a passion for creating. You're enthusiastic on educating. Where does this passion come from? I'm a competitive person. I like to win. I like to see other people win. But if I really kinda think back to the origin of where it came from and kinda how it ties into our industry today, I'm thinking about when I was in middle school going into high school, I I was bullied. And there was a group of guys that just constantly picked on me, wanted to fight, that sort of thing. And it just got to a point one day. I remember walking I'll never forget this day. I'm walking from school, going into the field house for football practice, and they're pushing me, goading me, just bullying me. Yeah. And I turned around, and I realized I'm gonna have to stand up. And I punched because Joe Joe Garcia. Joe, if you're out there I'll do it again. Joe, this the it changed my life. Yeah. And we tied it on, and and what it changed everything that day because the bullying stopped. Yep. And I found a power in being willing to stand up for myself. And when I look in our industry today, that's what we're fighting is bullying. There's very powerful interests, very powerful entities and people that are bullying our society. I kind of view my role as somebody that stands up and gives a voice to people that don't have a voice. And the people that don't have a voice are all of us in this room, in all of these buildings. As you look around, there's employees that are being bullied by the system. Yep. And somebody has to stand up for what's right and the better way to do this because it's taking their resources, their money, money that they spend on health insurance and when they get health care. And that money is no longer going into their four zero one k for their retirement. It's not going into the new house or the vacation or the kids' college education. It's literally stealing the American dream Yeah. From our society, and it's enriching others who are bullying our economy. It's taking resources from our economy, and there's a better way to do these things. And for those that are willing to stand up and say enough, those are the people that we're helping to do that and create value in their businesses, create value for their employees, putting money back in everybody's pocket instead of just giving it to somebody who's basically demands and sets prices and says, this is the way we're gonna do it or else. Or else. Yep. And it's and for anybody that's looking to stand up and take that sort of stand and create value, that's that's the opportunity. And that that just kinda tying it all full circle. I never thought about that before, but that's really where it comes from. It's it's standing up. It makes perfect sense, and I saw something just the other day. I'm glad I saw it because it it ties into what you said. The average family pays about twenty four thousand dollars a year just to have access to paying a deductible. That's right. Just to have access to paying a co pay Yep. For their health insurance. That is twenty four thousand dollars for the average family. And I'm a family of six, so we're probably above average in terms of size and spend. It's an incredible burden financially. Think about the average American worker. If they make fifty or sixty thousand dollars a year to pay twenty four thousand dollars Exactly. If you're with a a a big mid market company, maybe you pay twenty, but then you've got a three or a five thousand dollar deductible. By the time you bake having a baby or getting a surgery or your kidneys or tonsils out, you've spent twenty five to thirty thousand dollars a year. That's half of your pay. Who can afford that? Yep. And so it's solving that particular problem. And people look at health care, and they think, wow. It's it's it's twenty percent of our GDP. It's seventeen or eighteen trillion dollars. How are you gonna solve that problem? And I'm sure we'll get into this about the differences in between single payer and Yeah. Private insurance, but you're not gonna solve it at the national level. The the way you're gonna create value and and and solve the problem is by a grassroots where companies say, we're not gonna do what we've always done. We're gonna challenge the status quo. And it's creating another half a million dollars, a million dollars, three million dollars in individual companies that can then lower premiums for their employees. They've got cash flow now that they can reinvest into their business and spur economic growth. So I always ask the question is putting your money into health care and continuing to pay these entities that don't have your interest at heart Right. Is that gonna boost our economy, or is it putting money back into entrepreneurs and business owners' hands to help their employees and help their business at the same time? Which one is gonna create more economic stimulus? And that's the way I look at the problem. So today, it's one company, and then tomorrow, it's two. But as companies in our local economy start doing this, it creates economic growth. One hundred percent. And that seeing that expand around our country today, I think it's one of the fastest growing areas of our industry. It's exciting to me because there are other advisers just like me that are standing up and saying, we can actually solve this problem. Yeah. And the more that adopt, it spreads. And we're at a tipping point now in my opinion. Well, I think that's how movements happen. Right? It's not when, you start at the top. It's when you