And now America's Healthcare Advocate, Cary Hall.
Hello, America.
Welcome to America's
Healthcare Advocates show Broadcasting Coast to coast across the USA.
Here on the HIA Radio Network, you can find out more about me
and this show by going to the website AmericasHealthcareAdvocate.com.
You have questions?
Send me an email.
I get a whole bunch of them, but I answer each and every one of them.
So we want to thank all of you out there
in the audience for listening to this broadcast.
As we broadcast across the country, we just added two new affiliates.
I'll talk about that a little later in the show, but also 16
podcast platforms and 648,000.
This continues to amaze me, 648,000 downloads
and listens on our podcast and YouTube.
So thank you to all of you out there that pay attention to this broadcast
is greatly appreciated.
If you are looking for help, if you're chronologically challenged,
or you're looking for an ACA, Obamacare plan, you might want to give
the lovely Carolee Steele a call over RPS Benefits
by Design 877-385-2224.
She helps people all over the country with Medicare, and with the ACA issues.
So if you want to give her a call 877-385-2224 the happy
to help you anywhere in the country find coverage.
So we're going to do a show today.
This a little different than what we usually do.
The show is kind of centered on brokers, but it also is a show that I want
employers to listen to because you're going to learn a lot today.
In studio with me today is Stephen Combs, founder of BrokersBloc.
Welcome, Stephen.
Thank you.
You've been here multiple times,
but you've been off camera, so I got you this time. You did? Yeah.
You got me this time. Yeah. All right.
And Ryan Ross, who's marketing and operations director.
Welcome. Ryan. Thank you. Glad to have both of you here.
So these two young men, they're young by me.
Okay.
Because I'm 76 years old, as we all know. Okay.
But their approach to
this business is significantly different than anything I've seen out there.
And if you're a broker and you're looking
for a better way to do business, an innovative way to do business,
I strongly suggest you pay attention to this broadcast, because,
you know, I've been doing this for 27 years,
so 22 on the radio, according to Dave Thiessen, my producer,
and I read the book.
So this young man, Ryan Ross wrote a book.
It's called benefits with friends.
It's a really good book.
It's written as a novel.
Okay. We'll talk more about it.
But, my point in saying this to you is, you're never too old to learn.
I learned things in reading that the way they do things, the things
that they're doing
to improve the broker experience, to improve what brokers do for their clients.
They help brokers do a better job.
And that's really what we're going to talk about today.
So welcome again to both of you.
So let's just start off with how did this all come about Stephen.
You live in Atlanta. He lives in new Jersey.
How did this all come about?
So I was a broker in the metro Atlanta market for about seven years.
I was working with my father.
Came in, and the book kind of highlights this. But,
I always joke that
my dream as a child was to be a benefits broker, and.
Okay, that's an unusual dream, Stephen.
I guess I don't think Ryan had that dream as a child.
But anyway.
And my backup plan is to be a professional motocross racer.
Okay, so glad that the first one worked out for me.
You know?
Yeah, it's a lot safer. Okay?
It's a lot safer. Yeah.
So, anyways, was actually living out in Utah,
after college, selling property and casualty insurance,
and my dad had some health issues back in Georgia,
and my mom had actually called me and said, hey, he needs your help.
You know, he's, you know, having some health issues.
So I flew back in and started working with this agency,
and I actually did fall in love with the benefits industry,
worked with him for quite some time.
So selling small group middle size benefits.
And we had worked with several general agencies in that market
and just saw lots of gaps between the carriers, the access, the coverage,
the things that are innovative that a lot of GA just don't seem to have.
And so I wanted to create a general agency that offered different solutions
for brokers that I couldn't get from the ones in that market.
And you did.
And I did. Correct? Yeah, right. Let's talk a little about you.
What brought you
into this sphere and how did you get involved?
With Steven?
And then the two of you come together and establish what I think
is a pretty amazing company.
BrokersBloc.
So I am not a benefits guy.
I didn't know benefits was around or a thing until.
Other than, like, experiencing. Minding you're own healthcare.
Yeah. Okay.
I didn't know about benefits, but I know a lot more about marketing.
I came from the marketing world and marketing and ad sales.
I worked for Dow Jones.
Yeah, I saw that Dow Jones, you worked at Dow Jones and you also worked at Finance?
Yeah.
And then a marketing technology company in London.
So like my background,
as you know, my role at BrokersBloc is marketing and operations.
