Health Biz and Politics

Most American employers are suffering unnecessarily costly health benefits plans. This despite good publication by the renowned Health Rosetta advisors that plenty of both Fortune 500s and smaller businesses are flattening their cost curves while lowering Out Of Pocket exposure for their workers - and improving the quality of health outcomes. These advanced brokers analyze employee health trends like accountants, ditching immediately the biggest cost-driver: INSURANCE! Through the Affordable Care Act, health insurers gamed a price "control" law that has backfired, worsening annual premium hikes (and worsening quality). At Mitigate Partners, Mr. Schuessler has summarized his two-decade experience into what he calls "The FairCo$t Health Plan".Containing 16+ Cost Containment Solutions, the FairCo$t Health Plan enables business owners to become active managers of their health plan rather than continuing to be hostages of the traditional passively managed Insurance world. Operating as Population Health Managers rather than “Brokers”, Mr. Schuessler's team specializes in Cost Containment and Risk Mitigation strategies that result in dramatic reductions in the overall health plan spend.

For checking accounts and small loans, families are finding better deals and customer service not just with community banks, but also with credit unions. A million, mostly smaller-size entrepreneurs and middle-class families have accessed protection against catastrophic medical expenses not from insurance, but from what is called Health Share Communities. Like credit unions, sharing companies can offer better service at more affordable prices. But how do customers enjoy the Health Sharing experience, and what does a Medical Cost Sharing CEO consider to take even more customers from insurance companies? Robert Steele has sold insurance and other benefits for decades and mastered the art of the sale such that the University of North Alabama has a namesake wing at his alma mater North Alabama University.

America's half-dozen, largest health insurance companies have successfully lulled business owners and executives and their HR departments into accepting inevitable, annual price increases - with higher deductibles and often narrower networks that can exclude the best providers. Too few businesses are aware that a growing cohort of their competitors are actually providing HIGHER QUALITY health care and seeing substantial REDUCTIONS in costs, with lower to ZERO out-of-pocket costs and BETTER medical outcomes. After mastering this alternative-funding benefits model that manages the health care supply chain, Nelson Griswold founded the obligatory ASCEND conference for other brokers fed up with enabling the rip-off of American companies by the health insurance companies. These benefit improvements are freeing up capital for smaller entrepreneurs as well – and improving care for workers with better choices and less to no out-of-pocket costs. Everyone wins.

Obama’s Affordable Care Act exempted small business owners from the law’s requirements if they hired less than 50 employees, but these entrepreneurs never have had many affordable or high-quality choices to insure their workers. Entrepreneurs by definition are the problem solvers on whom society relies, so we need to care how they can access better benefits to recruit and retain key employees. Growing up in a household selling Prudential Insurance, Todd rebelled against the status quo, went independent, and developed the “pro-life” group benefit that helps employers help their workers while helping themselves. Mr. Marley upgraded this system into “Plan Panoptic” - bypassing traditional insurance, emphasizing wellness, broadening networks, and replacing one’s “lease” of benefits with their ownership. Agents nationwide are mopping up this fantastic solution for their local businesses.

A majority of states now allow medicine derived from the cannabis plant, and CBD oil couldn't be more popular. Democrat control of the federal government will expedite the years-long liberalization of Cannabis markets. CBD, however, faces quality pressure from the Food and Drug Administration, and legacy drug warrior sentiment continues to arrest cannabis entrepreneurs suffering continued gray areas in the law that smother the potential of these markets. For years Jason Amatucci has led the coalition that convinced successive Virginia legislatures to restore hemp farming. He has lobbied nationally the farm law to help entrepreneurs in all 50 states. Also, he has grown a nationwide venture for hemp products, Anavii. Will Biden and total Democrat control federally bring clarity to cannabis markets, to allow the promised explosion in innovative health and other markets?

Whether Democrats or Republicans dominate government, neither seems able to make prescriptions affordable or accessible. For Biden’s administration, the Patients Rising Now organization promotes several big reforms that should mitigate complaints - mainly by Medicare users and chronic patients of all ages. You will want to learn these reforms to help advocate for them. They include accessing lifesaving medications, addressing expensive copays, accessing generics, leaving behind fruitless campaigns like repealing ObamaCare to refocus on new reforms, how states should regulate insurance, ending the FDA approval bottleneck, and dealing with the international politics of drugs. Terry Wilcox has a background in media and advocacy for survivors, caregivers, and medical professionals. Published in Fortune, the Hill, and elsewhere, she helps patients find their voice and become advocates for their own health care.

One of the many tragedies of Covid’s lockdown has entailed the sabotaging of the livelihoods of so many families, workers, and business owners. One news report last May had 100,000 small businesses already closed. Even before the virus hysteria, though, experts knew the impact of financial stress on health: headaches, frustration, insomnia, divorce, and other debilitating conditions. Even though Health Care costs seem out of control, it does not have to be that way. Health Insurance premiums do hurt retirement planning goals and dampen lifestyle, but with advanced technology, one can get control of Debt, instead of Debt controlling you. If more people found out about this solution, we could have a healthier and wealthier society - and longer life expectancy. Traditional means of making financial decisions require more than calculators and budgets. Find out how to take the free DNA Challenge to improve your health.

