433 | Why Your Healthcare Sucks

Feb 12

[00:00:35] Chaz Wolfe: What's up everybody? I'm Chaz Wolf gathering the King's podcast, coming back to you here today with not only a king on the stage, but my brother Harlan Pickett, another radio voice, a podcaster. The, health and, medical, , insurance Man of the hour we're, we're looking to get into it.
[00:00:53] Chaz Wolfe: Really deep. Agitate, some thought here today. Harlan, welcome to the King stage.
[00:00:57] Harlon Pickett: Hey, thank you so very much. It is a honor to be on gathering the Kings podcast, brother. I am so excited to be here.
[00:01:05] Chaz Wolfe: You know, I just have to, 'cause we were just talking about it off air, but I gotta, I gotta point it out for the listener that how I, I couldn't not say Harlan Pickett knowing your. Uh, your, your Texas, uh, tone there that you even just were like, you know, thanks for being, you know, all of it. Just your, your accent, the, the name, the fact that you're in Houston.
[00:01:24] Chaz Wolfe: Uh, it just, it just brings me joy. It just makes me, it makes me smile, um, makes me feel a little bit of, a little bit of home. Um, even though I'm not from Texas, I feel like kind of, maybe I'm a Texan somewhere in there. Anyway. Um, Harlan, tell us what kind of business that you got, brother.
[00:01:37] Harlon Pickett: Alright, well, little bit different. I'm an entrepreneur that saw. Problems in our healthcare industry that were caused by our health insurance industry. And quite honestly, I'm an insurance broker. I've been in the industry since 2007, uh, because of multiple issues I saw my clients go through, I said, you know what?
[00:01:58] Harlon Pickett: Health insurance is not the answer because it's actually preventing people from getting access to healthcare. Uh, because insurance, health insurance and healthcare are two different things. And so we started building very unique designed plan options to get people away from insurance companies that were dictating which doctors they could see, when they could see them, and how long they could see them.
[00:02:23] Harlon Pickett: Uh, right. Quite honestly, it's, it's a difficult situation for people to understand because we've been brainwashed so much in this country. That we believe health insurance is ne necessary for healthcare, and that's just not the case. Healthcare is necessary for healthcare, so that that's what we do is we build custom health plans.
[00:02:44] Chaz Wolfe: You know, I think that you're spot on here. Um, not only in what you do. I love what you do and we'll get there. Uh, a little bit more semantically, but as far, just, just up above, principally, like, you're right, I think the majority of Americans think, oh man, I gotta make sure I got those insurance benefits.
[00:03:01] Chaz Wolfe: And whether they're working for somebody or they're trying to provide, uh, benefits for their employees, it we're just. We're just, we just never thought outside of the box of what if I don't. And off the air I was telling you a story, you know, that Julie and I went through in the last couple of years, and so I'm, maybe we'll get to that here in a little bit, but I think we're gonna agitate some thought here around how people think about this.
[00:03:23] Chaz Wolfe: Would you agree?
[00:03:24] Harlon Pickett: no, a absolutely because, so think about this. You're running a company and you, once you get past 50 employees, as you may or may or not know this, once you get past 50 employees, you're required by law to provide insurance to them. Not healthcare to them, you're, you're required to provide insurance to them.
[00:03:43] Harlon Pickett: That then becomes overnight, your second to third largest profit and loss item. I mean, you're, you're paying for something right now that most of your employees are not even using, by the way. Okay. And they're very unhappy with it. Uh, in, in fact, a lot of times you're unhappy with it, but you don't know any different.
[00:04:04] Harlon Pickett: You don't have any idea what else to do, and you believe that there's no way to control those costs. And if you're talking to a traditional broker, and I know lots of 'em out there, and I used to be one, if you're talking to a traditional broker, they're gonna tell you, Hey, there's nothing I can do. Yeah.
[00:04:18] Harlon Pickett: It's a 15% increase. Well, I thought we had a good year. I, I really didn't think the rates were gonna go up. Yeah. But they're only going up 15%. I'll tell you what, I'm gonna go to bat for you. I'm gonna take care of you. And they come back and tell you, I did it. I got 'em down to 12. You did that for me, man.
[00:04:35] Harlon Pickett: That's why I like you, buddy. That's why I'm never gonna have anyone else because you got it down to 12 for me. Woo. Thank you so much.
[00:04:42] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah.
[00:04:43] Harlon Pickett: How many of you heard how many out there that you're the C-E-O-C-F-O? You've heard that story and you probably weren't even involved, and that's what's unfortunate is you are leaving it to the HR department to make strategic decisions, money decisions that should be in your hands, not in your hrs hands.
[00:05:00] Harlon Pickett: They're not trained for that. These are strategic decisions that should, you should be making, not them.
[00:05:05] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Like you said, a pretty, a pretty high line item, um, on the p and l. Okay. Well, we're gonna get into, you know, just the ability, uh, to think differently about healthcare and insurance here soon from, from a place of Harlan, like what's deep rooted? You've obviously been an entrepreneur for a long time.
[00:05:24] Chaz Wolfe: Why do you do this? Why do you do entrepreneurialism? Why are you a business owner? But then also why healthcare?
[00:05:29] Harlon Pickett: Okay, so let, let's, let's go back to why I'm an entrepreneur, because after 19 years in corporate America, corporate America decided it didn't need me anymore. I got laid off. Like many of you out there are probably experienced. I got laid off. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. The greatest thing,
[00:05:47] Chaz Wolfe: it sounds like.
[00:05:48] Harlon Pickett: the greatest thing ever.
[00:05:49] Harlon Pickett: You know, it, it's interesting because I, there's people that I worked with. That are, I'm, I'm, I turned 57 in just a couple of days here and that is, uh, 58 would've been the age I could have retired at and I would've had enough time by now to retire full retirement and been retired at 58 years old of age. I cannot imagine how horrible my career would've been to, had to stay in that place because. I was paid just enough and had just a good enough benefits. I thought at the time to not leave. I had to be told, we don't need you anymore.
[00:06:27] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah.
