AUTOGRAPHS

Medical Travel, Medical Tourism Interview with Keith Johnson – Independent Insurance Broker

Keith Johnson has been an independent insurance broker for over 25 years, working specifically in the self funded industry.  Recently he took some time to speak with me about his recent trip to Korea and his part in HealthGlobe.

Roughly a year ago, Jeff Carter, CEO of HealthGlobe, extended an invitation to Keith through Jonathan Edelheit, the president of the Medical Tourism Association. Keith spent a week in San Francisco learning about Medical Tourism with Jeff and Sue Hart, HealthGlobe cofounder.

“When I grasped the potential that Medical Tourism has – there are huge ramifications there, – I immediately began working with Jeff to find the best way to promote Medical Tourism and HealthGlobe as the contract facilitator to as many self funded plans sponsors as we could.”

Keith introduces the concept of Medical Tourism to corporate America realizing that a tourism component is going to be much more attractive to a corporation when it is self- funded.

There are two ways for a corporate entity to provide benefits to their employees, through a fully insured program such as Blue Cross or a self- funded program where the corporate entity decides to take on much of the risk in insuring its staff.

With a fully insured program the insurance carrier, such as Blue Cross administers the benefits program and the corporation pays money on a monthly basis for them to do that.

In a self- funded program, instead of paying premiums they are able to put money in the bank and pay individual claims themselves. Because self funded programs can be re- insured, they have a cut off point for each claim, but they are still required to pay up to the reinsurance limit for individuals as well as for the whole group.

For a company that is self- funded Medical Tourism is fantastic. These companies are able to save huge amounts of money, so Keith is attracting the interest of many companies that are self- funded. Really large corporations don’t have reinsurance at all; they just pay any claims outright. Over 70% of all corporations are self-funded, Ford and Chrysler for example. Mega conglomerates are nearly always self- funded. It is when you start looking at companies under 500 employees that the numbers go down to 50% being self – funded and companies while businesses with under 100 employees are typically using a fully-insured benefits program.

In October of 2009, Keith accompanied Jeff and Sue to Korea on a tour to familiarize prospective clients with Korea’s exceptional health care system, along with a group of other influential insurance brokers, benefit consultants and health care plan sponsors (employers).

The group toured six Korean facilities in Seoul, a city with a population of over 10 million people. Keith continuously found himself impressed by the high degree of technology and the quality of both facilities and the care offered.

“The emphasis they placed on robotics was extremely impressive and the hospitals themselves were state of the art. I also felt that the pride of ownership that the physicians expressed was very telling. It was very much on par with any facility in the United States.”

Keith continues to educate companies about the enormous benefits to them in utilizing HealthGlobe to facilitate medical tourism for themselves and their employees; and HealthGlobe continues its mission to find the best and most affordable health care for its clients.

About the Author

Peter Propp is a Principal with consulting firm Shore Communications, Inc.  His practice areas focus on providing marketing leadership advice and execution support to companies of all sizes.  

Visit http://www.shore.com to learn more.

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