That's kind of what I've always focused on.
I started my own marketing agency in 2021,
and eventually I'm like, I need to find the niche and the niche.
So I was like, okay, I know the world of financial advising.
So I said, I'm going to help financial advisors
who sometimes help with benefits, right?
As we all know John Kuhlmann, he does that to
but I was speaking at an event.
I was reached out to by a guy named Don Chemi.
He told me about, oh, this is NABIP, right?
I am a member of NAFA, which is for insurance and financial advisors.
But this guy reached out and he's like, hey, can you speak about marketing
at this event in Atlanta?
I'm like, I'm in New Jersey.
You want me to just fly down. And he was like, yes.
But I'm like, all right, stage time is money time.
Yeah.
So if you can get on stage, do that.
And this is what I advise brokers do. I used to do a lot of it.
It's it's a really good way to just generate authority.
So I said let's do that.
And one of the people on the board of NABIP was Steven.
And he reached out to me separately. Right.
He reached out to me on a Monday.
He's like, can we speak later today?
And I'm like, I'm booked today, but let's meet tomorrow.
I didn't know where this guy was coming from, honestly.
But I'm like, wait, I like looked in my email
and I found like, oh, he's with NABIP.
And I thought it was about that.
But then he told me about something totally different, and I told him
I'm like, I'm not aware of what benefits are how it works at all.
So that being said, I know a lot about marketing
and he's like, all right, that's fine.
You know, about the financial services industry.
It's kind of like that.
And so I just had to learn a lot about it.
So we met what last March.
And here we are.
And we've been through a lot last year and will continue to grow.
Well, you you what you've created Stephen and Ryan is unique.
I don't know anybody else that's doing what you're doing.
There's a lot of GAs out there. Okay.
I was never a fan of GAs.
And definitely not a fan of FMOs.
In fact, all of my contracts with Benefits by Design over the 27 years I did
it were direct with the carriers.
I wouldn't work with an FMO, but if I had a GA out there,
that could provide the kind of things that you guys are doing
that would have been a different world.
Okay, so let's talk a little bit about what you see as your mission
with BrokersBloc. Before we go to the break here.
We got about three minutes.
Yeah.
So our mission is we we always said we're not anti-BUCA we're non BUCA.
But if it's, agency by general agency.
So we're not trying to disparage the BUCAs We're just trying
to show brokers that there are there's alternative solutions out there,
and there's a million out there, some really good, some really bad.
So we have carefully vetted all of our carrier partners,
looked at the paper that they're on the reinsurance,
the networks, the PBMs, make sure that the package is cohesive.
It's a cohesive tech stack
that bundles together nicely, that has a good user experience.
So we just built a suite of products that are, again,
non disruptive to the employee and the employers,
but they can save the money
on some of the low hanging fruit things such as the pharmacy benefit manager
and some steerage as well around you know hospital claims.
I'm going to talk a lot, but we're going to do a deep dive
on some of those things as we go through the show.
But I want to explain what that term BUCA means for you and the audience
that are listening. Is that what are what are you talking about?
That's Blue Cross, that’s United, that’s Cigna
that's who we're talking about here.
We're talking about the big major carriers across the country,
that that, that basically control the markets right now.
So when you talk about BUCA you know, what what happens there is
there's not a lot of competition anymore between the carriers, primarily
because especially when you're talking about small group, medium size group,
because of ACA, who sets the regulations, this is what you can offer.
You know, someone said that
basically what Obamacare did that turned insurance carriers into utilities,
which is pretty much correct when you think about it, because the rates
are set by the different states, they have to get approval to set a rate,
and they're only allowed to offer certain things, a certain amount of money
they're allowed to make, or the rest of it has to go back
if they exceed that profit.
So it's a completely different world than it used to be before Obamacare.
And that's why I think there's a need
for what these two young men are doing out there.
And especially if you're a broker, if you're a medium size broker,
you're a small broker and you don't have the tools, you don't have the ability
to do what they do. They can add a lot.
We're going to talk a lot about that today,
and you're going to give you information
I think could make a difference to a lot of you out there.
If you want to go to their website, it's brokersbloc.com.
brokersbloc.com is spelled bloc
by the way brokersbloc.com.
We'll be right back after the break.
You're listening to America's Healthcare Advocate
broadcasting here on the HIA Radio Network.
Coast to coast Cross, USA.
Stay right there. We've got more.