start with the individual and with with this the company. And you can impact, you know, a hundred lives at a time. And then just like recruiting in college football or college sports, they tell their friend. Who tells their friend? That's right. Now it's starting to spread. And we can regain some power. We can regain some leverage, put some money back in our pocket, and and still and here's the and here's the thing that people often associate with this is, well, decreases my access to care, decreases my experience while getting that care. No. It doesn't. It doesn't have to. And and I think that's a common misconception that, you know, employers have to to understand is we're not gonna reduce the experience and the outcomes or access of your employees to the care that they need. We're just gonna make sure that it's the right quality and it's the right price. That's right. And and oftentimes, if it's done right, you can increase the access to care because you're able to provide access to physicians that employees don't have access to today. It's a different level of care. Yep. Or you're able to provide them additional benefits that provide and oftentimes, people don't realize this, but if you go in, and I use myself as an example, I needed a hip replacement because of my football days. People don't know what that costs. And what they understand is, oh, it's my deductible out of pocket. It's five thousand dollars. But if you look at the two hospital systems across the street from each other, one of them is sixty thousand dollars for that procedure. The other is twenty. How do we make sure and the and the twenty, oftentimes, is better quality. Yeah. It is. How do we ensure that employee is willing to go in there and get it at the right price at the right place? And so if you design your plan, you're actually increasing access, but the benefit to employees oftentimes, the way we design our plans is if they if they're willing to go to the right place, you just make it free for them. They no longer have their deductible out of pocket. So you think about your family. Whereas in a traditional plan, you're gonna spend five thousand dollars, you get to keep that five thousand. Yeah. I just put five thousand dollars back in your pocket, and your company just say forty thousand dollars. That was my exact example. And I got to see the surgeon, and I went to the hospital that I wanted to go to, and I paid zero for it. So how what bigger win win can you get? My plan saved forty thousand dollars, and I got to keep my five thousand dollar out of pocket. Saves everybody money. Yeah. And and the amazing thing is you can do that with just about anything that's inside of your health plan. I wasn't forced to go through that channel. I had the option. Yeah. So we're we're we're empowering employees. Make a choice. You can go wherever you want. But if you're willing to go to these certain providers in certain places and, you know, source your medication this way through this mail order pharmacy or whatnot, like, Mark Cuban is a good example Yep. It's free. Well, that's the thing. I mean, if we were to behave as patients in health care like we behave in any other consumer environment, if we had those options, right, to be that consumer, and intelligently shop for our health care. It's amazing the quality and the cost savings that we could we could realize. Yeah. And you think about the just the average American. They know more about their iPhone, the difference between iPhone fourteen and a sixteen, the camera and the processor, and they know the price of it. You you buy television, you can go on Amazon, and you can read reviews, and you can go to Target or Best Buy or where if that place even exists anymore. But people It does. They they have a way to shop for, quality. They have a way to shop for price. They've got different ways to pay for it. I put on a payment plan, use my credit card, pay cash, what have you. And that's like shopping for eggs and comparing the price of eggs. Do I buy the the twelve pack, the dozen, or the eighteen? Do I get the name brand or not? It's, like, two cent different per egg. Yeah. Well, that's great. You save two cents per egg, but you just spent forty thousand dollars more than you should for this other thing. Like, let's focus on the things that matter. Right? I'm laughing because it sounds like common sense, but it's it's an innovative way to look at health care because we haven't challenged the status quo in this area very much in this in this industry. And so as as you talk about it, especially people that have been in this industry for a while, it makes perfect sense. But a lot of times, patients, employees, employers don't even know that that's an option. There are other ways that you personally and Hotchkiss have have challenged status quo and and worked and improved through innovation. What are some ways that you personally are differentiating from other brokers and consultants? But, also, how is Hotchkiss doing it at a larger level? Yeah. That's a great question. I think so I've been in the industry for ten years. I got into the business after spending fifteen years in corporate finance and banking. And I I actually had experiences with, clients, one of which was a large national brokerage. They were a client of mine. I helped raise capital for them to acquire firms like ours around the country. So I saw how they made money at scale on the brokerage side, but I didn't really understand how the advice they gave, how