[00:06:28] Harlon Pickett: And I'm telling you what a blessing. What a blessing it was because that entrepreneurial spirit that I always had, I had no choice now, right?
[00:06:36] Harlon Pickett: Chance? I had no choice. What are you gonna do? Still gotta feed the family. So away I went, the wife and I actually started a catering company first. Um, I'm, I'm a pit master. I'm from Texas. I'm a pit master. Sh, shocking, right? Um, yeah, I'm a pit master. So we ran a coter company for a number of years. Uh, just kind of a weird way I got into insurance.
[00:06:56] Harlon Pickett: This is ridiculous by the way. This is ridiculous. Who in the world gets in the insurance world like this? Uh, part of my wonderful severance package was a year's salary and benefits for a year. Always being in corporate America, I had no idea what insurance really cost for an individual. So when time came that our insurance was running out and I started getting quotes from insurance people from these insurance agents, evil, uh, ridiculously corrupt insurance agents in my mind, okay?
[00:07:29] Harlon Pickett: They were all quoting me. Boy, I didn't know how good this was back then. $800 a month for my family of four $800. I've never paid more than, you know, 200 bucks for this. You're, you guys are crazy. You're crooks. There's no way it costs this much. So in my infinite wisdom, I decided I would sell myself insurance.
[00:07:51] Harlon Pickett: So I studied for two weeks, took the test, passed the test, got appointed with insurance. Went and quoted insurance for myself and said, oh my gosh, this stuff cost $800 a month. That's how I got in insurance. How ridiculous is that, right?
[00:08:09] Chaz Wolfe: Wow. So, so you ended up selling your own policy, realizing that uh, it was the real price and thought, well, shoot, I might as well sling it to everybody else.
[00:08:18] Harlon Pickett: Well, what I found out is there's no one to explain to me what's happening when people leave corporate America or they, they go out for the first time and have to buy individual insurance. No one explains what it's gonna look like. No one explains other options out there. No one could. There was no one to explain it to me.
[00:08:34] Harlon Pickett: They just said, this is what it is. Because unfortunately, and those of you out there that are in industries. That there's a lot, that they're very difficult. Healthcare is very difficult. Insurance is very difficult to understand. I mean, try to read a policy sometime. It's ridiculous. But when you're in that type of industry, it's very unfortunate, but many, many people that are in it do not spend the extra time to understand it and they don't understand it so that you can explain it to the lay person, explain it to somebody who's not in that industry, and because of that situation, I saw my calling.
[00:09:08] Harlon Pickett: I said, okay. Just, I'm just gonna be an insurance guy, but I'm gonna explain to people what's going on. I'm gonna explain to 'em why it is the way it is, and give them options that may be a little bit different now. I really thought I was doing things different back then. I really wasn't. I didn't know any better.
[00:09:24] Harlon Pickett: I, I was so young in this industry. I was listening to the insurance companies. I believed them. I thought they were good guys. I was naive. It took me a lot of years to figure out that they were not our friend. Uh, but when I did. It's like somebody hit me over the head with how evil they are and yeah. Uh, if, if you're working for an insurance company out there, and especially if you're one of the BUCAs, by the way, a Buca cha, so you know, is Blue Cross United, Cigna, and Aetna Buca.
[00:09:54] Harlon Pickett: Okay? Those are the big, uh, cartel of insurance companies that control how we access healthcare in this country. And they are not your friend. And even if you are a self-funded plan, if you're a company out there that is self-funded and you have one of those companies controlling your plan, you're not getting the benefits you think you are.
[00:10:21] Harlon Pickett: Uh, go out and look at all the lawsuits out there against these guys for not. Managing these, these plans properly. They're for profit. And unfortunately they're not just making profit, they're profiteering. Uh, but my journey taught me these things and it made me very, very passionate about helping people in a very different way.
[00:10:39] Harlon Pickett: Uh, but it was, it was not very unconventional and the way that I got here, because I did not want to get here. It was an accident that I even got in the insurance industry. Once again, it's a, it's a weird journey. There's a lot of other stuff that happened in there, Chad, but I, I'll tell you, it's, it's been a, it's been a wonderful experience of growth to figure out all the things that are going on and help people, uh, get really the access they deserve to healthcare.
[00:11:04] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, and we're gonna do that here today as well. We're gonna extend your reach, you know, to the listeners. And so I think that. I mean, first off, entrepreneurs, it's not like unless they have a spouse that's working for a big company, they're in the same boat that you and I are. They're providing their own way.
[00:11:18] Chaz Wolfe: They've got a personal plan or they have no plan. Um, and we're gonna talk about maybe some of those things, not so much from the benefit of, I mean yeah, if they, if they wanna reach out to you and, and get some of your plans, I think that that's great. We'll give them an opportunity to do that. You're clearly a, a guy that's passionate and if they don't have anything, they should do it with you.
[00:11:36] Chaz Wolfe: Um. The, I think the baseline here is that we're, we're gonna show something to the entrepreneurs a, a new way of thinking or an agitation of thought. That I think is just a higher level of thinking. And I think that it can also be applied in business too, because really what the foundation that you've laid for us, is that what you think may be true. Possibly isn't, is is there a possibility that these big names that you know of could be doing something different than what they tell you? And I'm not here to say otherwise, but you are. And I think that that's great. I think between the agitation of our thought, you, my experience and, and, and your, uh, uh, expertise, I think that we'll be able to give to them a, a, a unique picture.
[00:12:14] Chaz Wolfe: So inside of that, I want to also capture some things that you've done in business for yourself, not just helping other people, but some really good decisions that you've made along the way here. So let's first talk about. What you're saying here as far as like, you know, maybe the insurance industry is causing the healthcare problem.
[00:12:32] Chaz Wolfe: Give us a little bit of understanding there and why do you feel that way?
[00:12:35] Harlon Pickett: Okay. That, that's a, that's a great question because. I had to see a problem with the way things are working now or the way things have worked in the past to understand there, there was a problem, right? And that problem just didn't come from me. I didn't just have an issue. I had helped hundreds, if not thousands of people get health insurance and I was listening to them.