To do.
Welcome back.
You're listening to America's Healthcare Advocate Show broadcasting coast to coast
across the USA here on the HIA Radio Network.
My producers, Mr..
Dave Thiessen behind the cameras, the man who puts all these shows
up on all the podcast platforms and the YouTube platform.
And Garner Cowdrey, who does all the work behind the microphones,
putting all the audio together as we broadcast Coast to Coast, by the way,
two new affiliates, we have WFEA-AM in Manchester, New Hampshire,
and another new affiliate in Charlotte, North Carolina WRHI-AM and FM.
We're on for two hours every Saturday.
I guess they really like us. We thank you all.
Make you part of America's Healthcare Advocate broadcasting family.
Welcome to the network.
We're happy to have you in studio with me, Stephen Combs.
And Ryan Roth. They are from BrokersBloc.
The website for them, by the way is BrokersBloc.com.
BrokersBloc.com.
Let me tell you about these two young men.
They're kind of amazing young men as far as I'm concerned.
Stephen is the founder of BrokersBloc.
Stephen helps insurance brokers cut through the noise confidentiality,
identify high performing, trustworthy vendors in an industry
where brokers are constantly bombarded with vendor pitches.
Are they ever I should know, okay,
what he's doing basically is creating an alternative here.
Their mission is to empower brokers to move beyond the default of brokers
with clients that are better, safer, smarter benefits
solutions for their clients and their clients are brokers.
So this is where
this makes a big difference, which is why I wanted
to read a little bit about his bio.
Ryan has worked at the intersection of marketing and financial services to 2011.
He founded an independent financial advisor marketing company in 2021.
He spent ten years at Dow Jones.
That must have been really interesting, Ryan.
And then the Financial Times, which is another interesting newspaper.
You ever see that pink newspaper in the airport?
That's the Financial Times.
It's a pretty interesting newspaper to read.
And then, he went on, to produce and hosted over
1000 webinars and 250 podcasts.
And he also wrote the book.
And I think it's kind of amazing.
The book benefits with friends, which I read.
All right. I'll talk a bit more about that in this segment.
So, pretty remarkable young man.
He's run 16 triathlons and three Ironman triathlon.
So, he's also a pretty good athlete.
So let's talk about this book for me because I was fascinated by this.
I told you when you came in here that,
I get a lot of people on this show that write books.
Most of them.
Yeah.
I try to read them out of courtesy.
Most of them are boring as hell and dry.
And they're how you're going to do this or how you're going to do that.
So you wrote this is a novel, and I'm reading this and I'm going,
That's Stephen in there.
That's that Stephen did the book.
Now I've got to get that part in a minute.
And some of the characters in the book, Porterhouse,
who has his meetings at the Texas Roadhouse, and it's
colorfully written and it's written in a way, that you enjoy reading it.
It's not a boring, dry read. Okay.
So I urge you, if you're a book, this is online at Amazon.
I bought it on Amazon. I forget what the hell it cost.
And I read it on, online at Amazon, on my, on my Kindle.
But it's really an interesting book.
And here's what I'll say about this.
It kind of encapsulates their philosophy
of what they're doing and how they're doing it.
And it does it in a colorful and interesting way.
The interesting part is when you wrote this, you didn't even know him.
I didn't well,
I knew him, but I didn't know the story about how he got involved in the business.
He took over his.
Father's agency just like he just told.
So weird, I didn't know this.
The original plot was like this guy
that was in benefits, and he he just needed to modernize.
But I realized, like, okay, I,
I wrote that to learn about the benefits industry.
You did a pretty good job.
I appreciate that because it hopefully comes out in the book.
But what like I wrote it thinking, okay, this guy just needs to modernize.
But that assumes he's
been in the industry and like, he should know some of these terms.
So I had to change the plot and I had to be like,
you need to create some stakes in the beginning and some drastic thing.
It's just a narrative tool.
So I'm like, okay, guys, maybe his dad dies.
And so he's thrust into his. Dad didn't die, by the way.
So we all know Steven's dad is still alive,
but he this guy's thrust into the industry and I'm like, I like food.
And so I'm gonna name it al dente, which you did, right?
And he was like a pasta manufacturer.
So I knew pasta manufacturing.
And he had to learn benefits.
He had to get a license, and then he needed to do marketing.
So it's for like,
yes, it's for benefits brokers to maybe brush up their skills on benefits.