they actually monetized clients. And so once I started digging into that, I realized, wait a minute. It looks like maybe there's some conflicts of interest. We're trying to aggregate with carriers, and we're taking big bonuses from them, which is great financially for the brokerages. But I thought to myself, does that create a conflict of interest? Who do they who's their actual client? Is it the is it the carriers, or is it the clients? And so I started asking my clients at the time Yeah. Big companies, how do you manage the cost of health care in your business? Because I have their financial statements. I'm looking at them. I see it's a very large line item. And if you're listening to this, it's and you run a manufacturing business, it's typically the third largest expense on your p and l behind the materials, labor, health care. Yep. And if you run a service business, it's usually the second largest item in your p and l behind labor, your your salaries. And the responses I got were really interesting. It was like, well, there's not really a way to manage this. It's whatever our broker gets from the carrier, and we'd budget a ten percent increase per year. If we come in below, we're happy. And if it's above, it's like, well, we just gotta figure how to manage that. We'll pass cost on to the employees. I thought to myself, that doesn't seem right to me because some of these companies' names you'd know, they manufacture products that everybody has in their house. The CFO could tell me what his plastic input costs were gonna be two to three years out because they hedge those. They had these sophisticated ways of managing costs. And I thought to myself, we're not addressing the real cost driver. The real cost driver of your insurance is the the claims that you pay. It's what are they paying out for your health care. Yep. That's where we should really focus versus saying we're gonna get this carrier to compete against this carrier on their profit margin because they're not did did they even have the same interest that you do in lowering health insurance costs? And what I realized very quickly, the the carriers, traditionally, traditional carriers, they don't have the incentive to lower health care costs. They actually want them to go up. If you look at the way the ACA is designed, which by the way they help write, their profit margins are capped at fifteen percent in aggregate of the premium they take in because they have to pay eighty five cents out of every dollar they take for health care costs. So just right out of the gate, if you're the CFO and the CEO of a big publicly traded insurance company and you've got a return shareholder value Yep. Do you want fifteen percent of a million dollars in premium or fifteen percent of a quadrillion? And so their whole goal right out of the gate is how do we justify spiraling costs up so we can take fifteen percent of a growing pie? Yeah. And when you look at the innovation that they've inserted into their business, let's say innovation just from a business strategy standpoint Right. They're vertically integrated. So there's a lot of talk about pharmacy benefit management and pharmaceuticals and, in our especially with the election going on right now. And Yep. Rebates are bad, and we need to hold the drug manufacturers accountable. But when you look at what's really driving the pricing of these drugs and off for commercial plans, it's how the PBM contracts for those medications. And not to get too complicated, but if you look at how the carriers make money, they profit from those expensive drugs going through the plan. They show back up with the broker and the to the employer and say, your claims utilization is high. Therefore, we have to raise your premium. But when you look at what they're actually paying for, they're going out and buying they're they're paying sometimes two, three times what they should be paying for the drug. They're taking that money, stick it in the back pocket, and then they show you an increase because their costs were high. Well, who and whose best interest is that in? And so there's, in in the economy today is in our industry, the the the top track around vertical integration is we're creating value for our policyholders. But if that's actually true, you would think I should see premiums coming down. Right. But you don't. You see premiums going up. Yep. The value is being captured for their shareholders. And if you look back at their stock performance over the last ten years, you can see where the value is going. It's going to shareholders. It's going to the CEO. And so the they are capturing a ton of value. It's just not being passed on to companies and the employees. And so the mindset that we have behind the plans that we design is how do we break up those misaligned incentives and return the value that's created in a health plan back to the employer. Yep. And they're very simple common sense strategies. When we sit down with an owner who's typically an entrepreneur or the CFO and the HR leadership, and we say these are the basic things that you can do to return value back to your company and the employees and bring your cost down and create stability, usually, it's like a light bulb goes off and they're like, that makes total common sense. Like, why doesn't everybody do that? Yep. Well, because it hasn't been an option. You know, people or if it has been an option, people haven't been aware of it. Nobody has been and this is a big shift that I've seen in in your