A hearty welcome to Grandma’s Wealth Wisdom with your hospitable hosts, Brandon and Amanda Neely. This is the only podcast for strategies to grow your wealth simply and sustainably like grandma used to. Without further ado here are your hosts.
Brandon: Hey, I'm Brandon, and welcome to Grandma's Wealth Wisdom, where we work with you to build wealth grandma would be proud of.
Amanda: And I'm Amanda. We're excited today. We're continuing the interview we started with Glenn Hahn of glennhahninsurance.com if you want to go ahead and check that out. He is going to share in this episode about six different ways you can cover the cost of healthcare. Actually, this is Episode 32 in the number of episodes.
Brandon: I can't believe we have done 32 episodes already. It's crazy. [0:01:02.2]
Amanda: Well, and they're only getting better, I think. So, six different ways to cover the cost of healthcare, and he also shares how to contact him if you want to just have an ear to listen to, someone to bounce ideas off, someone to do the research for you. He has that promise that he serves first. He will tell you if he can help you and he'll tell you if he can't help you, and he's really clear about that. So, he covers a lot. I want to jump right in to make sure we are able to fit in everything that he shares.
Glenn: So, I can do my part, right. I can educate, control, threaten, whatever, to impart knowledge or perhaps encourage a change in mindset, but you have to do your part too. I mean, if you think about, if you think about healthcare in the U.S., it's just think about your own experience with healthcare; you walk in to a doctor's office. You hand them an insurance card. You are purchasing services that you have no idea what they cost, and then you go home and you wait for the surprise bill in the mail. I mean, who buys anything like that? [0:02:14.5]
Brandon: It sounds insane.
Glenn: Nobody.
Amanda: Yep.
Glenn: Nobody.
Amanda: Yep.
Glenn: We have been conditioned to operate in this manner and it just, it strips you of knowledge and power, and when you're ignorant and powerless, you get what you get. Right?
Amanda: Yep. Yep.
Glenn: You get these big surprise bills. You get ever-increasing expenses. You know, I keep seeing the percentage of income that goes to health insurance, which is different than healthcare, and healthcare and it's astronomical, you know. I work with people every day who are like, "Yeah, my insurance premium is $2000 a month," and then like okay, that's insane, you know. That's more than a mortgage payment for most people.
Amanda: Right.
Glenn: So, what are you doing? Why are you doing that? "Oh, I had to have health insurance." [0:03:00.5]
Well, at 2000 a month? Maybe not. You know. There are other avenues, and I'm not saying, and everybody listening, do not go out and just ditch your health insurance and be unprotected. Bad things will happen. But, can we make decisions and purchase product knowing what we're getting into and knowing the exposure, knowing the expenses, and can we find value? Yes, we can. Does that mean I just on, you know, healthcare.gov and pick a plan? No, it does not.
Amanda: Yeah. So I feel like that's the kind of who we are going to be talking to mostly today, is people that don’t have an employer-sponsored plan, and they're figuring it out on their own, whether they…
Glenn: Even those with employer-sponsored plans, because I mean, having been an employer, they are in such, they are in such a bad spot. They have ever-increasing costs that they really have no or little ability to control because they outsource the management of that to an insurance broker and then you know, oh you got an 8% increase this year or a 10% increase, a 12% increase, and then they start doing cost shifting, which just means they're shifting the cost over to the employee in the form of either an increased deductible or a greater share, you know, a monthly premium that they have to pay, and where they really jammed it to the employee now is, oh, well yeah, we hired you. [0:04:32.0] We'll cover you and here's our contribution. Oh, you want to add the wife and kids? Yeah, we're going to pass that through at retail. So, a typical scenario would be, oh the employee gets hired and their contribution per month is a reasonable, you know, 50 or 100 bucks, something like that. Then they have a nice company policy, whatever, and then it's the wife and 2 kids -- oh yeah, that'll be 1400.
Brandon: Wow.
Glenn: You know. And it's like, huh, well how do I swing that because if I pay that, then I'm bringing home like, you know, that's half my money. [0:05:06.4]
Amanda: Right. Right.