They probably don't need to do that,
but it's more of like a marketing instructional book.
No, I would disagree with that.
I think that what's in here?
Yeah.
Like I said, I'm 76 years old, and I was kind of amazed.
Some of the things you put in here that I saw
as pieces, of things I did not know about, things that I didn't understand.
And I said to you guys off camera earlier, if I had known you
before, when I had Benefits by Design, I would have been one of your first clients.
Because your innovation and your thought process
on what you're bringing to the table allows.
I see your niche as medium and small brokers.
I don't know if that's what you see it as, but that's where I see guys
that don't have and gals
that don't have those kinds of tools or resources that you bring to the parties.
So talk a little bit about that.
Medium and small brokers are their bread and butter.
We do work with some larger ones, but most of our brokers are definably
the small or medium sized brokers who need help with technology,
with quoting, with spreadsheets and all those sorts of things.
The larger brokers are more so looking just for the carriers
that they don't want to necessarily maybe take the time to vet.
I understand that.
Like like our PSM Nebraska GigCare, which we're a new carrier
market, four years old.
We worked with you guys, etcetera, etcetera.
John Kuhlmann, who, by the way, is in the book,
which I think is kind of interesting. Yeah.
I'll see him up here next week, but, Yeah.
So keep going.
This is interesting. Yeah.
So we work with carriers that are, I mean, well-funded, you know, strong networks.
Well, well-capitalized, you know, good tech stacks
that are seamless for the for the broker, the employer and the employee.
And so we help the brokers identify kind of cut through the slop
because there's hundreds of vendors that pop up every single year.
They all promise the same things.
And then you go and rollover group and then it's a disaster.
Right?
We we we avoid those things because when I was a broker,
I was always looking for the next shiny object.
And so I've learned over the years of doing it
how to avoid those disastrous situations.
That's funny
when you said the next new shiny object, because it makes me think, Ryan,
of how many those next new shiny objects are out there.
And they last a year or two years and they start to crash and burn.
And then the broker
that I, there's one particular group from a number of years ago
that was selling group health insurance,
and it was like the greatest things of sliced bread.
And they went belly up.
And one particular broker I know got stuck with $1 million worth of claims to pay.
And another broker
who's a friend of mine wound up with half $1 million claims to pay.
So vetting these guys, these these companies that are coming out and
and there are
there's a lot of innovation going on right now because the BUCA plans,
in my humble opinion, are crashing and burning.
I don't see how this is sustainable in the long run,
because that the heavy regulation, you look at some of the increases
that came through last year, they're massive
23%, 30% in Florida,
I think it was as high as 38% in some cases.
I mean, the the the industry, it's boxed in
and it can't seem to figure out how to get around that.
And Congress is doing nothing.
Okay. So as usual.
All right.
So you're not getting anything from the politicians to change it.
So what you guys are doing is bringing
alternatives to the table and then showing these alternatives to the brokers.
But talk a little bit about what you're doing on the marketing side
to help brokers gain visibility because you've got,
you know, the the podcast, the the webinars,
the things that you're doing it, you talk about in here,
a lot of brokers would go, I don't know if I can do that.
So we're coming up on the break, so let's hold that right there.
When we come back from the break, I want you to get into that
and talk about how that's not really that difficult to do.
You illustrate that in the book,
and we'll talk about that when we come back from the break.
The website is BrokersBloc.com.
BrokersBloc.com.
There's a lot of information up there.
Take time to reach out to these guys.
And by the way they have a thing called the 300 Club.
We're going to talk about that in the next segment.
If you're an employer and you've got a broker who's lazy and not doing his job,
reach out to these guys.
They have a network of brokers that are vetted
and they're first class, and they'll be happy to help you.
BrokersBloc.com.
Stay right there. We'll be right back after the break.
You're listening to America's
Healthcare Advocate broadcasting coast to coast across the USA.
Here on the HIA Radio Network.
Welcome back.
You're listening to America's Healthcare Advocate show broadcasting
coast to coast across USA here on the HIA Radio Network,
in studio with me, Stephen Combs and Ryan Roth from BrokersBloc.
Their website is
BrokersBloc.com.
A lot of great information up there.
And I keep talking about this book because,
Ryan wrote a book that I think is pretty cool.
This is benefits with friends.
We're going to talk a little bit more about it here.
So one of the things that you spend a lot of time on that book is marketing.