[00:12:58] Harlon Pickett: The problems became very financially difficult for people. Um, when you think about that. Financial or medical debt is still the number one cause of bankruptcy in the country. And the fact that about 80% of those people had health insurance, you realize there's a fundamental problem there, right? There's something going on.
[00:13:19] Harlon Pickett: What is causing these people that have protection to all of a sudden be in this situation? And when you think of it in the.
[00:13:30] Chaz Wolfe: you're saying that the number one reason for bankruptcy is medical, um,
[00:13:35] Harlon Pickett: Me Medical debt. Yeah,
[00:13:37] Chaz Wolfe: medical debt, and 80% of those people had healthcare or health insurance,
[00:13:42] Harlon Pickett: insurance. See, what did you just do? You just called it healthcare, didn't you? I What? Well, that's what we do.
[00:13:48] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah,
[00:13:48] Harlon Pickett: I, I wanna point out to you how, okay. I'm, I'm fixing to go off on a tangent here. Sorry. This is what, this, this is me. It's so ingrained in our, in the US mental. System that these are the same is we just finished the first part of open enrollment for individuals, right?
[00:14:05] Harlon Pickett: healthcare.gov. Where did you go? Sign up healthcare.gov. That's the federal website, right? You cannot buy healthcare on healthcare.gov. Not one iota, not an ounce of healthcare. Can you ever buy on healthcare.gov?
[00:14:23] Chaz Wolfe: Hmm.
[00:14:24] Harlon Pickett: All you can get is health insurance. Then in many cases prevented prevents you from getting that healthcare 'cause you get denied the right to go see a doctor.
[00:14:33] Harlon Pickett: You wanted to see. You get denied, right? You get denied because they're not in network. Or you do see a doctor in network and they refer you to a facility in network and you're going to have this surgery and then the insurance company says, nah, you don't need that. Wait, what? This is life altering, potentially life saving.
[00:14:55] Harlon Pickett: No, you don't need that. The insurance company just decided what was medically correct for you. They just decided not you and your doctor where it should be, the insurance company. Tell me in what world that is. Right,
[00:15:11] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Well, just a. Put a little extra little drip in there. The person that you're describing, the insurance company who is determining that need or not, has a financial incentive to not pay. Now there's a purpose for insurance, generally speaking, like back it all out. Like insurance is a, is, it's the thing that we all pay for, that we hope that we never use.
[00:15:31] Chaz Wolfe: Okay, fine. But in that moment, they're financially incentivized to act one way or the other. And you can't deny that because it is what it is. They either pay out or they don't, based on their payouts. They have a profit at the end of the year. Insert your story.
[00:15:44] Harlon Pickett: Yeah. A absolutely, and you know, it, it's unfortunate, but that's the way it is. You, you can literally go out there and find. Thousands upon thousands of stories of people that have been denied all the way down from something as simple as an image. No, you cannot get this. MRI. What? I can't get an MRI, uh. So you're just gonna let it go?
[00:16:10] Harlon Pickett: No, you need to go to physical therapy. Okay. Well, here's the problem and. There's plenty of data to back this up. You don't go to physical therapy without the MRI because of physical therapy could further damage what's going on unless you know what's actually going on. So how can I, as the doctor, recommend something?
[00:16:30] Harlon Pickett: There's nothing wrong with physical therapy. I think physical therapy is a great first step to avoid your, uh, surgery. It happens, it works in many cases. Without knowing exactly what's going on with the structure of certain things, it's not a good idea because you don't know what to do.
[00:16:46] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. What's the same reason why when someone falls, you don't hurry up quick and get 'em to stand up. You, they don't move.
[00:16:51] Harlon Pickett: right, right. There there's, there's so much in inter intertwined in there, and I. Seeing this over and over with clients, seeing them denied things, seeing them, you know. Uh, another big one is, is tra uh, medical travel. So whether, uh, we, we had a client that was picked up by a helicopter because he was in an accident, right?
[00:17:13] Harlon Pickett: So lifelike came and picked up the passenger. The passenger was in critical condition. He was unconscious, okay? He was driving, he was unconscious. It turned out all he had was a broken leg. A concussion. But he got a ride too. The helicopter was there. They denied his claim. They said You should not have been, you did not have a serious enough to go. He was unconscious.
[00:17:40] Chaz Wolfe: we want the, hold on. Don't, don't put him on there. Send the ambulance.
[00:17:45] Harlon Pickett: He's unconscious. He couldn't say, no, don't put me in there. My insurance ain't gonna pay.
[00:17:51] Chaz Wolfe: Wow.
[00:17:52] Harlon Pickett: Yeah. Um. $80,000 bill, $80,000 Bill Insurance Company said, no, we're not paying that. We're not paying that. Mm-Hmm, you, you, you only had a concussion and a broken leg. That is not reason to ha have that kind of helicopter wreck.
[00:18:05] Harlon Pickett: You don't get that.
[00:18:06] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah.
[00:18:07] Harlon Pickett: These are the kind of things, right? How did he have any control whatsoever? There was none. But they don't think of that logically. And you know, the other thing we see is now when I say the insurance company decides whether or not something's gonna happen. There is process. Now, some of you may have heard some of the lawsuits that are out there right now because AI is actually making a lot of these decisions now.
[00:18:28] Harlon Pickett: Uh, AI is determining whether something gets paid or not, but in a lot of cases, especially more serious things, it will get a doctor's eyes on it. So a doctor will look at it. Here's the problem with that. Let's say that you have a cancer diagnosis. You're saying your oncologist, your oncologist may even be a specialist for what your particular cancer is.
[00:18:49] Harlon Pickett: It goes to the insurance company. True story, a pediatrician that works for the insurance company is now reviewing and he says, nah, this doesn't look like the proper treatment to me. I think you should do something else. Based on your wide experience in ecology or based on the fact that you wanna save the insurance company money, which one of those is it, doc?
[00:19:15] Harlon Pickett: But these are real things. These are happening every single day, and that is actually a lawsuit that's out there right now. That exact scenario is a lawsuit against an insurance company because that's exactly what happened, and the individual did not make it individual. Uh, the treatment was finally approved, but it was too late.