Glenn: So, people with employee plans with wives and kids, pay attention as well.
Amanda: Yeah. Or husbands and kids. Absolutely.
Glenn: Yeah. Yeah.
Amanda: So what are the other options? Let's go to that like other options, people with employer-sponsored plans or if they just lost their job, if they're maybe changing jobs or maybe they're an entrepreneur. We have a lot of entrepreneurs in the world today. Or maybe they just retired or are retiring early. What are some of the other options?
Brandon: Like Cobra? Maybe with Cobra?
Glenn: Yeah. Yeah. There's basically 5 buckets that you can look in. So the first bucket is Cobra. Cobra is a federally mandated program. It basically says the company policy you're currently on, you can continue it for another 18 months, which is great. The bad news is the company contribution goes away. You're going to foot the whole bill now. Now most people look at it as, with the employee mindset, it's look, I'm paying for my insurance. I'm paying that $100 a month. [0:06:03.5]
Okay, yes, you are, but your employer is, if you're a single person, is picking up 5, 6, 700 bucks of that. So that is a substantial amount and if you're changing jobs, if you're offered Cobra, just sit down when you open that letter because we don’t need a head injury from you passing out when seeing what it's going to cost you per month. It's a lot of money. So, Cobra is a good option. I recommend Cobra if you're in the middle of medical treatment. Don't change horses mid-stream. Cobra is a great option if you have something else fairly certain lined up. They do have a 60-day window where basically you don’t have to pay that premium and you still have that coverage, and if something were to happen, you pay that premium and it retroactively goes back to your date of termination or leaving the company, but once that 60 days is up, you're out of it. Don’t ever deny or rescind your ability for Cobra coverage. [0:07:05.1]
Just put that in your pocket. Don’t say anything. If the company ever inquires about it, just say, "I'm thinking about it." Keep it there. It doesn’t cost anything. It doesn’t hurt you. It's there. It's a back stop. It can be your emergency emergency emergency plan, but it doesn’t do anything, it doesn't benefit you in any way to deny that benefit. That's the first bucket.
Amanda: Got it. So first bucket.
Glenn: That's the first bucket. Second bucket is ACA Obamacare, the exchange, whatever you want to refer to it as. That's healthcare.gov. Word of advice -- don't go on healthcare.gov. Use this website called healthsherpa.com. They do not collect personal information, so you will not get sales calls. Also when it says do you want to save your progress so far, they know because they're trying to collect your email. [0:08:01.9]
So, you can go on there. You can mess around. You can change your income levels. You can change around who you're insuring, who you're not insuring. You can look at all the plans and it's virtually impossible for you to accidently sign up for something. I mean, you'd have to be seriously day drinking to do that. So, you can just go on there and the information is basically your age and your zip code and take a look at what's available. You'll be surprised. And when you do that, I feel obligated to share just a little bit of the lingo that you see. One is the deductible. A deductible is the amount of money you have to pay out of your own pocket before the insurance company pays one penny, alright. A copay is basically a cover charge. That's the money you pay to get into the room. Some services might be included. They might not. But a copay is a cover charge. And then coinsurance is some portion of the bill you have to pay, some percentage that you have to pay until you reach a different dollar amount than the deductible and once you reach that dollar amount, usually referred to as max out of pocket, you're 100% insured. [0:09:13.0]
Pretty complicated stuff. I didn't pay really close attention to math in high school or college, so it is complicated. There are other ways of handling that as well. So, the ACA is one if you are highly subsidized, which means the ACA provides a subsidy or discount based on your income. If you have a highly subsidized or are eligible for a highly subsidized plan, the ACA is the good deal because you're basically getting major medical for a fraction of what everybody else is getting it for. So, I've had clients get it for free. I've had clients get it for 20 a month. You know. It can be a good deal. Now the down side of the ACA plans are the deductibles are sky high. [0:10:00.9]
So, you know, 6500 per individual typically between 13 and 15,000 for a family. So most people don’t have that kind of swag sticking around unless they're your clients, but yeah. But the difficulty is then, okay, I have insurance but I can never go anywhere or see anybody because I'm functionally uninsured. I have to pay out of pocket for all my services and it just makes it difficult. But the ACA, again, if you go on the healthsherpa site and you see you qualify for a large subsidy, that's a great building block, right.
