A Lifetime Pursuit of Health with Tom Basey

Today's guest is Tom Basey, a US-based insurance expert. We'll chat about some differences between insurance options in the US compared to Australia and in what ways insurance companies are incentivizing people to make healthier choices.

Tom will share his opinions about financial literacy, consistent exercise, and stress reduction techniques. Get in touch with Tom for a free medication cost analysis!

Connect with Tom at https://www.facebook.com/BaseyInsurance

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On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wholisticnaturalhealth/

Online: https://wholisticnaturalhealth.com.au

A Subito Media production

Transcript

Magic Barclay: 0:59

welcome back to a magical life. I'm your host magic Barclay. And I'm today joined by Tom Basey. Now Tom is someone we haven't had on our podcast before, obviously, but he's all about insurance. And the reason I reached out to Tom is because we don't talk about the nitty gritty of what your health choices. Mean to you financially, are you covered? Are you not covered? So we're going to get right into that very different type of episode for you today. Listeners one, I think that is quite essential for you to have, so let me introduce Tom. He's worked for around 30 years in corporate America, including 15 years at Motorola, seven years in medical equipment industries. As a design engineer and project manager four years ago, he started his second career as an independent health insurance agent. Welcome Tom.

Tom Basey: 2:00

Thanks, magic. It's wonderful to be here to talk to you and your

Magic Barclay: 2:02

listeners. Thank you. Now on my podcast, we've talked a lot to guests about second careers. What was. The impetus for you to want to start a second career.

Tom Basey: 2:17

you know, we don't have time to cover that completely on your podcast, but I'll give you, uh, some information. Number one, like many people in corporate America are perhaps all over the world. I got burned out or I needed a change. You know, if you do anything for 20 plus years, you might get tired of it. I was very fortunate. Corporate America was great for me in a lot of ways. And actually I even made a change. You were marked in there. I went from telecom to medical device, but I didn't want to do that anymore. And for one thing, uh, there's a commute involved getting in a vehicle and driving an hour one way and then back. So I, I was tired of the commute. I was tired of the pressure perhaps to perform. For example, as a project manager, I was all. Here's let's set up a plan to meet this end objective. We have to hit these interim milestones. So it's like constant stress, just we're trying to meet that next milestone. So, so there's a variety of reasons why I simply wanted to do something else. Now having said that, yeah, that may be, that may be enough for a response. What I would offer in addition is. Some, uh, I didn't know how to get out of corporate America from the health insurance standpoint, lack of knowledge. I didn't know how I could have insurance and it was so critical to me. And so that was probably when I stayed there so long, a gentleman came to my residence and enrolled my mother-in-law, who lived with me in Medicare. Really not Medicare, cuz that comes from the government, a Medicare supplement for example. And uh, I sat in and listened one to make sure she was okay, but two, I wanted to be educated and BA long story short, I'm now done. I'm now four years into providing, I do some health insurance. You mentioned, uh, we'll get into the details, but basically I, I help people in their Medicare journey now and I'm four years in on that and I'm, I, I can work largely virtually, but that's what I'm doing day to.

Magic Barclay: 3:53

That sounds very interesting. Now look, let's cover some of the differences so that the listeners aren't confused. So I'm in Australia, mm-hmm Medicare here is a government thing. Medicare pays for a lot of things. So people aren't really invested in what their doctor tells them because it's covered by Medicare. You're not actually paying for it. You do pay a Medicare levy. At tax time mm-hmm which kind of goes into the bucket to pay for that mm-hmm but health insurance here is often for surgery for extras, like optical, um, extras, like, you know, hearing tests, things like that. Physio and health insurance here. Now covers very, very little. So a lot of allied health was struck off couple of years ago, certainly. Alternative health neuropathy. A lot of those things have gone by the wayside. So here in Australia, health insurance is something you pay for not expecting to need to use it or not expecting it to cover much. How does it work in America?

