Healthcare is Expensive

Four days a week, I take calls for a Maine-based healthcare provider. The calls run the gamut: people are sick, they want to fill their prescriptions (and there are lots of pills being pushed), or they make some variation on a common theme—demanding some kind of service (often that day), demonstrating how little they know about how broken our healthcare system really is.

Back in the late 1990s, I worked for another healthcare provider. We were an HMO, back when HMOs were supposed to save the day and reinvent medicine in America. More important in this discussion was that HMOs were expected to be the cost-containment deemed necessary at that juncture. HMOs did not save healthcare.

I really liked my gig back then. The organization was locally-managed and really had a humane, quality-focused approach to healthcare. Where I’m at now often reminds me of that time 20 years ago. However, the organization with skilled local management got swallowed like Jonah getting inhaled by the whale. A corporate giant vacuumed up the business based in Freeport and almost overnight, everything went downhill.  Profit became the primary motif and most of our group who were hired together to service a block of Midwestern business, scattered to the four corners of the work world. Some of us ended up at a disability insurer I’ve often referred to as Moscow Mutual. That’s another story I’ve written about, including in a book of essays that mainly ended up being relegated to the publishing dustbin.

Elizabeth Warren, one of the bloated field of Democrats, released details recently about her Medicare for All plan, her solution for overhauling American healthcare. As soon as Warren dotted the I’s and crossed the T’s of her plan, the critics crawled out from their corners, detailing why moving from a broken system to one covering everyone, lowering costs, and improving care outcomes won’t work. Continue reading

Medicare (for all)

We are slightly more than two weeks ‘til the midterms. Will the Democrats gain the House (and Senate), or will the Kavanaugh nomination drive Republicans to the polls in higher than usual numbers? Then, there are the myriad of issues sliding past the lips of candidates. One of them I’ve heard and care about is the term “Medicare for all.”

Despite continued opposition from almost every candidate on the right, Democrats recognize that voters do favor something more radical than President Obama’s plan for health insurance. While “Obamacare” is far from the ideal, all “the party of no” can come up with is continued cuts to Medicaid and even the specter that they’ll at some point gut Medicare.

If you look at polling, the landscape clearly shows that more than half of the country (and 70 percent of those polled who vote Democrat) want some form of single-payer healthcare, which is what Medicare is. More than half of America’s doctors also favor it. So why won’t our elected leaders do something about it?

I’ve written about passing my insurance exam and being licensed as a life/health agent in Maine. Last fall, I passed my CMS certification to sell Medicare. My first year representing Medicare Advantage plans found my sales to be minimal. But I was happy that I got to make this step forward as an agent. What I learned is that most people age 65 (or heading there fast) know little or nothing about Medicare. Worse, they don’t know how to maximize their healthcare benefit options. Continue reading

Better Days

During the summer of 2017, and even at times, this past summer, recovery from grief and loss seemed improbable. Losing a son like Mark assured me my spot in line, stuck in a position and place I never asked to be in.

Life is now pockmarked by sad anniversaries. These will be forever oriented around an event that turned lives upside-down: the last time we saw Mark; the start of his final walk; his birthday, Christmas, his death…and on and on the calendar turns.

When I returned from my Father’s Day road trip in late June, and with July’s swelter, once more I was moored in sadness and hopelessness. The odds that things might dramatically improve were not any that a successful gambler would take.

We’re fortunate to have an exceptional grief counselor. At an appointment prior to summer, in May, she reframed how I was feeling as “moving through grief.” Her suggestion and semantic reorientation from “moving beyond grief” worked for me.

I’m not dismissing that my physical malady and SI joint issue contributed to the darkness I experienced most days. Sitting at home with nothing to do and with no prospects of anyone intervening dropped a veil of interminability over July.

My walking partner and friend, Paul, was also experiencing back issues. Both of us had dusted-off our tennis games during the summer and fall of 2017. This tennis season, neither of us was capable of swinging a racket, or chasing balls on the baseline—we were simply struggling to remain upright.

August forced me to dig into my Medicare certification requirements. I wasn’t eager for this three to four-week period of completing modules in order to pass the federally-mandated certification exam that allows agents little wiggle room. You basically have to know your stuff if you want to sell this type of health insurance. On top of these strict federal mandates, each plan imposes additional requirements before being deemed “ready to sell.” The good news for me this year is that I’m contracted with three plans, instead of last year’s solitary option.

Tutoring at the private school nearby may have saved me in 2017. No matter how dark and difficult things felt, I knew I had to gather my wits about me late every afternoon in preparation for the student I was assigned to work with.

Driving onto the stately grounds of the school replete with a 19th century mansion always managed to enhance my mood and remind me that it was time for me to “perform” for two hours. And that’s what I did beginning in September through early December when the students left for Christmas break.

Teaching and tutoring are noble endeavors.

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Never Far Away

Life goes on. At least that’s what they tell us. Actually, by repeating the phrase back at other people, it helps make them feel better about you that you are feeling better—but you’re not. You’re just moving with the flow, swept up in the momentum of life moving forward.