Amanda: Okay.
Glenn: That will provide you that I call it the high level fighter cover. Right. You've got the in case something really bad happens, you're covered. So the specter of medical bankruptcy is greatly diminished. So the third bucket is the private market and the private market consists of individual companies, insurance companies, who will offer plans that are not ACA compliant. [0:11:02.2]
And what ACA or Obamacare compliance simply means is they have the 13 essential health benefits that congress people decided were essential. Everybody needs these. So, Brandon, you're going to pay for you know pediatric dental even though you're not pediatric, right.
Amanda: Yep.
Brandon: Yep.
Glenn: Right? And you're too young to have a colonoscopy, but you're going to pay for that because that's essential. Right? So the private market just says basically hey, accident and illness, injury and illness; that’s what we're going to cover. Some plans will include the wellness component, but they typically don’t have psychiatric or drug rehab or other mental health or serious like mental health coverage. They'll usually have, you know, prescription coverage, those types of things. They're good plans. The problem with those, like half of those, they're underwritten, which means you have to medically qualify, but if you medically qualify, you get a discount. [0:12:03.4]
So my clients who qualify for underwritten plans typically save 30% to 60% compared to an unsubsidized ACA plan. So that's a pretty good deal. You know, the family, I'm working with a high school friend of mine and her and two daughters, with a large colored, blue colored insurance company is spending 2200 a month and the private market plan that we're going to put her in is around 900.
Amanda: Wow. That's less than half.
Glenn: Yeah, and it's actually better coverage too. Better network. Better providers. Because the ACA, a lot of them, in Chicago anyway, a lot of the bigger providers don’t like to participate in those. So, Northwestern for example, you know.
Brandon: She works with us and puts that extra money into …
Glenn: Yeah, exactly. There are much, I was actually angling toward like, hey, send it my way, but you know. [0:13:02.0]
Only because I've known her since high school. But, there are much better things that you can be spending your money on or investing in than paying an insurance premium in healthcare.
Amanda: Yeah.
Glenn: Much better. So, the private plans are an option. If you're young and you're healthy, that's pretty much the way to go. If you have a preexisting condition, depending on what it is, there are guaranteed issue plans on the private market which typically just mean that you have a, you're going to get the policy no matter what, but the caveat is your preexisting condition isn't going to be covered for hospitalization or surgery for a period of time, typically a year. Those plans are great for say somebody with a well-controlled preexisting condition like, I don't know, type 2 diabetes. I take a pill every day. I diet and exercise. It's under control. [0:14:00.2]
I don’t have any real risk of you know hospitalization or surgical intervention. Those plans are going to be a good option for you to consider. That's the third bucket. The fourth bucket is …
Amanda: Can I ask a quick question about the third bucket?
Glenn: Sure.
Amanda: If someone wanted to look for a private market plan, do they need to work with someone like you to help find that?
Glenn: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you can go online but boy, the second you go online, you're going to be like every insurance agent's best friend ever. You're going to have, you know, if you're lonely, go online, fill out an insurance request form.
Amanda: Yeah.
Glenn: You'll have 100 phone calls the first day, no problem, or more. So, no, don’t go fill out a form. Never or make up your name, make up an email account that's different than your real one, and look at way, because I'm telling you, if you go online and you fill out a form, you are going to get hammered. Hammered with calls. [0:15:04.0]
Amanda: Good word of warning there.
Glenn: Yeah, don’t do that. Don't do it. And tell your friends not to do it. Tell your enemies to do it, but don’t tell your friends to do it.
Amanda: Okay.
Glenn: So yeah, it's best to work with somebody who is knowledgeable in the field and has access to both. So, one phone call going out versus 200 coming in. Way better.
Amanda: Awesome. Perfect.