[00:19:32] Harlon Pickett: Individuals, uh, could not be treated at that point.
[00:19:35] Chaz Wolfe: Wow. Well, okay, so you've, you've said something that, that triggers the story that I'd mentioned to you ahead of time, You said that, um, you know, really it's, it's them determining it, but it's also, you know, that $80,000 helicopter ride, it's like, well, well why was the helicopter ride $80,000 to begin with?
[00:19:54] Chaz Wolfe: And that's because, well, when the insurance pays for it. They can charge $80,000, you know? Um, because if he had been in critical condition, basically it's a twist of the arm and charge whatever you want and the insurance company pays for it. And so I, I'm gonna tell this brief, you know, scenario here that Julie and I went through.
[00:20:16] Chaz Wolfe: Then I want your opinion on it because, uh, there was just a couple years ago. We're extremely healthy family. We have, um, what I now know of, it's something similar to your product that you have, uh, basically a medical share, which basically means I'm not insured unless it's just some really catastrophic thing.
[00:20:33] Chaz Wolfe: I'm basically self-insured, but I have a, but I have a group behind me that, that can save me in a, in a bad scenario. Okay, cool. So we go in, we, we've never had major stuff really happening. Um, Julie's pregnant, uh, she's having our third miscarriage, um, at this time and has to be ambulance in the middle of the night.
[00:20:52] Chaz Wolfe: Um, you know, emergency, uh, DNC, like really bad scenario. Like really, I, I was holding my lifeless passed out wife in my arms. One of the scariest moments in my life. We, we, you know, we check out from a couple of days later, and of course, throughout the long, throughout the process, it's, Hey, what, what insurance company do you have? I said, oh, we don't have one. Oh, really? Okay. So cash pay, you know, da all the way down. I'm like, this is gonna be so interesting to me. 'cause I've never been in this scenario.
[00:21:19] Chaz Wolfe: I, I've just, I've heard of the medical debt, I've heard of these huge absorbent bills. Um, and so this is really interesting to me. I'm just like, we're just gonna play this out, see how it works, and, uh. We get the, the bill, it, it was a $40,000 bill, but because we're cash pay, it was like 3000 something dollars.
[00:21:36] Chaz Wolfe: I wrote a check and, and we moved on and it was just like, wait a second. So if I had had insurance, you would've charged this amount, but because I don't, you charged the real amount. Is that what you're saying to me? Harlan, help me out here, bro. What, what sense does this make?
[00:21:53] Harlon Pickett: Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, each hospital has a book that has prices in it,
[00:22:00] Chaz Wolfe: Mm-Hmm.
[00:22:00] Harlon Pickett: and they're kind of imaginary prices, but they're prices. And that is, that's the rate that you were told. Okay, that $40,000 is the rate that they could charge. Now, they also have the rate for each and every insurance company, okay?
[00:22:21] Harlon Pickett: Each insurance company's rate is different, and within each insurance company there's different plans, and each of those plans is different. And so what ends up happening is the same exact procedure. Can have literally hundreds of different price points for the exact same procedure. And then there's one other price, the cash price, and typically that cash price is going to be the lowest, or within the lowest, say four or five.
[00:22:52] Harlon Pickett: Uh, sometimes the insurance company may have done a real good job. Sometimes there might be a reason. That, uh, there's other things below it. Me, Medicare can have an impact on that, but typically at the very bottom is gonna be the cash price. Now, there's a few reasons for that, but they're, they make a lot of sense for anyone that's a business owner out there.
[00:23:11] Harlon Pickett: This will make perfect sense to you. Can you charge somebody less if they're gonna pay you today, whether they are, if they pay you six months from now?
[00:23:21] Chaz Wolfe: And guaranteed,
[00:23:23] Harlon Pickett: In my hand. It's not just, it's in my hand. Right? There's not gonna be any negotiation. There's gotta be anything else. You're gonna gimme this money right now,
[00:23:31] Chaz Wolfe: And it's mine. Yep. And, and I think we'd all agree that yes, there's a, there's a, there's a play for that.
[00:23:35] Harlon Pickett: there's a place for that and the administration of it's a whole lot less, right?
[00:23:39] Harlon Pickett: Um,
[00:23:39] Chaz Wolfe: Yep.
[00:23:40] Harlon Pickett: as we've seen Obamacare come out, as we've seen, uh, the, the big plethora of Medicare Advantage plans, they're, they're just all over the place now. The administration side of hospitalization, doctor's offices, healthcare period has exploded to the tune of about 1900% increase in 10 years. And. The majority of that is on the billing side, where all of this, everyone has different billing systems.
[00:24:09] Harlon Pickett: So whether you're sending it out for Medicare, you're sending out for Medicare Advantage, whether you're sending it out for a commercial plan, individual plan, you've gotta have a certain knowledge for all of those different things. And so we've seen an explosion on the admin side so, so many times that Bill, if, if I'm taking cash and I don't have to have a bunch of people deal with this, I can take so much less because I don't have all the administration that I would have.
[00:24:32] Chaz Wolfe: That's right.
[00:24:34] Harlon Pickett: Uh, one of the guys in in the hospital world told me that typically there's five billing people forever bed in a hospital.
[00:24:43] Chaz Wolfe: Wow.
[00:24:44] Harlon Pickett: Think about that. Five billing people for every single bed in a hospital. How heavy is that? That mean there's more than there is nurses, right? If you've been in a hospital or been to visit someone in a hospital, you may see a couple.
[00:24:59] Harlon Pickett: Nurses or you may see a nurse and a helper that comes in to maybe do some blood draw or something, but you don't have near as many people coming into your room as you do have administrating that visit. That's, that's nuts.
[00:25:13] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, there's a lot that goes into the semantics of it all, but I think the, the biggest. biggest takeaway for me as an entrepreneur was, look, man, I mean, there's a huge play into health. Like I, I, there are, there are many families who have things going on in their bodies, ailments, disease, and, and they can't just not have insurance or at least that that's what they think.