As John Goodman wrote four years ago in Forbes, patients facing huge deductibles and Out of Pocket expenses are electing not to only to save in tax-advantaged Health Savings Accounts, but also paying monthly “shares” into a Medical Benefit Savings MATCHING Account that builds much faster than an HSA. Thus, allowing the HSA to be a retirement account. How do medical benefit savings accounts appreciate so much faster than HSA’s? Ms. Coveleskie has for decades sold innovative products to protect family finances. For the family or business owner (5 or more employees) facing thousands in Out-Of-Pocket - whether for chronic disease, elective surgery, maintenance meds, having a baby, braces, therapies, or huge elderly health costs you will learn how to DOUBLE your money over 3 years, to HALVE these costs.

Various managed care schemes and government regulations have made the doctor-patient relationship a commodity, measuring "covered lives" rather than ministering compassion. Several years ago, insurance entities found a way to capture a large segment of the health market by transferring money without actually participating in the delivery of care. Without anti-trust liability, Big insurance companies have swallowed up smaller firms, and like modern-day “mercantilists” have become virtual monopolies. Author of “A New Dawn on the Horizon of Health Care: Hope for Health Insurance Reform”, Dr. Westbrock shares how reform - best done via transparency, competition, and personal responsibility - can replace the current mercantile health system with a compassionate economy that rewards focus on the patient and their inherent and infinite value.

From our earliest myths - like Gilgamesh's drive for immortality two millennia before Christ - we always have obsessed over the inevitability of death. The anti-aging market today is growing as the Baby Boomers retire, building demand for cosmetic procedures and anti-aging products. But what causes our 30 trillion cells to age, and what behaviors will ensure a longer, healthier life? With the global population aged 60 and over doubling since 1980, patient demand is exploding for pharmaceutical and surgical interventions - even organ transplantation. All of these treatments can be restorative and life-saving. Allopathic interventions, though, miss out on the protocols based on the body’s original, perfect version. We can trace aging, inflammation, and most diseases to the slowing down of a few systems wired into all of our bodies' cells. These systems were likewise perfect in their ability to keep those cells healthy. To prevent age-based slowing, most of us supplement our cells with vitamins, herbal medicine, even pharmaceuticals. Not perfect. Innovative scientists and medical entrepreneurs have recently made profound breakthroughs in re-activating these systems and restoring them to their original levels of functioning. These new treatments have proven millions of times more effective than the best supplements or pharmaceuticals. They allow the body to be the amazing healing machine that it was designed to be.

As ObamaCare’s high deductibles made patients into price-sensitive shoppers, they learned of high quality yet extremely affordable treatment alternatives south of the border or just a few hours flight elsewhere overseas. The medical tourism market exploded over the last decade. Verita profited in this growth, offering as a global brand two pillars of patient treatments: one in the early commercialization of breakthrough treatments and products, the other includes comprehensive treatment protocols in prime medical tourism countries such as Mexico and Thailand. Mr. Krausz will explain how they leverage regulatory, cost, and destination advantages and provide international standards of care and service. But Gideon also will discuss the medical tourism industry in light of its disruption by the travel-killing lockdown, the continuing employer dissatisfaction with domestic health solutions, and most especially via the demand by consumers for more options - including cutting edge therapies not yet available in the US.

Six in ten Americans suffer from a chronic disease, over half of the population. These include preventable lifestyle diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. This epidemic in society is consuming nearly 90% of all health care costs, much of which stems from high-cost pharmaceutical prescriptions and technology interventions that are focused more on symptom treatment and do not address the underlying causal factors. Dr. Khalsa, a research scientist at Harvard Medical School, shows how yoga and meditation are an effective behavioral strategy that addresses the behavioral and lifestyle-related risk factors that contribute to these chronic non-communicable diseases and will lead to the promotion and maintenance of health and wellness, prevention of disease, and also as an adjunct therapeutic intervention. Many patients, unfortunately, have struggled with behavior change. Khalsa describes how patients can practice the exercises and breathwork in yoga that easily facilitates effective meditation practice to improve healthy behaviors that can address the risk factors and behaviors underlying chronic diseases.