Glenn: The fourth bucket is cost-sharing plans, medical cost-sharing plans. People associate those with faith-based plans. It came about as -- they've been around for 60 years, but they gained notoriety when literally the Little Sisters of the Poor won the Supreme Court case against Obamacare, saying that we don’t have to participate. They were kind of like insurance. The only technical difference between insurance and medical cost-sharing plans is an insurance, the insurance company assumes fiduciary responsibility for the bill, and in medical cost-sharing plans, you retain, the patient retains fiduciary responsibility for the bill, like medical cost-sharing plan just pays the bill, okay. [0:16:08.6]
So, there are good reputable ones out there with long track records and long histories. Some of the faith-based ones do have morality clauses and oaths and what not. There is a secular one also that I work with that basically says if you are injured or harmed in the commission of a criminal act, we're not going to cover you. Most people are okay with that. You know, if I get shot robbing a liquor store, you're not going to pay my hospital bill. Okay. got it. You know, I'll avoid that behavior. And then they'll say something like, you know, I strive to make good choices, which we all strive for that. So those are typically somewhere in the price range of a private discounted healthy private underwritten plan. They have a little bit different deductible type situation. They don’t call it a deductible because it's not insurance. [0:17:02.9]
They call it an unshared amount, meaning this is the amount I pay personally; the rest of it is shared. And those range anywhere from 500 up to you know $5000, but it's per medical incident. So if Brandon is up on the roof cleaning out gutters and falls off the ladder and breaks his collarbone and goes to the ER and he has one of these plans and he has a $500 individual unshared amount, he knows he's going to be out of pocket $500; everything else is going to be covered or shared for that incident. That would include if he had, you know, the ER visit. If he had x-rays, surgery. If he had to go to physical therapy, if in physical therapy he broke it again, that whole encapsulated incident with his shoulder is considered one incident. Now if he were rehabbing or he was in a sling or whatever, tripped and fell and broke the other arm…[0:18:03.1]
Brandon: Second incident.
Glenn: Not only are you having a bad year, but you would also have another medical incident, a separate one, and that would be another 500 and then whatever occurred with that would be covered and so on. So that's per person, per coverage. It's a good plan, but it doesn’t cover the nickel and dime stuff, which is what irritates most people.
Amanda: Right.
Glenn: So, it's like, hey, I don’t feel good. I got to go to the doctor. Oh, I got to cough up 100 bucks, right. So or I don't know how much it's going to cost, you know, because I'm just going to stop in my local CVS.
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Glenn: Bucket number five are short-term plans, and short-term plans are on websites such as essurance.com. Again, if you're going to look at those, create a false identity to go look at those. Seriously. And look up the address for Wrigley Field. Use that as a nod to the Blues Brothers. Come on. Do not put your personal information in. Take a look at those. Short-term plans have their place in the marketplace. They have their utilization. The problem with those is they're 90 days in length and if something happens to you in that 90 days, you now have a preexisting medical condition. They're not going to renew you for the next 90 days. So, they're great in October, November, December because during open enrollment, you know no matter what you have, you can also get on an ACA Obamacare plan. [0:20:01.5]
You know that. As long as it's open enrollment. If you're in, you know, almost June, June 1st you have it. Okay, you're good until September. Let's say June 15th you're diagnosed with cancer. Your chemo treatment is going to be 6 months. You're uninsured from October, November, December because your Obamacare plan is not going to kick in until January, so you're paying the cost then. So, they're there. They serve a purpose. Just be smart about it. Three months and always think in worst case scenario because that's why you have insurance to begin with - worst case scenario. Right?
Amanda: Yeah.