[00:25:36] Chaz Wolfe: Uh, maybe there's other solutions for them. I can't speak for them. But for, for me and my family, um, us being, you know, we we're, we're vigilant on being healthy individuals, being not, not. You know, wanting healthcare when we need it, but providing healthcare to ourselves every single day in what we eat, what we don't eat, how we exercise, all that stuff.
[00:25:56] Chaz Wolfe: So that way, um, this whole racket, which I just, it felt like a racket. I was just like, unbelievable. This is crazy. Like, I'm thankful that I got to just write the check. Super grateful for that. But. Harlan, this was, this was a scenario where I'm like, this, I see that gap of 3000 to 40,000 going, it, all it's doing is paying the five billing people per bed and everybody else on the, on the, on the healthcare side.
[00:26:24] Chaz Wolfe: It does not benefit the individual at all.
[00:26:26] Harlon Pickett: No, not at all. It's, it's not, you didn't receive different healthcare. See, that's the key. You did not receive a different level of healthcare. Because you paid 3000 versus 40,000. Think about that. No difference. So what does that mean? What? What does that tell us then, Jess? What does that tell us? It tells us there's no correlation between the level of care and the cost of the care.
[00:26:52] Chaz Wolfe: Right,
[00:26:52] Harlon Pickett: What else is out there that way? In other words, it completely flips on the head. You get what you pay for because that's not the case in healthcare.
[00:27:00] Chaz Wolfe: right.
[00:27:01] Harlon Pickett: And typically lower costs actually mean better care because of the way that the plans are designed. And the way, uh, I mean there's a, there's a movement out there called Direct Primary Care and Chaz, what Direct Primary Care is, is membership based.
[00:27:14] Harlon Pickett: So it's doctors that allow you to pay a monthly membership fee, uh, anywhere from 50 to say $120 a month, and then you can go to that doctor anytime for zero cost. You have that doctor's cell phone, you have, you can text that doctor. Lemme tell you. It's a beautiful experience. That's what we use ourself.
[00:27:35] Harlon Pickett: The very first time I met my doctor, she said, hi, I'm Michelle, not. Hi, I'm Dr. Jones now. Hi, I'm Dr. Pickett. Not. Hi, I'm Dr. Whoever. I'm Michelle.
[00:27:46] Chaz Wolfe: Right. Yeah.
[00:27:49] Harlon Pickett: What, what a different experience. Uh, whenever after I first met her, a couple of weeks later, she sends me a text. She goes, how you doing today? Oh, is this some kind of weird auto thing?
[00:28:00] Harlon Pickett: I'm like, I'm okay. She's like, great. I was just thinking about you. I'm looking forward to our meeting in a couple of weeks to follow up on the things we discussed.
[00:28:09] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah,
[00:28:09] Harlon Pickett: did she tell me? She said I needed to change my diet a little bit. Needed to, you know, I'm very blessed. I don't have any major medical issues.
[00:28:16] Harlon Pickett: Maybe extra pound or two. But anyway, I wanted to know, Hey, how can we, I'm from Texas, all right? I like chicken fried steak and brisket and stuff like that.
[00:28:25] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah,
[00:28:25] Harlon Pickett: But we talked about how I can, kind of what you were talking about. She, what can I do to be healthier without having to get on a bunch of pharmaceuticals?
[00:28:35] Chaz Wolfe: yeah. That's right.
[00:28:36] Harlon Pickett: So she wanted to know. She's just checking in to see how's that journey going for you?
[00:28:41] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah.
[00:28:42] Harlon Pickett: What can she do to help? When's the last time your doctor, anyone out there? When's the last time your doctor checked in with you via text? When's the last time your doctor cared enough or had the time? To check in with you to make sure your healthcare journey was going the way that both of you had decided it should go.
[00:29:02] Harlon Pickett: Do you have any input in that or are you waiting weeks, if not months, to see a doctor to only get five to seven minutes with them and they don't listen to you and your frustration level keeps getting higher and hire and hire as a entrepreneur, as a business owner? Are you sick and tired of being in a system that really doesn't care about your health but only cares about profiteering?
[00:29:24] Harlon Pickett: Uh, because that's where it's at. And that is an unfortunate place. But that is why medical debt is outta control, Chas. And that is why the traditional system, people keep saying it's broke. I told you this beforehand. The system is not broke. The system is working exactly the way it was designed to work by the people that designed it.
[00:29:44] Harlon Pickett: It is absolutely, uh, enriching those, it was designed to enrich and bankrupting those. It was designed to bankrupt, including, this is an interesting one too, the moral bankruptcy of doctors. Doctors are having to make decisions that are go against their morals, that go against their beliefs, but because of insurance and health systems, they're being dictated to what they can do and what they can't do, and it's morally bankrupting them.
[00:30:13] Harlon Pickett: This is what's causing such a huge burnout towards physicians.
[00:30:17] Chaz Wolfe: Wow. Yeah, there's a lot of angles here of the problem. I think you've articulated it well. The frustration of it. I think we've all experienced, even if. Even if the listener has never experienced, you know, maybe some of the deeper things we've talked about, but they've just gone into the office and for a normal checkup, dude never lifts his head up from the pen, you know,
[00:30:37] Harlon Pickett: Yep.
[00:30:38] Chaz Wolfe: questions, uh, you know, checks my heart rate and then leaves.
[00:30:41] Chaz Wolfe: You know, we've all experienced that. You've given us a little bit of the solution. You've said, you know, part of it is. You know, kind of our alignment of being healthy and being preventative. Okay, fine. We're not, neither one of us are specialists in that, although we agree. The second step then you've said is get a different type of healthcare plan.
[00:31:00] Chaz Wolfe: Uh, where, which is where you're talking to a doctor, you're in a medical, I. Community, uh, membership, you get access that you maybe don't have before, but there's a third piece, which is basically what you do and it, it is for those emergency type scenarios. It is for like a health insurance replacement.
[00:31:16] Chaz Wolfe: Tell us more about that, because I think that's part of it, right? Yeah.