When a patient gets diagnosed with a chronic disease, the payor gets stuck with a bill that never ends. Not so, according to the burgeoning field of individualized medicine. According to the American Academy of Lifestyle medicine, anyone can reverse long-term symptoms (of, say, type 2 diabetes, hypertension or obesity, etc.) with a few scientifically based behavioral changes: 1. Whole-food plant predominant diet 2. 150 min/week of moderate exercise 3. 8 hours of restful sleep 4. Daily relaxation time to lower stress 5. Not smoking 6. Regular connection to positive people After years as an Internal Medicine doctor, Siri Chand explored integrated protocols and now designs pathways to cultivate these six "qualities" uniquely for each patient. Ayurveda, a medical system developed over millennia in India, offers a nuanced version of how to think about exactly this for each individual person. It assesses patterns - and allows them to shift. There is value in the mindful moments of observation and then doing something different. Saying something different, eating something different, moving in a new way, finding new friends, and just paying attention to our breathing patterns. It then in fact becomes #matterovermind and a sense of happiness and health emerge in a very natural way.

It would strike most voters as unbelievable if the media told them that Trump revolutionized Healthcare more than Obama and Biden did with the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Under the ACA, Biden expanded coverage for lower-income people. Under Mr. Blase’s leadership, Trump issued regulatory changes that will expand plan choices rather than restrict them, and that makes it easier for patients and employers to shop for care. More significantly, Trump established accounts where employers can reimburse coverage chosen by consumers, required insurers and hospitals to provide up-front price information, and expanded access to care through telehealth and health savings accounts. These steps will revolutionize employer benefits, spur competition, and lead to better patient care. And the president’s plans for the second term drown Biden’s surrender to an inevitable health market takeover by the government.

An epidemic of chronic disease. A pandemic. An economic crisis. Skyrocketing healthcare costs for suboptimal care that fails to address the root cause of America’s consumer health and community health needs. The time is now to implement wide-scale health reforms that address the root cause of both our health crisis AND our health care crisis. The answer lies neither in leaving the insurance system as is nor in scaling the dysfunctional federal healthcare system, Medicare for All. Rather, the answer entails a sustainable solution that is consumer and community-centered, intelligent and data-driven, and that meets affordability and equity goals while preserving the free market. Ms. Lininger designed Duchess Health to meet these goals. Duchess Health offers the health intelligence to permit scaling of whole health reforms and complement innovative health plans. With solutions that can be customized to meet the specific needs of progressive, self-funded employers who wanted to improve their employee health, it facilitates widespread adoption of direct contracting arrangements from primary to specialty care - to help drive down costs, reinvest savings into the virtuous cycle of health, and repair our local communities.

The government’s threat to mandate a COVID vaccine not just for kids but also adults has awakened a silent dread reflected in polls showing fewer than 1/4 of Americans will accept this medical intervention. But vaccine skepticism has risen long before COVID and indeed has set off wars in all 50 states as Pharma-funded Democrats repeal the right to say “no”: 1/3 of parents now refuse to follow the CDC’s schedule for school shots. What lies below this rebellion against the government-medical complex? Could the rebellion be unstoppable, as high profile lawyers like Robert F Kennedy call attention to the chronic disease explosion from 12% of kids in 1989 to 50% today - a trend equaling the increase in the number of shots required for K-12? Or, as politicians like Rand Paul are pummeled for daring to ask questions of the narrative descending from controversial figures like NIH Director Fauci. Can mandates even work within the consumer-directed health revolution where healing is going not in the direction of “public health”, but rather towards “personalization”? To help us sort out the draconian assault on health and freedom is John Hopkins-educated Marsha Rose, president of Virginia’s Freedom Keepers.

Families know they face $100,000 costs for the care they’ll need the longer they live, yet the primary Long Term Care Insurance product has collapsed out of the market. What can we do to avoid financial ruin for our loved ones? For two decades insurance professionals Leah Garcia and David Simpkins have analyzed the financial condition that differs for each family head or business owner, in order to curate a suite of products from health, life, and disability - to retirement and long-term care. The fortunate fact exists that long term care “insurance” no longer has to cost too much to justify the purchase. Responding to consumer demand for affordability, Leah and David are promoting innovative solutions that cost ridiculously little and yet promise amazing protection. In this time of worry, their webinar brings good news.

Theorist John Schaar said that the future is not a result of choices among alternatives offered by the present, but a place that is created; and the activity of creating it changes both the maker and the destination. The Pavilion, Jim Grapek says, is his way to create ‘that better future’ we so desperately need. He felt called to develop The Pavilion in 2010 after seeing so many paradigm-shifting discoveries, especially in health, and realizing – seeing these on the Discovery Channel isn't the answer -- people need direct access to these new cures, treatments, and solutions for better living. Thus, The Pavilion was born. A next-generation community hub built around a new, quantum science paradigm, Pavilions will help move people into an era of health and prosperity. Like a cross between Canyon Ranch, Disney’s original vision for EPCOT, and a World’s Fair pavilion, The Pavilion empowers people to live well and fosters more vibrant communities. From The Pavilion’s first of a kind, health-supporting architecture, to its branded American New Medicine®, to its 501c3 Life Sciences Center which includes exhibits on healthy living, quantum science, and “Rethinking Death and Dying,” there will be no shortage of "conversations that matter." Won’t it be great to have a Pavilion or Pavilion community where you live?