Glenn: Stuff you can't foot on your own. So those are the five buckets that you can look into and devise a solution to protect you from gigantic medical bills. Now, one of the things that I do to limit your out of pocket expenses is I wholeheartedly recommend everybody look at joining a medical practice that's called Direct Primary Care. [0:21:04.5]
This is a physician, a primary care physician internist who has opened up shop and refuses all medical insurance. They do not take any insurance whatsoever. I am 58 years old. I joined one. I pay $85 a month. For that, in exchange for that $85 a month, I have unlimited access to my doctor. I can call. I can stop in. If I don’t feel well, I have same-day or guaranteed within 24-hour access directly to the physician. Now my dad was a doctor. My mom was a nurse. I had the same primary care doctor for 15 years. I joined this new one in December of '18. I have seen her more and have spent more time with her than my previous primary care physician of 15 years. [0:22:00.5]
They have time to see you. They have time to figure out what's going on because they limit their practice size. Her practice size is limited to 300 people. The fee for service physician, my other primary doctor, her practice size is 3500 people, and the reason it was is she only got paid, my previous one, only got paid when somebody showed up and had a service rendered. My current one gets my $85 a month whether I see her 100 times or once or none. Oh, what I like about this, what you need to consider as a consumer is, working with people whose incentives are aligned with yours. My previous primary care doctor was a great doctor. I really liked her, but the incentive and her time constraints, you know, we have all had this experience with, you know, you get 15 minutes of the doctor's time. You typically get a prescription. If you're not okay in two weeks, give me a call back or come back in, right. [0:23:01.6]
My primary care physician is incentivized, her incentives are aligned with mine. I don’t want to see her. She doesn’t want to see me. Right? How do we do that? Oh. We make sure Glenn is healthy and has no reason to come in. So my initial visit with her was 2 hours long. We went all over my glorious medical history and she made some recommendations and we're on a pathway to correcting some things that have been uncorrectable in the last 15 years, and I'm already seeing progress because she takes the time, understands me as a person, you know, Mister Mostly Compliant, and has figured out a way, you know, that we can work together that I'm willing to do and she thinks will work. So, it's just a smarter approach to medicine. I have now a relationship with my doctor. Previously, I got to see my doctor 15 minutes whenever I had something and it was, you know, part of that 15 minutes was always redoing my blood pressure because her you know medical assistant or whatever would screw it up, and you know, they'd come in and look at me like shouldn’t you be stroked out right now because, you know, your blood pressure is through the roof. [0:24:19.3]
No, she used a small cuff. So, direct primary care, check it out. If you just put in, in Google, and put in direct primary care mapper, there's a website that will show you on a map where all the DPC practices that they have found thus far are located and a little dot you can click and see what the practice includes. 80% to 90% of your everyday healthcare needs are covered by a DPC. The things that are not covered, outpatient surgery. You blow your knee out. You need arthroscopy. They're not going to do that in their office. Inpatient surgery. Obviously, they're not a hospital. ER visits. They're not an ER. [0:25:02.2]
They are an urgent care. They will sew you up, the minor stuff, but if you’ve got a bone sticking out and you know blood squirting, get to the ER, and then obviously a major medical type event, you know, a heart attack, stroke, organ failure, cancer, whatever, those types of things. So you still need coverage for the major events, but here's the coolest thing about a direct primary care practice because I'm a little bit of a healthcare geek in the industry.
Amanda: Obviously.
Glenn: Yeah. Well I watch the metrics, and metrics are simply the performance measurement of how things are working, right. So if you belong to a direct primary care practice, you are 54% less likely to be hospitalized and you are 73% less likely to visit an ER. Now, if you think about it, well one that's impressive and two, nobody wants to go to a hospital and nobody wants to go to an ER, two very expensive places to go to, especially the ER. [0:26:06.9]
But the nice thing is about that is oh, I get in because it's $85 a month, no matter how times I go in, so if I don’t feel well, I'm calling doc. I'm going in, so my little stuff never becomes big stuff. Never. Look at those, everybody, regardless if you're on a company plan, if you're on Medicare, if you're on Medicaid. No matter where you're at, look at that. They're affordable. Young people especially. I mean, you're young. You're healthy. Check those out. Very cost effective. Less than your gym club membership and more beneficial to you. They'll do your physical exam. Now, in Illinois, docs can prescribe and deliver out of their office. She saves me a trip to the drug store. I also get my prescription medications at her cost, direct transparency. [0:27:02.1]
Right. So they're very transparent. If I need an x-ray, she has arrangements with other providers, cash pricing, which is phenomenal, you know. A chest x-ray through an insurance company out of your pocket will probably be anywhere from 120 to 300 bucks. Through her, it's 40.