In the fall, I found out a private school nearby needed people to come in at night and help some of their students during a time slot called “guided study.” I told the director a bit of my story and how I would try to make it through the first week, but that there were “no promises.” I did. And then, I made it through the next week, and the week after that. We are now in the month when the students I’ve met across weeks numbering in the 30s are looking forward to the end of the trimester and going home. I did better than I thought I would.

Maybe the reason I managed to do the “life going on” dance had to do with a young man I met my second week of tutoring. He needed help with his statistics assignment. I hadn’t done statistics in decades, especially statistical word problems that required solutions relevant to terms like median, standard deviation, mode, and variance. I had to draw “pictures” to figure them out. He said to me, “why are you drawing pictures?” We both learned that he was visual and this offered us a window into understanding his learning style.

The next night, I was asked if I wanted to work with him one-on-one. I said I’d give it a shot. We’ve been meeting four nights a week (and Sunday nights, too) since late September. I’ve learned that he likes order and routine. I’ve tried to create that five nights a week.

My days are spent working on other things. I’m writing a book. A week ago, I drove to Waterville and then, Oakland, and offered a new seminar I’ve developed, The ABCs of Medicare. I began my week by sending out another newsletter for the Mark Baumer Sustainability Fund. Yes, life goes on. But you are never far away.

Springtime has dawdled this year, taking its sweet time getting here. Those of us who live in the Northeast have learned patience with the seasons—those who haven’t must contend with their constant carping (that does nothing to speed along seasonal change). At the very least, they’re always going to be disappointed. I’ve learned that life can be disappointing. Grief and loss are excellent instructors.

Spring is also a time of year that reminds me of all the previous beginnings of baseball dating back to the time when I was probably five or six and learning that baseball seasons all have starting points. These always correspond with spring’s arrival.

These (spring) memories are never far away.

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What Does It All Mean?

Life now has a definitive before and after. What existed prior to tragedy is now gone—not in the sense that all of it’s disappeared entirely—but threads connecting me to that time have been forever altered.

If you are not familiar with passages through the dark, you probably won’t understand. That’s okay. All of us will at some point lose someone we love, though. All loss isn’t the same, either. Therese Rando posits that sudden, unanticipated death leaves those left behind traumatized due primarily from the psychological assault brought on by a death like Mark’s.

I continually run into people who don’t know my story. Why should they? It’s not like I’m hosting a reality TV program or anything. Of course, being the self-oriented people that we are, it’s easy to assume that everyone knows that my son was killed and expect them to acknowledge it. What’s interesting to me after slightly more than a year of acting out a common scene, is how people do react when they do find out. It runs the gamut from basically not acknowledging it (sort of like “oh,” and then moving on), offering some version of the platitude,” I’m sorry for your loss,” and then, there are those who engage with you in a human and empathetic fashion. This group is the smallest one. Continue reading

Plans for the Near Future

Last week my insurance license arrived in the mail. You can now find me on the State of Maine website for insurance if you do an agent search. I now feel “official.”

I once held an insurance license for both life and health back in the mid-1990s, but I let it lapse. At the time, I didn’t know the first thing about sales and in hindsight, the company I was selling for really didn’t have a very strong stable of products. Part of that was due to insurance laws in Maine at the time. However, other reps did very well because they kept it simple and worked their plan.

Passing my insurance exam was the first step for me. To be honest, I hadn’t thought beyond simply getting a passing score. I was tunneled in—selling our house, moving 26 years of belongings to a new location, and fitting work, study, and freelancing into what was a roller coaster three month ride. That was all I was capable of carrying to the close of 2016. Continue reading

Selling Insurance

Not much of a “ring” to insurance salesman. Writer is more romantic and sounds better. The latter doesn’t always deliver and leave you flush with ka-ching—or with any cash at all, for that matter.

The fall has been a blur. Readying a house for sale and then closing on the domicile that was your home for half of your life is a big change. So is acclimating to a new town. Of course that’s just part of the story. I also decided in August to become a volleyball ref, followed by enrolling in an online course designed to prepare me to pass the state exam leading to getting licensed to sell insurance. Yes, the cares of this world have been right there in my face each and every day for the past three months. Sorry if I haven’t returned an email or your phone call.

Can I be totally honest here? There were many mornings during the past three months when I just wanted to stay in bed, rather than get up and turn off the alarm clock when it went off at 4:00 am so I could shoehorn studying into what was my usual get-out-of-bed and brew some coffee period of the morning before shuffling of to work time. But as they say, sometimes perseverance pays off.

Driving into Westbrook yesterday prior to my scheduled Maine Life, Accident & Health Producers exam set for 8:00 a.m., I tried to steer my mind clear of any craters of negativity or sinkholes filled with anxiety. WMPG playing some vintage John Coltrane kept me focused on the road and task looming ahead.

Whole life, or term?

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