area of the industry is there's been a focus on education Mhmm. In the last three, four years that hasn't been there traditionally. And when you think about an entrepreneur, when you think about an owner, a founder, a CEO, they're usually so deep in their business that they don't have they don't have the time or the mind space to really focus on this. And health care is confusing, so they've trusted, you know, these brokers traditionally to to give them the information that they need. Where I've seen people like yourself, people like Spencer Smith, it's like, listen. We're we're gonna we're gonna share with you what we've learned over time so that you can focus on your business, but also run it effectively as innovatively. With the kind of innovation that you do in the other areas of your business, let's let's apply that same logic and and ideas to your health care. Yeah. That that's absolutely right. And the the the couple things I'd leave you with is the the innovation that we're using today is not new. There's a book out there called the I'm a I might butcher the title, but you'll find it. The company that saw the company that fixed health care. And I read this book, and it was written by an owner of a mid market company. He has about a thousand employees. He's in, I believe, Wisconsin. He's a manufacturer for the of parts for the auto industry. So he squeezed Yep. Because the manufacturers want lower price. His health care costs continue to rise. It was cutting into his margin. He he writes in the book that it threatened the existence of his company. K. And he lays out a common sense strategy of how they actually lowered their cost, provided better benefits to their employees, and it's a very similar plan that what we use with our clients with some slight differences. And I thought to myself, how old is this book? And I flip back, and the book was written in two thousand nine before the ACA. Before think about that for a second. Two thousand nine before the ecosystem that we've got today changed. Yeah. So the concepts are not new. So the question becomes, why isn't that spreading? And I think it goes back to the way, I'll tie this back into what I think is a differentiator for us, me getting into the industry after the ACA was passed. I believe the people that we trust, the brokerage community, the advisory community to help us be the knowledge expert, If you look at the interest of the brokers, particularly the ones that are really large and have been around for a very long time, they've got these legacy books of business with a big carrier or a couple of big carriers. If you go back and do the same exercise when you look up the the carrier's performance, stock performance over the last decade, look at the brokerage community. Just pull up the top ten and look up their stock ticker. It tracks very similarly. I've got, two graphs I can share that just overlays the carrier performance and the brokerage industry performance to the S and P five hundred. And oftentimes, it's three, four, five times the S and P. And what I see just from my knowledge of having worked with those companies and in the industry, the carriers pay big bonuses and pay high comp to brokerages to keep the system working the way that it is. I go back to where are their conflicts of interest and misaligned incentives. You need to solve for those and make sure you're getting the right advice. The people that you trust to give you the information you need to make the right decision is critically important. Yep. And so even taking that a step further, lobbying money that's spent in Washington is public information. Yep. You can see it. And the health care lobby spends three times what second place, which is electronics manufacturing, just in year to date, twenty twenty four, just year to date, three hundred and seventy four billion dollars has been spent by health care. That's the hospital lobby, the insurance lobby, the pharma lobby, and it's all the big names that we know we see on TV and on billboards. Yep. Three hundred and seventy four billion dollars. I'm sorry. Three hundred seventy four million dollars versus a hundred and twenty five million dollars spent by the electronics manufacturing industry. In fact, health care is larger. It's it's two and a half times larger than oil and gas and defense combined. And think of like, think about how sensitive a topic you know, those things are how people get riled up about, you know, big oil and all these things. Two and a half times that is where the health care spend is. Over over the last ten years, it's six billion dollars in aggregate that health care has spent lobbying in Washington. And for that kind of money and that kind of time, if somebody was lobbying for change, the question I asked, wouldn't we have something? Right. But in fact, if you just look at what's happening, they're lobbying for more of the same. Yeah. Don't change our industry. Don't make us post our prices. Don't make us compete. Let us continue making money off of of this vertical integration. Yep. Keep it the same because we're all making money, and we're gonna pass it back to you. So everybody's getting paid to keep the music playing. And the patience often get left out of it it because we're we're the we're the cash cow. We're the engine. Look at these people in these cars driving by. We don't know them. They're they're nameless. They're faceless. It's just money. It's just money. We're not doing anything bad. We're providing health care. And