Amanda: Yep.
Glenn: Glenn, you need a chest x-ray. Yeah, I think I can swing that. Right?
Amanda: Absolutely.
Glenn: You know, as opposed to, oh, well 300 bucks. I got to think about that. You know, the cost-benefit ratio of do I really have pneumonia or am I just being a baby?
Amanda: Yeah.
Glenn: So those calculations, especially us guys, we, you know, I need this prescription? Yeah, I'm not going to fill that, you know. So something to consider, and then once you do that, the medical cost-sharing plans become very attractive. The private market plans that can be customized to basically wrap the insurance coverage around the services the DPC provides becomes very attractive. [0:28:03.5]
My mom's 87 years old. I got her into one simply because she was having some issues. She's like, yeah, I get to see my doctor in 10 days. I'm like, you're 87; do you have 10 days?
Amanda: Right. Right.
Glenn: Really, to wait, you know?
Amanda: Yep.
Glenn: So we got her into one and she can get right in, and she's not sickly. She's not ill, but it's just, you know, I'm looking at it, and I'm like, okay, this is ridiculous, you know. Why is this 87-year-old woman having to wait 10 days to see somebody?
Amanda: Right. Well, this has been really helpful, Glenn. Thanks so much for sharing the five buckets that you went through, and then you kind of added that sixth in there with the direct primary care.
Glenn: Yeah.
Amanda: It's definitely something I've looked into before, but I want to come back and revisit. There wasn’t a doctor that was doing that that I felt comfortable like with going to when I was looking before, but I know more and more doctors are switching, so I need to go back…
Glenn: They double every year. The number of practices double every year because the doctors have figured out, hey, I don’t have to practice medicine based on what the insurance company tells me. [0:29:08.4]
I can develop a personal one-on-one relationship with the patient, which is important. You know, it's the art of medicine. It is not the science of medicine. So…
Brandon: That sounds like it's going back old school.
Glenn: You know, it needs to because, you know, I know both of you some, you know. I would not presume to know how to cajole you into healthy behaviors or treatment patterns or whatever without spending a vast amount more time with you, you know. You know you definitely can't make me do anything.
Amanda: Nope.
Glenn: I mean, it's just, you know, my, it's sad and funny at the same time, but part of the reason I chose my direct primary care doctor is she has five brothers, so you know, she can handle me, no problem. You know. Like, oh yeah, you're just like my second brother. [0:30:02.3]
Amanda: Right. And well that's actually a good point, that when you're looking for a direct primary care, you can find a doctor that will like align with what you need or what your values are, whereas like, you call a hospital or a clinic, they're just going to assign you a doctor.
Glenn: Right.
Amanda: Maybe look at their areas of specialties and say I want a doctor that specializes in cardiac issues, you know, but really, you don’t get a choice.
Glenn: Yeah, or do they even really need a cardiac?
Amanda: Right. Right.
Glenn: You know, it's kind of like, you know, if we all looked on WebMD, we're all dying of something.
Amanda: Yeah.
Glenn: You know, we can find whatever it is that we're most afraid of. Oh no, I have that symptom, right. So, you know, just there is a lot of value in a personal relationship with a doctor. There is a lot of value in the ability to access them when you need to, right. A lot of it is just peace of mind, right. So and they do all the wiz bank stuff now too, like I was driving down to see my kids in Louisville. I had this thing on my leg. [0:31:09.5]
I'm like, oh, is that a spider bite? What the? You know, it's itching and it's driving me nuts. So I call up the doctor's office. They're like yeah, take a picture of it, send it over. Like well I'm going 80 miles an hour. Perhaps I should find a rest area and do that, right. So I take the picture, send it over. I have a prescription waiting for me in Louisville when I get down there.
Brandon: Yeah. Awesome.
Glenn: So I don’t have to wait to come back and see her. You know, it's what we have come to expect as customer service and instant, not instant gratification, but instant service. Right?
Brandon: I think like in general, we want this in every area of our lives but healthcare, we think it's different.
Glenn: Yeah.