So let's talk about how you help
the piece in there on podcasts, which I like,
you know, here
we do podcasting different than what you're talking about doing, but,
you know, to suggest to a broker that they do a podcast, most of these guys
and gals are going to go, what are you talking about?
I can't do something like that.
So describe you do it in the book, but describe how you actually do this
and why you think this is beneficial to the brokers.
So I think podcasts are really important to do, because
any broker that wants to create marketing material or just create
more sales inflow for themselves, visibility, you need to create visibility.
They need to create authority.
A podcast is a great way to do that.
And I would say it's the most low
drag way to do that as well, because all you need is a phone.
And there's a scene in the book where one of the characters
he lands a podcast or an interview with this guy
that he's wanted to speak with
for a long time, and his marketing assistant's like, record that.
So he sits down, he asks some questions, he puts his phone down.
That's all you need to do, right?
You put your phone down and say, I'm going to record this conversation.
You take that audio file, you make a Spotify account,
you upload it to the Spotify account, you press publish,
which is a really hard thing to do because it
there's an element of vulnerability when you put anything out.
Oh yeah. Absolutely right.
You're talking no guys from radio 22, you know,
you know every time you're like, oh is it ready to go make it ready to go.
Just push the button.
People might not listen to the beginning.
You might need to push it out to people in the beginning.
But having a conversation on something that you are an authority
figure on or at least you know a little bit about it, right?
Having a conversation with friends is even easier,
because you can banter for a little while and then say, I want to talk about
these five things in my podcast interview.
Or maybe it's a shorter version, right?
Interviews can be half an hour, or they can be a five minute podcast
talking about, I want to talk about PBM transparency
and how to analyze an EOB explanation of benefits, things like that.
You can have three points that you want to talk about
any five minutes you put that on a podcast,
but that's only the first step.
Then you need to send it to people, right?
I recommend people define what's called a dream 100.
This is the 100 list of 100 people that you would do perfect with.
And in the book I talk about you do, I took a talk about a niche.
Right.
The guy's
niche in the book is manufacturing I because he knows about manufacturers.
He made pasta.
He was a pasta manufacturer.
But so many brokers, if they say like I am the broker for associations, right.
Our friend John Kuhlmann does that.
That's what his thing is.
He’s really good at it probably.
And he's also in the book. By the way.
He probably has other types of clients.
But if you focus on the niche, what you focus on expands,
because then you say, this is who I am for, right?
You probably.
And you become the authority figure.
And John has become an authority figure in the association,
and you work with him, both of you.
So let's segue to something because he threw it out there.
But one of the most complicated, misunderstood things out there is the PBM.
First of all, tell what a PBM Steve is.
It's a pharmacy benefit manager as part of the health plan that manages
all the prescriptions and that can eat up a lot of the claims.
I mean, sometimes over half. Okay.
Explain that.
Yeah.
So a pharmacy like generic drugs aren't a big deal.
Even the brand name drugs are not a big deal.
Where it comes into play
is there's TV, commercial drugs, the specialty medications. Yep.
The ones that, you know, they're paying millions of dollars for
ads, work because they have a patent on it and they can charge whatever.
There's some examples, such as Stelara, costs like $27,000
every fill, which can be every other month.
I mean, who can really afford that as an employee or an employer?
One thing that people don't realize is there's also massive rebates.
That's the hidden part of the industry, and people do not understand.
Yeah.
So let's talk about that because there's a lot of money there under the table
that the employer doesn't see if they're not,
if the broker is not smart enough to know how to get those rebates.
Okay.
Or there's a part in the book actually where I think Ryan talks about,
the asking for the asking you.
He shake his head, just asking for the printout from the carrier on the rebates.
And what he gets is a cut and pasted spreadsheet that doesn't tell him
anything.
Okay, because that's not something they want to disclose.
So talk about it.
So large groups have got rebates forever.
I mean they get them for if you have 500 plus employees,
maybe a thousand plus any PBM is going to give you rebates
if they want the business.
There's no volume for them to make sense.
Small groups and middle sized groups historically have never seen them.
No, and they don't know what they are.
They don’t know what they are, until now.
So now there's PBMs that operate just on basically like an admin fee.
They charge an administrative fee,
but all the rebates are passed through back to the employer.
and they're not for profit basically. Pretty much exactly.
And those, those like Stelara, 27 grand after rebates it’s only about four grand.
It's a big swing. Yeah it is a big swing.