I hate to be cynical about it in that regard, but that's the experience and all the Yeah. All the experience and the knowledge that I've been able to uncover being in this industry. That's what I truly, truly believe is happening. I don't think they're bad people. The the job of a CEO and a CFO is to maximize shareholder value. And that's the thing. It's like it's an it's an incredible business model. Mhmm. The returns on investment are pretty impressive. So if you just look at it from a business strategy perspective, it's like a case study. Something we we could all learn from. Yeah. But it's, it's different because of, first of all, the industry, but we're all patients. And, man, as as expensive as everything is in this world right now, we need a little bit of a break. And if we don't, the stress that the patient, the people, the population put on the health system is just gonna grow, which then gives them more power, more leverage. That's often why that's exactly why I asked that healthy habit question at the beginning of every podcast because we we have to control what we can control. We have to maintain and improve our own health because if we rely on somebody else to do it, that's not necessarily what their what their focus is. You've talked about misaligned incentives. You've talked about, you know, this information and and and the stuff being publicly available. And oftentimes, I you know, during these conversations, I hear, well, we need transparency. We need transparency. We need transparency. But I don't even know what transparency means. Like, what does that mean? What does an employer need to be demanding in terms of transparency? What does transparency look like? Yeah. So I'll go back to just the consumer experience. I wanna buy a television. Where do I go? Usually, for me, the first place I'm gonna go is Amazon. Yeah. I'm gonna put in what I need, what I'm looking for. I'm gonna read reviews. I'm gonna look at prices. So, oftentimes, health care gets overcomplicated. And the more complicated we make it, the more we, entrust others to help help us make that decision. Yep. And so, really, for me, transparency is how do I give information to somebody to where they're able to buy something the way they do anything else in their life? So instead of bickering over which eggs I buy because I can save two cents, wouldn't it make more sense to put something in, consumer's hand where they can save thousands and thousands of dollars? The employer can save thousands and thousands of dollars. So I think transparency comes from a couple different places. One, it starts with data. Yeah. Most companies don't know what they spend money on, where they're spending it, or even if it's a good price. So being able to get access to your data, when you get the data, you can line item by line item just like we do everything else in our lives and business. I I'm buying these things. This is what it cost. The first question you have to ask is, is that a good price? Mhmm. Am I paying the right price for this? Am I spending ten thousand if you think about plasma TVs when they first came out, that that technology technology doesn't exist anymore. But the first TVs that came out were, like, ten thousand dollars. Yep. I could buy a better technology now for two hundred bucks at Target. Right. So it's looking at what we're buying. Are we paying a fair price? That's the first place that we start with transparency. The second place is how do you take that information and put it into a digestible form that's easy for an employee to pull it up on their phone or get or even you know, we've got we do a lot of work with, with Blue Collar, kind of the full spectrum, but I'm thinking about folks maybe that don't have easy access to technology. Do they have a resource Yeah. That can help them? Because if you think about your health care journey, I'm diagnosed with cancer. Super scary. What am I gonna do? Where do I go? My doctor's telling me these are the things I need to do, but I I need a second opinion. I need to know where do I need to go. And giving the employee an outlet that's unbiased, that has access to all the information, that's able to say, here's the steps in the process. Here's where you should be going. Mhmm. We're gonna take care of it for you, and it's gonna be more cost effective for the employee. They're gonna get a better outcome, and it's more cost effective for the employer. Right. So really, to me, transparency is how do we give information that's easy for people to access and use and make actionable decisions? Because data is just data unless you can learn something from it. Mhmm. And so, you know, oftentimes, like you said, health care can be health care can be complicated. And it's complicated probably for a reason that, is darker than we want it to be. And so need having somebody to bounce this information off of to get a better perspective of what it actually means so that we can make good decisions is is valuable. And I think that's where roles like yours come in very, very handy and and important to, you know, making this change and and starting to challenge the status quo. Brings me to my next question, which is margin and mission. You know, businesses have to they're stuck. You know, traditionally, they've been stuck. This paradox is I've gotta make margin. I've gotta build and grow a business, but I also need to offer great benefits to my employees. And oftentimes, those are opposing ideals. Yeah. And so how can and and from