Brandon: And I think we need to come back to some of that and find people like yourself who understand what we want as far as individuals, knowing we need healthcare, like that's a need, knowing the cost is going up like crazy, and all of that. [0:32:04.8]
So I know we went through a whole lot. I mean, we just covered five buckets. That's it. We didn’t cover even some other questions of why is healthcare so expensive, which I think…
Glenn: Yeah, we can get into it.
Brandon: We need to do that probably next time.
Amanda: We'll have to have you back.
Glenn: Sure.
Brandon: And so, if you'd like to hear more from Glenn, for sure we're going to have his information in the show notes, and also we'd love to have you back because I think we barely touched the surface of who you are. I know you're a hilarious comedian as well as a medical expert in insurance, not in, don’t go to him to check you out.
Amanda: Diagnose a condition.
Glenn: Now, come on, I'm a doctor's son.
Brandon: Yeah, I don't know about that.
Glenn: I'm fully licensed to not operate anywhere.
Amanda: Well, if people really had a burning question and wanted to reach out to you, what's the best way to get a hold of you? [0:32:59.5]
Glenn: Well, they can email me at ghahn@hahnhealthinsurance.com or call me. My personal cell phone is 630-205-1544. Make sure when you call me, you put it in context. Tell me you're with Brandon or Amanda, so I know where it's coming from, and so I'm extra nice to you. Just kidding. I'm nice to everyone, well, mostly nice to everybody. And then yeah, I'm happy to answer questions or help you out or you know if you're in the best place you can be, I'll tell you that. Right. If there's some place better you can be, I will tell you that too, and if I can help get you there, I will help get you there. If I personally can't you get there, I'll tell you either how to get there yourself or somebody who can help you get there. [0:34:01.5]
Amanda: Awesome. That sounds great.
Brandon: That’s why I love referring people to you because I know that, and that's how we work as well.
Glenn: Yeah, 100% transparent on my end. So you get all the options, not the one I think you should have. Now, I may tell you which one I think works best for you and why, but it's your choice, and you're going to have probably not the five buckets, but at least four of them, because I'm not going to talk short-term plans this time of year unless there's really compelling reasons to talk about it. But you're going to have four to look at, for sure, and then we can delve, deep dive into whichever one, either you're most comfortable with or whichever one is going to fit your particular circumstance best.
Brandon: Cool. Well, we will have you back on another interview for sure to go deeper into how you're going to get into Congress, and …
Glenn: No. I'm either going to be a benevolent dictator or nothing, Brandon, come on. I want a cool hat and a robe. [0:35:03.4]
Brandon: We can do that, and maybe at the next, I'll bring you a cool hat and robe and that'll be fun.
Glenn: Yeah. Pooh-Bah. No, friend of humanity. That's a good title.
Brandon: We'll call you Gandalf too.
Amanda: The tiny friend of humanity.
Glenn: Yeah. Tiny, friend of humanity. That'll work. That'll work.
Amanda: Well thanks again for joining us and we'll look forward to seeing you again soon.
Glenn: Great. Thank you for having me.
Amanda: So to recap, Glenn talked about six different ways to cover the costs of healthcare. He talked about Cobra. He talked about the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare/the Marketplace and the website there to research that without having to give away your personal information is healthsherpa.com. Then he talked about going into the private market, figuring that out yourself that way. Then we talked about cost-sharing plans. A little bit of an insider's scoop. Brandon and I participate in a cost-sharing plan. [0:36:01.9]
We have got some great stories including you know as most of our listeners know, we had a baby last year, and the entire process, the prenatal care, the labor and delivery, all of that we were part of a cost-sharing plan when we went through all of that, and Glenn talked about the personal requirement, you know, kind of like a deductible that we are personally obligated to pay. One of the cool things about the cost-sharing plan that we're with is that if you can get a discount from your provider, so we got a cash pay discount because we paid cash up front, they give you a discount because they don’t have to cover all those administrative costs, right, of billing the insurance and all of that.
Brandon: Yeah, we used our policy for that too, right?