So so at Detego with our Population Science Management program for GigCare,
we have Script Aid which is our own PBM.
And we so we do three things.
We do a drug importation okay.
So if for that particular drug, if we brought it in
from Canada would probably be 3 or $4000.
If that, maybe less. Okay.
So we do it that way.
We do it with drugs that are on the formulary.
If they're expensive and even if they're not on the formulary,
we don't tell you: “Well, that's your problem”.
Now you contrast that with the BUCA ACA plan.
The broker's got no solution for that.
No. Okay.
Well our plan has the solution because we go out
and we bring that drug in and we don't make them pay
the difference is what it is, and we bring it in.
The other thing we do is foundational assistance.
And that's a big deal, okay.
Because what 90% of the people don't know and most of the brokers don't know
or don't know how to do it, is to file for foundational assistance.
That's all stuff that you guys do.
So that foundational assistance
means, just so you understand the audience out there and brokers,
if you've never heard of it, okay, if you need a growth hormone
drug and it's $100,000 a year, you're probably not able to afford that
unless you're a multi-millionaire.
But if you are working with the carrier, like in our case
Detego and Population Science Management, GigCare.
We actually have our own nurses at Script Aide to go out
and do the paperwork, get the medication, have it drop shipped to your door.
And that's exactly what you're talking about, is it not correct?
Yeah. They call them patient assistance programs.
And so but most of our carriers offer them as well.
And the member typically gives them for free.
That's exactly right.
Yeah. More times than not it's free. Yeah.
We have some carriers that do it very gently where, you know, hey,
you can get the medication through your health plan,
but it's going to be your deductible and coinsurance.
Or we can source from Canada or New Zealand or do a PAP or patient
assistance program. And this is $0 co-pay.
Some of our carriers use a hammer instead of a scalpel.
I'm gonna, I'm afraid to ask you where we come in.
But anyway, go ahead. So, this is not you guys, but.
But what they do is.
So they'll cover the medication no matter what.
On a 30 day to 60 day supply.
So there's no disruption in care, right?
But then after that, the member then is required to do the program right.
They're required to go through the advocacy program
to get the medication and they get it for free. Right?
Okay.
Now, if they can't source internationally or they can't do an assistance program,
then they do
get it through the health plan or they do cover it,
but they have to go through those avenues first.
And I do like that for the the clients that are willing to have
a little bit of disruption, because if you're a group that's being
just destroyed by high cost medications, these carriers can be a great solution.
But I just have to know, what are your needs?
What is your risk tolerance?
Is it
you know, that you have some medications you want to reduce,
and you want the employees to have the choice?
Or do you want to, you know, make the employees go through the program?
Again, it's not disruptive.
They give them a 30 day to 60 day supply with plenty of time.
That's correct. Yeah. Yeah okay. And so
when you talk about these carriers you're talking about people
very similar to what Detego, we're a TPA but we have our own plans.
Talk about some of the other carriers you work with that
are not the BUCA plans that are look, BUCA plans fit for some people.
They don't fit for a lot of people and a lot of people are struggling with cost.
And unfortunately, this is work. Okay.
If if your broker's not willing to do the work,
you're probably not gonna know there are alternatives out there.
So talk about some of these other alternatives.
Yeah.
So we have are they really fall into two buckets.
We have the tech, you know, stack companies that are very AI based
tech based.
And that's going to be Angle Health, Arlo Health, Level Health.
And those are the three real tech heavy vendors, Health In Tech as well.
I was very tech focused.
All the underwriting is done AI.
No health apps are required.
Angle Health goes down to five lives.
The other three go down to the ten lives.
They all have prescription management tools.
They're all do it a little bit differently.
Health In Tech is the one that I like for the groups
that are have a lot of high cost drugs because they use the hammer approach.
The rest use, the rest use
the scalpel approach where it’s, hey, you have the choice, it's up to you.
But that's what they do.
And we have some more legacy carriers that are a little bit more
well known to the population out there.
We got TrustMark.
I know TrustMark and used to work with them.
They're very good. We work with them a lot.
We have all formerly All State Benefits now Nationwide Benefits.
Yeah.
Then we carry your Optimal Benefits. Yep.
And then here's one that's
maybe not well known per se, but Great American Insurance.
I've heard of it. I don't know much about it.
Their reinsurance company, they've been around since the 1800s.
That’s how I know them.
$33 billion in assets. So they're no joke?