[00:31:19] Harlon Pickett: Yeah, a absolutely. So medical cost sharing, which you're very familiar with. We, we do work on the medical cost sharing platform. Uh, that is something that's very important to us. Now, one of the things when we started design, when I started designing these plans that I. I love the Christian based health player, which you're, you're on Medisure.
[00:31:39] Harlon Pickett: There's other one called Christian Health Ministries. There's a number out there. There's one that's devoted strictly to the Catholic faith. The, the negative side of those, if there's a negative side, is that you have to be a person of faith and in some cases go so far as I got a letter from my pastor saying that I go to church at least twice a month.
[00:31:58] Chaz Wolfe: Which is crazy.
[00:31:59] Harlon Pickett: Uh, it, it is, but I, I understand. So what they're, what they're really doing is they're watching out for their membership to make sure that they don't have any strange outliers out there, and that everyone's on the same page. Well, what we did instead is we partnered with an organization that is not Faith-based except for one thing.
[00:32:19] Harlon Pickett: And that is you do believe in helping your fellow man. So your faith is actually in your fellow man. You're, you're not, that you're worshiping your fellow man, but that you agree that the way that we help each other is by taking care of each other. And you also testify, or you, you know, you, you say, I'm going to live a healthy lifestyle.
[00:32:39] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah.
[00:32:39] Harlon Pickett: So what that means is when we had one of our members that passed was hospitalized and ultimately passed away by organ failure and on her. Unfortunately, on her death certificate, it said organ failure due to severe alcoholism. Her need, her bill was not paid. Okay? She did not live up to her side of it.
[00:33:06] Harlon Pickett: She did not live a healthy lifestyle. She didn't do what she said she was gonna do.
[00:33:11] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah.
[00:33:11] Harlon Pickett: Now, as you kind of mentioned before, the bill was astronomical. The bill was north of a hundred thousand dollars. What a lot of groups would've done in that case, to say too bad, so sad, she didn't follow up to her part of it.
[00:33:27] Harlon Pickett: So her spouse has just left with that bill. That is not what we did. Even though we did not pay any part of that need, we did go to bat for that family. We were able to negotiate that down to less than $10,000 and so while there still was a bill there. And needless to say, the grieving spouse was not, uh, in a good place.
[00:33:50] Harlon Pickett: We did keep them, keep him in particular from going into severe medical debt, and we're able to at least do that side of it for that family. Not an optimal situation whatsoever. But there is, there is more advocacy on your side. I mean, you, you're, you've got some skin in the game in this case. Uh, you do when you have traditional insurance too.
[00:34:12] Harlon Pickett: You just don't realize it. Uh, one, one thing to remember is the definition of insurance is the sharing of risk. That is the, that is the legal term, the sharing of risk, not the guaranteed payment of your claims that is not in there anywhere. And even if you ever were to read your policy and you could make hedge or tails of it, it truly says there is no guarantee of payment for anything, which is why they can deny what they do.
[00:34:37] Harlon Pickett: So just because you have a card in your wallet that says. Blue Cross Blue Shield, UnitedHealthcare, Humana, Aetna, whatever, doesn't mean you're guaranteed payment for all the things that you need. And that is, once again, the fallacies of some of the things that we live with. But what we do differently is we ask a crazy question, so what are your needs?
[00:35:00] Harlon Pickett: What do you want your plan to look like? If you could design something for your company or for yourself, what would be important to you? We ask those questions, we take that into consideration, and we build customized solutions for businesses of any size or for individuals. Sometimes though, that includes health insurance, a part of health insurance, sometimes it doesn't.
[00:35:26] Harlon Pickett: But if you've ever looked at a health insurance plan, if you ever were to get into that box, we call it the BUCA box, the BUCA Black box, if you ever to open that up. What you would actually see is nothing more than a healthcare supply chain. That's all. It's all we're doing is building you your own healthcare supply chain, taking the high dollar middlemen out and giving you direct access to healthcare, but not just leaving you on your own.
[00:35:55] Harlon Pickett: We're actually. Fundamentally changing the way you access healthcare by helping guide you down the pathway to, to better care at high quality places, centers of excellence. Uh, highly rated places, highly rated doctors that will get you the best care and not just put you back in the hospital. Over and over and over.
[00:36:15] Harlon Pickett: Uh, one of our partners, the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, run by Dr. Keith Smith in the last 10 years. It's gonna be hard to believe folks in the last 10 years they've had one infection. One hospitals nowadays can't just have one a day, and in 10 years they've had one doing thousands upon thousands of surgeries.
[00:36:40] Harlon Pickett: That's what we look for. Centers of excellence provide you the care you need and deserve. It's, it's not just something, Hey, I want some care. No, you deserve that care. So let's get you the care you deserve. By customizing what you do, then you're actually able to control your healthcare. You're able to help your employees in a better way.
[00:37:00] Harlon Pickett: Um, imagine a healthcare plan that's so good, it's drawing people to your company. People want to come work for you
[00:37:09] Chaz Wolfe: Right.
[00:37:10] Harlon Pickett: because of the healthcare that you offer them. That's what's possible. And then you have better control on that second or third highest cost line item on your p and l every year.
[00:37:22] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Uh, if I'm an entrepreneur listening to this right now and I'm like, okay, I get it. I like control. That's why I'm in business.
[00:37:27] Harlon Pickett: Right,
[00:37:28] Chaz Wolfe: I like to control my entire environment, uh, to be able to control the plan. Okay, fine. But I'm not a healthcare expert, so how am I supposed to know how to pick? Obviously you'll help me, but what does that process look like?
[00:37:38] Chaz Wolfe: What am I picking? I.
[00:37:40] Harlon Pickett: Well, that's a great question. What do you want. See that's, that's what a fundamental crazy question, right? What do you want? Because they've never heard that. If a, if a traditional insurance broker come and said, what do you want they actually meant, do you want Blue Cross? Do you want Aetna this year? Do you want, what do you want?
[00:37:56] Harlon Pickett: Do you want a high deductible, low deductible? Our, your rates are going
[00:37:59] Chaz Wolfe: do, well, what do you mean when you say, what do I want? 'cause I don't know.
