Health care crisis management

Our health care finance and delivery system was a state of national crisis when I left Wall Street and entered the small business advisory field in the 1980s. This was a huge concern for my first clients who were mostly building contractors.  The connection between successful management of health care costs and overall financial success in business was compelling. I decided to make health care a core part of my independent practice. I spent much time and effort researching, developing, speaking and writing, and  marketing online alternative approaches that helped people wrestle back control from insurance companies.  I published more than a thousand articles and spoke with more than 50,000 people about their health care system concerns since those early days.

The health care finance and delivery system is still in crisis today. The most amazing amazing part of my journey through all of this is watching how we’ve managed to cope through decades of rapid cost increases, declining access to medical care and government screw-ups like the Affordable Care Act. We’ve proven amazingly tolerant and resourceful but that doesn’t change the distributing underpinnings of the broken system that serves itself, not my clients. The health care management strategies that served my small business clients well in the past no longer work very well today.

In recent years I’ve taken a ‘crisis management approach’ to focus on ways to avoid being financially crushed by the health care system when things go wrong. (Since none of us are getting younger and healthier, there is a likelihood that things eventually do go wrong). I no longer feel that it is appropriate to pretend that reasonable solutions exist within the industry today. This transition leads to an entirely different but necessary approach to effective comprehensive financial planning.

If you are among the millions of Americans who must find health insurance through the new individual health insurance marketplace, I invite you to request a free copy of my “Tips for using the Health Insurance Marketplace” that packs 50 bits of practical advice into an easy-to-read 7 page booklet.