No, they are not.
But they've released a Small Group Level Funded plan, 2 to 99,
Ten plus A underwriting.
And the rates have just been phenomenal.
So that is exactly why we're doing this show.
What do I always say about this show?
We're here to educate and inform.
We just informed you and educated you.
If you're a broker and you heard some of these names
and you want access, you want to know how do I get involved?
What do I do?
This makes sense. I've got clients I need help with.
Maybe I've got clients
that I want to bring on board, but I can't because
I don't have anything innovative.
Go to the website BrokersBloc com BrokersBloc.com.
We'll be right back after the break. Stay there.
You're listening to America's
Healthcare Advocate broadcasting coast to coast across the USA.
We'll be right back.
Welcome back.
You're listening to America's Healthcare Advocate show broadcasting coast
to coast across the USA here on the HIA Radio Network.
You can find out
more about us by going to the website AmericasHealthcareAdvocate.com.
By the way, maybe you work in a medium to small size agency
and you guys are struggling.
You know, trying to add new clients or even trying to keep your book.
This podcast is up on 16 podcast platforms.
It's on YouTube.
You can go to this whole show,
you know, tell the owner of your agency, your brokerage.
Hey, we need to connect with these guys.
Well, why? Who are these guys? Well, go up and listen to the show.
Go up and do the podcast.
Go up and do the YouTube. We’ve got.
What do we have, 643,000.
Dave just said in our last count. Nine.
There we go.
649,000. See, I get it wrong every time.
The point I'm making is you're never too old to learn.
There's innovation out there.
These two young men, they're young to me.
Okay. Are really good at what they do.
And I urge you, to take a moment.
And if you're a broker out there, go to their website, BrokersBloc.com.
All right.
Let's talk a little bit about, Well, first
let's talk about the Broker 300 Club because I think this is kind of cool.
And what does that mean?
And what it is, it's an exclusive club for our brokers
that are, you know, high level producers that are innovative.
They know what they're doing in the industry using innovative carriers.
And so what it is, is we're putting together a retreat.
It's going to be in May of next year,
and it's going to be for brokers to get together, congregate
with the carriers, innovative carriers, and just have, you know,
dedicated attention to learning the new products, processes, systems,
networks, everything that's out there that they can offer to their clients.
And if you're a broker wanting to be innovative in 2026
and 2027, you definitely want to be a part of it. See?
And what that reminds me of is back in the day, when Paredo, which
is the largest captive in the country now, and Berkeley Hamilton captive
when they would hold events, Paredo was probably the best at this.
They would hold them, usually twice a year in Nashville.
And the amount of information that got pumped out in those events,
I mean, you know, when I first started with Paredo,
I think there might have been 300 total clients and brokers combined
by the time I left.
I think it was up to I think it's 4000, now brokers.
And I don't know how many clients have got involved.
It's it's gotten enormous. Okay.
Because Cavanaugh and Clayton, the guys that started was very much like you guys.
They did something out of the box.
Okay.
Problem was you had to be 100 lives or more to qualify for it.
Well, you know, for us, that was great.
You know, we were in the self-funded market.
But what you're offering now is a solution for brokers in the small group market.
And one of you
just mentioned one of your carriers goes down to five lives, correct?
Actually, several of them go down to two lives.
Well that's it.
And that's a big deal because there are a lot of mom pop shops out there
that can't get health insurance, or they get it on the ACA plans.
It's horrifically expensive.
And this is an alternative for them.
So you're you're educating the brokers on how to find those people,
get them set up and help them do it.
Correct. Okay.
Let's switch gears a little bit and then talk about the,
the broker directory, because this is to the employer out there
because unfortunately, you know, in this industry
got a lot of lazy people just tell you how it is.
Okay.
You know, my philosophy was if you can't get in front of your client once a quarter
just to tell them how things are going and see how they're doing,
are they having problems?
Are things going well for them?
You know, there are there other employees happy?
What's going on.
Then I don't think you're doing your job.
And unfortunately I think in this industry that doesn't happen a lot.
And if you're an employer, I tell you, you're unhappy with a broker
that shows up once a year with the spreadsheet and says, pick your poison.
That's not the way this should work.
Okay, so talk a little bit about your broker list and what what
those are qualified brokers that are looking for alternatives
to what's out there. Let's talk about that. Absolutely.
So not only have we vetted carriers we’re also vetting brokers as well.