our conversation today, I can already anticipate your answer. But how do how do employers need to start thinking about delivering both, achieving margin but offering great benefits to their employees? Yeah. That's a great question. When I got into the industry ten years ago, I came into the industry from the mindset of my mission was to help companies reduce their cost, improve their profitability, and create more value for their companies. So a lot of the business that we work with are privately owned. They're not publicly traded, but the owner is acutely aware of the value of their business because it's a multiple of their cash flow and their earnings. And so when I would meet with owners and CFOs, look at this structure. I'm gonna be able to reduce the cost half a million dollars or a million dollars. And if you trade at a five x multiple, I just put two and a half to five million dollars of value to your company. Yeah. And that was super attractive to a lot of the owners and CFOs I was working with at the time. But what I've realized since is a I'll call it a dual mission. The very first client that I had right down the street, when we met with when we met with the employees so we talked about nameless, faceless people. You're in a publicly traded company Yep. In New York or somewhere. You don't see the people that are impacted by your decisions. I saw firsthand the employees that were affected by the status quo system. My very first client I picked up was in a traditional fully insured plan. They got a twenty percent increase. I'm meeting with the employees to explain their benefits, and a mother walked up to me after. She was a single mom, tears in her eyes, and she said to me, I the only plan I can afford is this six thousand dollar high deductible plan with an HSA. My son needs to have a procedure on his ear, and they're telling me that the procedure is, like, twenty some odd thousand dollars. What do I what what is my cost gonna be? And he's like, well, it's gonna be six thousand dollars. It's the deductible. Yep. And she started crying, and she said, I don't have the money to pay for that procedure, but this is the only plan I can afford. And it was that moment that I realized my mission is trying to help these companies save money. We need to design something that helps people, that helps the people. And so I view mine when I walk into all I go I see all my clients. I see I go into their operations, and I look around and I see people that are like my brother, my mom Yep. My wife, my, you know, family because they are. Yep. They're somebody's brother Yep. Or father, and they they don't have the ability. If somebody's not gonna be willing to help them solve this problem from themselves, who else is? Yep. And so what I thought was my mission was to help companies create value and and increase cash flow in their valuation. What I realized is the real mission is how can I help their employees? How can I help somebody's brother or uncle? Yeah. And that's really what drives me because I know that I'm creating value for them. Well, you we started this conversation talking about bullies. And, you know, some of our callings is to stand up for those who can't stand up for themselves. And these employers are being bullied. But in reality, it's it's the employee that takes the brunt, oftentimes. And so that's part of your mission. This dual mission is, yes, deliver value to the company, but stand up for those who can't stand up for themselves. That's right. We've got an important, you know, political event coming up in What's that? Twenty days. It's this election that you may have heard of. With every election year, trends, opportunities, challenges are on the horizon. What do you see as something that might present itself twenty twenty five and beyond? How are we preparing for what might be coming down with some of the political changes we we could experience? Yeah. That's a really big question. One camp is more geared towards and we we've heard this over the last several election cycles, and it's been it's been attempted. But, single payer Medicare for all, where the government's gonna take complete control of our health insurance system and take care of us all for free. It sounds great. And then so that's one camp. The the other is free market, and anybody that's listening to this, probably half of them are like, well, we've already tried the free market. That doesn't work. Capitalism in health care does not work. And what I would challenge that statement with is, do we really have Right. Free free economy working? We don't. It's an oligopoly. You've got four big payers, which they're not even the payers, by the way. The insurance companies are taking your money and then squandering it and skimming off their bookies is what they are. Like, hedge our bets, skim the profits. Costs are up high. We're gonna get it back from the employers. It's not even their money. Doesn't matter how your health insurance is funded. You're paying the cost. Whether you're paying it in a fully insured premium, a self insured premium, you're paying for it. Who's managing it for you? So in that regard, it's not truly free market. But what you're seeing is a biggest trend that we see right now is a lot of the the plans and strategies that we're using. You mentioned it earlier. People tell their friends, and owners in YPO, young presidents organization, or you've got a CFO that's in a CFO roundtable. My clients call me and tell me, hey. Health care is coming