Amanda: Somewhat, yeah. So, and if you don’t know what Brandon means by using our policy, you need to schedule a call with us so you know what he's talking about there. But because we got that discount, we actually had no personal out of pocket amount that we had to cover first. [0:37:04.0]
No deductible to use insurance language, even though it's not insurance, and so, 100% of what we paid for all of that care, prenatal, labor and delivery, everything, was covered through the cost-sharing plan, and we did not have to pay anything out of pocket, which was a really cool experience. I don’t know anybody that's had a baby that's had that similar experience, unless they're also with a cost-sharing plan. So that was number four. Number five was short-term plans, and he talked about some of the reasons to use them or not, and then the sixth one we talked about a long time was that direct primary care option as well, and how that really helps you work with a doctor whose incentives are aligned with yours. Anything that sticks out to you, Brandon, from that conversation?
Brandon: Well, I liked, you know how we do our financial analysis and not everything that we, not everything fits for everybody, right. You can't just give them, hey, this information is going to fit for everybody. [0:38:05.0]
That's a lot like in the healthcare world, like we, a lot of times people think, well everything is one sizes fits all, saving for retirement, one size fits all, doing all this stuff is one size fits all. And so to figure out which bucket that you most align with with your values really helps me to think oh well, this is where I would fit, and what works alongside those ways. So, I felt like that was very similar to what we do and that's why I think like Glenn and I work well together is because we don’t just say everybody's all the same. There's different needs, different goals, different stages in life that work better for different people and I felt that was what really helped me saying okay where do they fit.
Amanda: Yeah. Absolutely. He used a really good phrase that I think is like the goal of using whatever these buckets are, and the phrase he used was peace of mind. [0:39:03.4]
Do you want to know, like no matter what happens with your health in the future, that you can have peace of mind that you're able to meet the challenges. So for some people, having a high deductible plan is fine. They know like that they've got the peace of mind they can cover that deductible if they need it and actually having the lower monthly cost makes sense for them because they're fine with that. Other people, that would not give them peace of mind, and they need to figure out something different. So I think that, if you're going to talk to Glenn, if you're going to work with somebody else, you know whatever you're thinking about in terms of your healthcare and how you're going to pay for it in the future, and then coming at it like how do I get to the place where I have peace of mind, that no matter what happens with my health in the future, I've got a plan of action. I think that is like a good goal to reach for.
Brandon: Yeah. I think that's again why the financial peace and the health peace so go hand-in-hand is because it's all about getting peace of mind, not just now, but in the future as you reach 60 or 65, 70, 80. And passing that peace of mind on to the people around you, so. [0:40:18.8]
Amanda: Yeah, to your grandchildren.
Brandon: Yeah, that's we titled this, that's why we had him on, right.
Amanda: Right. Absolutely. Cool. So if you found some value from this, let us know. Leave a review. Reach out to Glenn at the phone number that he shared or on his website hahninsurance.com.
Brandon: We will have several of the links in the show notes, so this would be a great resource. We might actually have a pdf, who knows, with some of that information.
Amanda: It's hahnhealthinsurance.com or go back in the episode where he shared his phone number and give him a call. [0:41:03.2]
I'm sure he would love to hear from you. Just remember to tell him that you heard him on the Grandma's Wealth Wisdom podcast so he treats you extra special.
Brandon: Oh yeah. I'm sure he treats everybody, I mean, that's anyway.
Amanda: That's Glenn, yeah.
Brandon: So until next time.
Amanda: But wait, wait, wait.
Brandon: Wait, what?
Amanda: In the next episode, we're going to be having another interview of another person that's going to drop some awesome value and share another area of expertise, and so be sure to tune in next time for more wisdom related to your money and what you do with it.
Brandon: Yeah, I'm excited for that interview too. We're not going to tell you who it is or what they're going to talk about because we don’t know yet.
Amanda: We have some ideas.
Brandon: We have some ideas but nothing is confirmed yet, so, therefore, you know as much as we do in some regards. So until next time, keep building your wealth simply and sustainably for your own future and the future of our grandchildren's generation.
The topics presented in this podcast are the general information only and not for the purposes of providing legal, accounting, or investment advice. On such matters please consult a professional who knows your specific situation.
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