So if a client of a group is looking for a quality broker
that can meet their needs, we have brokers in all shapes and shapes and sizes.
We have brokers that work with small groups, large group, medium groups.
So whatever your needs are, wherever you're located at geographically,
we can actually source you a very highly vetted quality broker.
And so, you know, maybe you'll give them a 2 or 3
and they can pick the one they like type of thing.
Yeah. Yeah.
So that again that website is BrokersBloc.com BrokersBloc.com.
There needs to be change in this industry okay.
And you know what.
What you're doing Ryan.
You and Stephen, the two of you together, you know, to help brokers
improve the process at the end of the day is really going to help the employer,
and the employee with that experience.
Yes. Yeah.
I mean, if one of the things that we try to do ourselves is figure out
how can we systematize operations, and use AI to do that,
and I think there's a big opportunity to help brokers do things in a similar way
to actually how we do it, whether that's making creating content for those brokers.
And then the brokers can also do a very similar thing for their clients
to find their niche. Right?
But also figure out, okay, we use AI in different ways
in order to streamline our operations because we're we're a lean team, right.
But there's brokers in the similar situations, right?
So it kind of the processes and the systemization
funnels down to how the brokers can operate as well.
So that's one of the things we can advise on as well.
Yeah.
You know in John Kuhlmann’s in the book and which is interesting, John's done
a number of different radio shows with me.
He's going to be back here next week, to do some more.
But he works very closely with you guys, and has a lot of regard
for what you're doing and innovates and uses a lot of your processes.
And, you know, we talked about associations. Yeah.
And how and I see the emails, the back and forth where you're working with him,
all the various associations.
But he is an example, at least to me, of a broker that found a niche.
There are a lot of brokers out there in this space, and I'm
I it's amazed me how it's just blown up.
I mean,
you know, Toolbelt, 1099
employees that work at Home Depot and, and Menards to come out,
you buy a refrigerator, they're gonna
you need to have the icemaker put in these guys come out or gals and put it in.
And there's a whole association full of these guys with a 250,000 people
in this thing.
Yeah. NHRA.
I happen to be a car guy.
National Hot Rod Association.
That blew me away. I'm like, he brought that.
He goes, do you know who these guys said?
Yeah, I've been to more NHRA races and you can possibly imagine.
Okay.
So I mean, it's amazing
how many these are out there and you guys are assisting him.
Yeah.
Well, you know,
I think a lot of other brokers can think the same way that he's thinking, right.
Like figuring out, okay, his niece's like associations.
But the thing is, there's associations for so many things, right?
One of our brokers, they are they focus on credit unions
and non profits Interesting.
because these are all groups. Yeah.
We were at a Texas Roadhouse the other night because I love Texas Roadhouse.
And we he actually eats at Texas Roadhouse.
Great.
Stephen not so much.
So I'm just going to tell you. But anyway.
Actually I do okay.
Okay. It’s where he charges his Tesla.
Yeah.
So if you were in a Texas
Roadhouse somewhere like oh I bet there's a restaurant association, of course.
Or you could be a broker if you're a broker
that's worked with 1 or 3 restaurants just because you found the business
that way, think like, okay, what are the commonalities between my clients?
And maybe they're a restaurant.
They're there's a restaurant association out there.
You can be the broker for that restaurant association.
Do things like that.
Is that's exactly what I'm talking about okay.
And that's why I think
having these two young men here doing this show
that we're going to do more of this, they've got
they've got some great programs and we're going to be talking about these
throughout the year.
But this is why I wanted to do this today, because if I was that medium broker,
that small broker who became a bigger broker because of this radio show
back in the day before we had all of this AI and everything else.
But the beauty of it is it's a tool now that's available.
You just heard Ryan describe it.
You heard Stephen talk about their their 300 club, what they're doing.
I urge you to take a minute to connect with these guys and just listen to
what they've got.
You might be surprised what you learn
and you might be surprised how they can help you.
The website is BrokersBloc.com, bloc.
BrokersBloc.com.
Thank you both for being here, it was a great show today.
Thank you. Appreciate you both.
And now I leave you with this
thought from Albert Einstein, the one who follows the crowd,
will usually get no further than the crowd.
The one who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.
Remember, friends, it's a funny thing about life.
If you refuse to accept anything but the very best, you most often get it.
Thank you for listening to America's Healthcare Advocates Show.
Broadcasting coast to coast across USA.
Goodbye America.