Tom Basey: 5:10

Uh, well, interestingly, there are some parallels with the same, and there's some that are fundamentally different. Number one, Medicare here is for people exclusively 65 and above it was established in the sixties. And it is leave for people who don't work. That was the plan. Oh, when you don't work, then the government needs to provide this for you cuz one day you won't. So Medicare is for people who are 65 and above there may, there's some exceptions you get on disability, but that's the case for most working Americans. You do need to have some kind of health insurance solution. For one thing, pre COVID we're two years in. So the numbers are, we don't know what the numbers are, but pre COVID the average medical event in the us that's average. So that means right. That's everything from a broken pinky to heart surgery, but it was, it cost$6,000. That was the price that, that would, uh, the health provider would, would, would, uh, charge, for example, actually here, everybody needs to have some kind of health insurance because they're typically not on Medicare. So another typically. You're you're buying some health insurance often. You're doing it, getting it through your employer at kind of a group or bulk rate, but you need some for anything. So you don't walk into the physician to get a, a physical exam or to, to treat the flu or something without some kind of way to pay. And most people do not pay cash. Most people have some form of health insurance, and most of it's from the government. So that's the way that works. Now, what I would offer another challenge is our standard, what we call major medical insurance, which most people have that are under 65. The challenge is number one, there's a deductible, which means you gotta pay X number of dollars before the plan kicks in. And then even when it kicks in, it typically doesn't pay a hundred percent. For example, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make up an approximate, reasonable representation. Uh, someone may have a$3,000 deductible. And then often the, the, I, I say the most common is 20%. They're gonna have to pay 20% of the ongoing costs. So, I mean, so if the average event, as I re, as I remark to you is$6,000. Well, you're gonna have to pony up. Now your plan kicks in now for the rest of the cost that you have going on for the rest of the year. Once you've met your deductible, you're gonna pay 20% of that. And that particular instance will then if there's 3000 less, uh, then you pay 20% of that, uh, six,$600. So you'd still pay$600 on that. So that's the way it works. Medicare. The good news is Medicare is more thorough. There's winter, you're 65. The go, you pay the government for us. You, you mentioned a levy. There is this year, it went up significantly 30 something dollars, and that didn't sit well with folks, but for most people, most people paying$170 a month. For their Medicare, but that's all they pay after that. They get that from the government. And then I can't talk too much about this or your listeners will fall asleep. Then they got a choice even to get a Medicare advantage plan or they need to get a Medicare supplement plus a drug plan. But the good news is in the Medicare world. You're, it's more thorough covered. There's there's less out. There is no deductible as a typically. So the good news is once you get 65 here in the us, your cost of your healthcare is much, much less. And it's because you're getting Medicare plus something else.

Magic Barclay: 7:59

Thanks for explaining that. And here Medicare is for anyone. So, you know, once you're a baby, you get a Medicare card. Mm-hmm so, yeah, it's very different in that respect. Mm-hmm now, listen, Tom, I always ask the same three questions of all my guests and I get a really exciting array of answers from everyone. And so for you, the questions are the same and obviously. Your personal experience will come through, but also how it relates to insurance. So the first question is what can your expertise do to accelerate health? Be it physical, emotional, or spiritual. Now in the show notes that you sent me, you said that you have a lifetime pursuit of health. I really wanna hear about that. So the floor is yours.

Tom Basey: 8:48

I will talk about that. However, I would issue the qualification, but I don't know that I have expertise. In other words, the struggle is real. I think everybody in the world wants to be healthy and they try to run things. So I continue. So I'm, I don't wanna reveal my exact age, but I, I mean, I've worked in corporate America 30 years, right? So I'm not a spring chicken as it were, but I continue to be in decent help, but that's because I make a conscious effort to do that. And to me, my fundamental model will. So much of your health is dictated. I mean, some the genetics, I can't do anything about the genetics, right. But it's, it's diet and exercise. So I continue to strive to intake things that are healthy for my body limit the things that don't. And I continue to exercise. And I do that in a variety of ways. Of course, just like everything COVID put made, COVID made things more challenging in a varieties. It makes more diff challenging to get whatever food products you want. It makes doing, going to a gym, for example, difficult. So there's things. So I, I continue to, for example, to both play and coach what we call soccer hill, you you'll call it football and. Down under, you know, but I, I, I love that game. And so that's my personal passion and I, and I, I want to get up in the morning. I wanna wake up and when I step out of bed, not hurt. And so I I'm, that's my motivation to, to do that.

Magic Barclay: 10:03

So from an insurance standpoint, if people are looking after their health, obviously that will relate to what better premiums or like what's the payoff here?