[00:38:03] Harlon Pickett: Well, let's talk about that. Do you want, uh, so let, let's talk about what's out there. Let's talk about medical cost sharing. Let's talk about building a, a custom health plan. Let's, let's talk about care navigation. Care navigation is where your employees truly have an advocate they talk to about what's going on with them.
[00:38:21] Harlon Pickett: Your doctor says you need to get an MRI. Great. Here's what we can do. We can send you over here and because the way our plan is structured, if you'll go down the pathway we recommend it's zero out of pocket for all your services. No cost for your doctor, for your specialist visit, no cost for your, uh, your MRI no cost for for that CT scan because we couldn't see everything we needed to see.
[00:38:45] Harlon Pickett: And then, yeah, you're gonna need surgery. How about no cost for that too. And we're all, all that time we're not. There's no secret back alley. You go into that. You gotta know the secret knock. No, you're going to high quality centers of excellence. To get the care you deserve and not have to worry about a low quality doctor or infections or thing.
[00:39:04] Harlon Pickett: This stuff, this stuff happened. Yes, it does, but we're gonna send you to the places that you're most likely going to avoid all the negative things that happen in the healthcare world. Um, but you, you make a good point. I'm not a healthcare guy. What, what do I not know? There's a lot you don't know. And that's why it's a conversation.
[00:39:23] Harlon Pickett: It's a conversation to get you to understand what's possible. So that when then we can build a plan that works best for you and your situation. Part of it is, I mentioned earlier, if you're a, if you're a group of 50 or more, there's certain regulatory things you must comply with or else there's huge fines that you could have.
[00:39:41] Harlon Pickett: We're gonna make sure that all of that regulatory stuff is taken care of. The compliance side of it. I won't say it's just as important, but it's important because the fines can be astronomical. We're not gonna put you in that situation. You're not gonna have to choose one or the other, right? You're not gonna have to say, well, I can be compliant, or I can have a good health plan.
[00:40:00] Harlon Pickett: Nope. You can do both. So the compliance side is just as important to us. Uh, we have a company that we use that has all the lawyers, and you follow a CA guidelines and ERISA guidelines. If you're out there within, you know what I'm talking about. We make sure that it's a compliant plan, but it's so different and feels so different than those traditional plans.
[00:40:21] Harlon Pickett: You, you truly have that feeling of, oh my gosh, this is healthcare. You finally got that insurance stuff outta here so I could have health care and my employees have health care. It's a huge, huge difference.
[00:40:36] Chaz Wolfe: I appreciate the, uh, really it is a distinguishment, but it's also just your, your passion. Um, you can tell that you've spent time in the mud and, um, and you're just trying to let people know.
[00:40:48] Harlon Pickett: Yeah, it really is. And you know, unfortunately, there's, there's one other thing. There's one key thing. Not everyone will understand this because unless you've hired a traditional broker, then you don't get this side of it. As a traditional broker, we're paid by the insurance company and maybe a few other things out there too.
[00:41:09] Harlon Pickett: Maybe a pharmacy, maybe the, the claims, the TPA we're paid by all of them. Typically, we tell the employer, great news, you don't have to pay me. I'm getting paid by everyone else. So good news, it's free for you. Is it really? If I'm being paid by the insurance company and everybody else, which side of the table am I sitting on?
[00:41:30] Harlon Pickett: Chaz, am I sitting on the employer side?
[00:41:33] Chaz Wolfe: it sounds like, it sounds like you're incentivized.
[00:41:35] Harlon Pickett: I'm, there's no reason for me to sit on your side of the table. I'm gonna sit on the side of the table with the people that pay me. Well, guess what? There's about 500, a little bit less than 500 is across the country that do something a little bit different.
[00:41:51] Harlon Pickett: We don't get paid by any insurance company or any other way. The only person we get paid from is the employer themselves. We come to a consulting agreement and we make a fair price on what our services are. Sometimes they are a little bit higher than you might be paying your broker because all you know of what you're paying your broker.
[00:42:11] Harlon Pickett: Is what he told you, but we fully disclose all of that. We come to a true agreement on what our services are worth. And the only person we ever receive any compensation from is the employer themselves. That puts us on their side of the table. We make sure that the plan's running the way it's supposed to run.
[00:42:28] Harlon Pickett: We do regular checkups. Uh, we don't work with everybody. If you're not willing to, uh, provide someone in your company, that's gonna be what we called your healthcare champion. You need to have a champion. You need someone on your side in your company that really cares and is gonna be with us to follow how the plan works.
[00:42:48] Harlon Pickett: If something's not working right or their engagement with their employees is not working right, we're gonna fix it Now. We're not gonna wait till the plan year's over and say, oh, that didn't work. Let's try something new next year. No. We're gonna stay on top of this at the beginning, weekly, uh, eventually monthly, but we're gonna follow up and keep in touch with one another, and be sure the plan is doing exactly what was promised, because my compensation is on the line.
[00:43:13] Harlon Pickett: If the plan does not work the way I guarantee it's gonna work. I'm not getting paid.
[00:43:19] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. It's good, it's good alignment. I think that every entrepreneur wants to have good alignment. Um, as we, as we're thinking about building our business and our, and our teams even, uh, I mean, we want a salesperson that works for us to be incentivized to sell the right things at the right margin. Like, you know, it, it's, we've gotta all be on the same page.
[00:43:38] Chaz Wolfe: And I think that you've done just a great job. It's definitely new thinking. It's, it's
[00:43:42] Harlon Pickett: It is.
[00:43:42] Chaz Wolfe: I'm sure some thoughts, uh, out there going, wait a second, I gotta pay you too. And it's like. Look, you're already paying the man. Okay. Probably more. Um, who knows? With, with, uh, with the way that the premiums are,
[00:43:54] Harlon Pickett: Yeah. That's why they keep getting increases. Remember that guy that saved him from 15 down to 12? He only got a 12% raise.