up. HR roundtables. Health care is coming up. Companies are figuring out how to grapple with this. They they can't figure it out, and they're introducing me to their peers. And that that is happening all around the country, and you're seeing this strategy that we're using taking off like wildfire. It's a grassroots movement. And people have said, we're not gonna wait for the government to solve this for us. There are things that we can do now Yeah. To take back control, and we're doing it. And so I think you're seeing it now, and it's accelerating. So, really, the question is gonna be is, are we gonna move into a government run system, or are we gonna continue on this grassroots movement where companies stand up and say, enough. We're not doing it your way anymore. We're gonna do it a new way. And the reason why I like working with privately owned companies is if you think about I always love to hear the origin story of the business and how they the the risk they took. Usually, somebody went and worked for a big company, and they thought, you know what? I I see this niche here. I'm gonna take a risk. I'm gonna go out and start my own company. Right. Whether that's the first generation or second generation in that business, but it's that entrepreneurial spirit that they took to start their business and build up something that's successful. And, really, what I'm teaching these employers is take that same innovative entrepreneurial spirit, and let's put that into this business unit that you have. Because Make your second or third biggest line item. Make no mistake. If you are an employer and you have, you offer health insurance, you're running a health care division. If you just look at what you spend for it, it's a division of your company. Yep. Yet one of the most expensive things in our p and l, we turn the keys over to somebody else to manage. Now the companies don't have to manage it. That's what they hire a good adviser for to build the system. Right. Looks and feels very similar to what they've got today. They're not paying claims. It's you got an insurance group that's handling all that for you. But it's just building a different model. Yep. And it's taking that same entrepreneurial spirit and fixing something that's broken in their business. Well said. Last thing. One thing. If anybody listening and watching, if they could go home and and share it with their family or if an employer could share it with his director of HR, whatever, What's the one thing you want our listeners walking away understanding? So I mentioned the the the company that fixed health care. This is not new. This has been around. It's been tried and tested for over a decade, fifteen years. I think people should be curious. People need to ask the right questions and ask why. A couple of questions people need to ask. Why are my costs going up? What can I do about it? And who's the best group to help me solve that? Yeah. I think you gotta have to be willing to challenge what you're being told. It's a contrarian viewpoint. And the companies that take that mindset and are willing to have that curiosity and challenge it often end up with a better result. It's how the best businesses are built. Let's apply it to health care. Somebody told Elon Musk that you're not gonna be able to send a rocket into space. The government's the best one to do that NASA. Quick story. My grandfather was a physicist for NASA. He worked on the Apollo missions. He worked on all the space shuttle missions. And I'll never forget this. In the late nineties before he passed, he told me, Chris, private spaceflight is where we this country needs to move. And I was appalled. I was like, grandpa, there's no way. NASA. NASA? How is this possible? And he said private industry is gonna be able to do this better than the government. You watch. One day, there's gonna be somebody that's gonna be sending rockets and shuttles into space, and it won't be NASA. And he was way ahead of his time because fast forward twenty some odd years, it's Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk that were willing to say, I think there's a better way to do this. Think about this. We used to just destroy rockets and boosters and, you know, rockets were not reusable. Right. Somebody challenged that and said, well, why not? Is there a way to do that? And can we bring innovation? And we're gonna challenge the status quo, and we're gonna get that done. And that's a new frontier for us, and that's possible with just about anything in life. If you're willing to find the right people that will ask the right questions and challenge the assumptions, this is what we've been told. If you've ever been to a circus, you'll see they tie elephants up with a stake in the ground. And I always ask, that's crazy. That stake is not gonna hold that elephant. How are they getting away with that? Because they do it to baby elephants because that baby elephant is not able to pull the stake out of the ground, and it learns I'm just not gonna challenge the stake. Challenge the stake in the ground. It's a mindset. You don't know what you're capable of. Health care is complicated. I don't know if it's rocket science. It's not rocket science. It's common sense. If we can disrupt rocket science and bring common sense and challenge those assumptions, the same can be done in our industry. And I appreciate you sharing a couple ways we can get started. Sure. My pleasure. I appreciate you having me. Welcome back anytime. Awesome. Thank you.