Tom Basey: 10:16

Well, what I would offer is this, the insurance industry in my country is quite regulated. And, but of course, just like any business, they are there to make money. And there's this whole science of actuary. So, so they're basically statistics. So they've gotten very good at predicting things like when you're gonna die, if there's, if you're a male non-smoker and then actually even life choices. So the good news is actually the industry. Wants to take care of people. If they didn't have customers, they wouldn't have a business, but they wanna make business. So more and more. We are being incentivized to take care of ourselves. So actually to your. Premiums are lower. Typically the, the, the companies will do it different ways, but often here is your premium. This is the monthly cost of your insurance. If you will go ahead and for example, do preventative screamings, or if you there's a variety of different, uh, hoops that will have you jump through, but it's basically, they're encouraging you. You're, they're incentivizing you to, to be healthy either through lifestyle habits or by avoiding things or by, uh, like checkups annual checkups. And so that's one response I would have, uh, that's one thing I would offer you. The other thing I would offer. They are helping you as well. In other words. So that's the thing, insurance the healthier people are the less they have to pay out. They don't want to pay big bucks to all the doctors to take care of. Diabetes or your heart surgery or whatever. So they actually, they are incentivized as well. So the good news is there's a more and more, there are bells and whistles. I will call'em being added to plans. Like for example, I'm gonna talk about Medicare because it's easier to do so for any one of the major cares. So we've got big insurance companies here in the us that offer these, I'm gonna these advantage plans, which are things that, that you, you enroll in that, that couple and work with your Medicare that you get from the government. Those things potentially have. I benefits, dental benefits, ear benefits, and that is at a minimum. Often you can go and get an annual checkup often at a zero cost or very low copay. So they're, they're doing that. They also provide, uh, sometimes potentially. Healthy food, eating card. So you can actually use those thing and purchase at least healthy foods, Don, as you can't buy, candy and snacks, but, but you can buy healthy foods with those. So they're doing it that way. They, uh, what's another example, you know, and that's the thing they found. For example, there's a correlation between your dental health and your heart. And so there's a reason to do that. You know what I mean? So the good news. Everybody, both the insured individuals and the insurance companies have recognized the importance of health and the financial implications. And so everybody is being incentivized to address that

Magic Barclay: 12:45

made some really good points there. And from a functional medicine perspective, I know that each tooth has its own microbiome and a large part of your immune system. Is actually in your teeth. And so when you link that to heart health, obviously if you have a damaged microbiome, that damage then carries on, where does it carry on your major organs and your heart is one of those. So any inflammation, any dysbiosis of any part of your innate immune system, which your teeth are. Is going to then flow on to the rest of the innate immune system of which your heart is part of. So I'm really glad they're incentivizing like that and really looking at the whole of body, not just how you feel today.

Tom Basey: 13:45

Uh, agreed. And, uh, I, it, remind me, forgive me. Number one. I'm glad you said that. That's the thing as the insurance rep, I couldn't have articulated what you said. They just educate us on, like I say, a correlation between oral health and cardiovascular. I couldn't, I didn't know what you said, but it does. Remind me also another examples actually for Medicare often these plans will offer a no cost gym membership. So that's another example of things that they're doing. I just wanted to mention that as well, but, uh, yes, I concur with you.

Magic Barclay: 14:13

Maybe the Australian, I insurers should take a leaf out of the us' book because we still pay for gym memberships and you don't get rewarded for doing the right things. So interesting. Mm-hmm Tom, we talk about wealth here, not just the financial, but the personal and emotional. And I know that you mentioned in your show notes, you know, value. So in looking at the value of health, how can people create wealth?

Tom Basey: 14:49

Wow. Uh, that's a challenging question. For me, I will I'll I will offer the thoughts that come to mind. Number one, it is big business in the, in the, I don't know the billions of dollar industry, but so I, I do a lot of networking. I'm, I'm meet, I'm looking to find and meet people to partner with them, referrals, that kind of thing. And so there are people who offer personal training. They're people who offer products like, uh, nutritional supplements. They're people who offer. Products simply that don't have certain toxins for example. And so that to answer your questions, I would claim we don't have enough time to cover all that, but there are plenty of ways. If someone is passionate about health, wealth can be generated from that by simply providing these solutions for people that, that help there. Another one, here's another one. Uh, and this may I suspect this is on your radar, but water. In other words, there's an industry around providing water either. Providing water already produced for somebody that's less toxic or has better things or vice versa that you can buy actually equipment that will allow you to like, for example, I just, just like the previous remark. I, I, you, you perhaps can speak better route than I can, but they, they can, I'll say deionized water, for example, there's, there's a machine on the market, right. And I'm not gonna say this segment brought by that supposedly can generate three different seven different types of water. So it's a, there's big business in health and wellness.

Magic Barclay: 16:14

And so what would be your top three tips to creating wealth?

Tom Basey: 16:19

Well, that's an interesting question too. These are, these are getting very existential, number one, independent of what you do. You need to have financial literacy. In other words, no matter what solution you're providing, if you don't, if you're not financially literate, in other words, uh, maybe I'll leave it at that. You need to understand, for example, the time value of money. So that's number one, financial literacy, no matter what you're doing. Then number two, uh, I would offer not unlike the products I offer, not unlike your podcast. You kind of need to be looking to help provide a solution that is, uh, givers get, in other words, you can't be out what's in it for me, actually, the, the approaches to be client focused or how can you help someone and then your compensation will come eventually. So financial literacy, uh, customer focus. service I'll go with service, so knows whatever that means. So you can't just come in and provide someone else a solution and disappear. You need to explain it initially, uh, provide the solution for'em and be there to continue to support it, post sale, if you will, and or for repeat sale or whatever. That's the thing. It's a big, it's a big, uh, industry. So it's the answer would very slightly, but those, those are my three financial literacy customer focus and customer service.