[00:44:02] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Yeah, he just negotiated his own, his own cost down. Um, Harlan, I'm gonna wrap this thing up by asking you a question. This might be a little bit unique because we, we, we didn't get a bunch into business, although I think that all the stuff that we talked about today is super valuable for entrepreneurs and so that's why I went there looking at your own journey.
[00:44:22] Chaz Wolfe: I want you just to roll back the, the clock. I want you to, to, to pick the younger Harlan, pick out whatever age. And I want you just to whisper something to his ear, but I want you to tell us what you whisper to him. What is it?
[00:44:38] Harlon Pickett: Stay true to yourself.
[00:44:41] Chaz Wolfe: Okay.
[00:44:41] Harlon Pickett: Uh, the, the reason I say that is because I was recently asked the question of if you could go back to your younger self, your high school self, what journey would you tell them to take? And my answer was the same one, the same exact journey because the things that I've been through from corporate America to entrepreneur outside of this world, to seeing the problems, the, that it turned me to who I am now, all of it was necessary. I had to stay true to myself. I had to let myself become the entrepreneur and the spokeperson in this kinda role that I was born to be. I did not ever dream of doing this. There was zero chance I was gonna be doing this. Okay. I guess there wasn't, there was like 0.0001%, but here I is. Right? Um, but the strange thing is, is this was not my desire.
[00:45:33] Harlon Pickett: This was nowhere in my dreams. This was nowhere. You know, oh, I wanna be an astronaut, I wanna be a fisher, I wanna be an insurance guy that changes things. Nah. Who in the world wants to be an insurance guy? Right? Um, so, but by staying true to yourself, that means that what you're really here to do, you do.
[00:45:55] Harlon Pickett: You do it and you don't let nothing get in the way of that, nothing.
[00:46:00] Chaz Wolfe: That's good. Yeah. I've seen, I've seen just the, the journey that you've shared, and I don't know the whole story of course, but you're, you're not just helping people with their healthcare and health insurance options. You are helping people understand things differently and you're changing. Their, their world potentially.
[00:46:18] Chaz Wolfe: Um, and so I think that's, that's what you'd been staying true to, right? Whether it, you know, if you would've been in a different vehicle, I still think that maybe you'd still be helping people in that way, but it's cool that you've been able to express yourself in this, in this environment. But I think that that message for the younger Harlan or for the younger entrepreneur or the younger Chaz, like listening it, like it's all, it's uh, it's authentic to say, Hey, who are you?
[00:46:41] Chaz Wolfe: What's your identity? What are you made for? And go for it.
[00:46:44] Harlon Pickett: it really is. I mean, we all have options. We all have the opportunities, right? The, the doors open and close.
[00:46:51] Chaz Wolfe: Right.
[00:46:53] Harlon Pickett: Uh, I, I think there's times when that door opens and we don't want to go down that direction. I, I'm not saying that I wanted to go down this direction. There's a lot of people out there, especially traditional insurance that think I'm outta my damn mind, I might be,
[00:47:09] Chaz Wolfe: Here you is.
[00:47:10] Harlon Pickett: but here I is.
[00:47:12] Chaz Wolfe: That's right. Well, Harlan, how can the listener find you? One, if they're an entrepreneur and they just think you're super fun, uh, with your Houston accent and, uh, they wanna, they wanna be. With you here, uh, ising with you? Uh, or, or if they, if they genuinely wanna reach out and be like, Hey, look, I'm an entrepreneur.
[00:47:27] Chaz Wolfe: I either need some sort of a plan for myself or for my employees. They wanna get more information. How can they find you that way?
[00:47:33] Harlon Pickett: Well, the first place they could find me is on LinkedIn. Um, if you go out and look for Harlan Pickett, H-A-R-L-O-N-P-I-C-K-E-T-T, you only find one of us. So I'll be pretty easy to find on, on LinkedIn. Uh, the other way, of course, you can go out to our website, eagle care health.com. That's eagle care health.com.
[00:47:55] Harlon Pickett: Uh, you can email me directly at h picket@eaglecarehealth.com. Uh, there's, uh, there's so many ways you can listen to me talk about all kind of crazy stuff on my podcast, the Health and Wealth Power Hour.
[00:48:09] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, I
[00:48:09] Harlon Pickett: can find that on all the podcast places. Uh, you can also go to my podcast website@hwpowerhour.com.
[00:48:17] Harlon Pickett: That's HW power hour.com. Lots of different ways to get ahold of me. Love to share information with people.
[00:48:26] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah,
[00:48:26] Harlon Pickett: It's, um, it's a tough place to be in it. The, the healthcare world is so corrupt. It's so. Difficult to navigate, and it shouldn't be that way. We should be able to get the healthcare that we need and deserve.
[00:48:43] Harlon Pickett: And it's just tough. It, it makes me, it makes me sad that people have to go through so much to get the healthcare that they deserve and let's do something different. Let's do something about it.
[00:48:57] Chaz Wolfe: I love the agitation of thought. Always willing to do something new and different. So thank you for being here. Uh, blessings to you brother on your, on your family, all the people that you're helping. Um, not only navigate the situation, but just do healthcare and health insurance differently. Thank you for providing some of those options, and we appreciate you being here.
[00:49:14] Chaz Wolfe: Good, sir. Thank
[00:49:15] Harlon Pickett: Yep. Thank you, sir.

Join our host, Chaz Wolfe, as he engages in a riveting conversation with Harlon Pickett, President of Eagle Care Health Solutions. Harlon, with his 19 years of experience in the healthcare industry, sheds light on the critical differences between healthcare and health insurance, and the pervasive issues plaguing our system. Harlon discusses his personal journey, from being laid off in corporate America to pioneering innovative health solutions. He addresses the moral bankruptcy in the health industry, the growing influence of AI in insurance decisions, and the effectiveness of Direct Primary Care.

Harlon Pickett:

Website: https://eaglecarehealth.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eaglecarehealthsolutions

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eaglecarehealthsolutions/

linkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harlon-pickett/

Email: hpickett@eaglecarehealth.com

The Health & Wealth Power Hour:

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQRIXJqN-5oK0b-n-wE0mOus2t25NtoH5

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