Magic Barclay: 17:32

Thanks for those answers. And listeners, I'm going to link up that comment of, you know, the value of time and the value of health. So look at supplementation for example, and I'll tie this into it. The insurance in a minute, you can get a vitamin D supplement from the chemist, from the pharmacist off the shelf. And, you know, it's a name that you've heard of a lot, but you don't know the parent company of that company. You think, well, this is a supplement. Must be good for me. Everyone's told me I need to take vitamin D mm-hmm so I'll take it, but you don't know where the trail of money goes back to now, if that vitamin D supplement is something that you are taking to get well from something else. If the parent company made this something else and made the vitamin D maybe that's not something you should trust. Maybe that is not a value exchange that you need to make, and it will not provide value in your health. And as a consequence, maybe it won't be great for your insurance either. So really follow the trail and really look at what you're putting into your body. Not just your food, not just your water, but your supplements as well. You know, some are just made of filler and rubbish and things that aren't bio available and things that won't help you, you just pee and poop them out. And then others are what exactly what you need and they will boost your health and they will end up costing you less later because you will have less insurance to pay. You know, you won't be visiting the doctor as much visiting the hospital as much, and it really comes down to your value of time and money at that point in time, when you're at the pharmacist, looking at the. And if none of those brands that you see on the shelf in front of you jump out as 100% reputable. For example, if they advertise on TV, they're probably not reputable. There's a quick hint for you. Do some research learn continuously, as Tom says, really go home and say, I don't need to buy the vitamin D today. I am going to research. Heck out of this and find out what is a good brand who owns these companies and what is in them, what would you say to that?

Tom Basey: 20:27

Uh, I concur with you. Uh, I, I agree. Uh, the remark I would offer you kinda, you, you scraped across another thing we've talked about. You talked about food in the supplements. I I'm speaking outta term, but you're just bringing the topic up. Actually there's even home products around. Be it pesticide or cleaning products that sometimes there may be an alternative that's more healthy for you? Not my bay. I don't know, but that's my understanding. So I would, I would synthesize people to be aware of that as well. Not even what you consume, but things that are around you should be aware of perhaps

Magic Barclay: 20:57

100% and listeners, if you pick up a label, be it a bug spray or be it a can of food or a supplement or whatever. And you can't say easily the first three things on that label, put it back, walk away, run away, because that is not something that you want and you should be able to pronounce everything on that label. And you need to be able to understand what those things do. Otherwise you have no business picking up that product. Okay, Tom. Now we do talk about weight here and many of the listeners and certainly many of the guests, we've all battled our weight. So if you've ever battled with your weight, what was the trigger to lose it? And we know that stress is a key influence in weight issues. So you mentioned that before, actually, what can you offer listeners to reduce stress?

Tom Basey: 22:05

I wanna remark both on weight and stress. Yes. They're coupled the first thing when it comes to weight again, I'll repeat. The struggle is real. So I have a Fitbit, I wear that thing. I do variety of different activities over the past several years. I've been looking, I I'll look at running versus walking versus playing soccer. And I look at the number of calories burn and the step and the kind and the implications, maybe that, yeah. Calories burn. So I'm not saying I know the answer, but my point. What gets measured, gets improved. So I measure my weight and then I measure the caloric consumption. So I'm, I'm synthesized through that. I'm trying, I haven't, I have no panacea of where I don't know what to tell you how to do other than you gotta be doing something. So I continue to strive. So I don't have the solutions almost, but I would remark. At a minimum, you gotta be weighing yourself, looking at your body mass min index, and maybe using some kind of fitness tracker to, to monitor what you're doing. But what I found is you need to be doing stuff you need doing exercise all the time. And, and that's just an example when it comes to stress. Uh, to reiterate my initial remarks about career. That's a thing. And, and you've talked about the value of time. In other words, everybody's time is gonna end up eventually on this plan. We don't know the date for you or I, but we're eventually, we're all, we're all gonna pass away and you gotta decide every day. How do you wanna spend that day? I want to feel good physically and emotionally. And I want to be healthy. And so I, I, if nothing else, I put the time in to work towards that. So I'm not, I'm not setting the world on fire as far as a physical fitness, but I'm in decent shape, but it's because I have made a conscious effort and I continue to work on it, but I, I don't, I don't have a great answer for you other than that. And then I made it, I made a career change. So I made a career change to address the stress that yes, they've scientifically determined as correlating to, to weight retention.

Magic Barclay: 23:48

Thank you now, Tom people can find you on YouTube at Basey insurance. Basey insurance is also on LinkedIn and on Facebook. And that's B a S E Y. We love freebies here, Tom, what can you offer the listeners? Like, can you offer them a consult to have a look at their insurance? Or like, what can you offer?

Tom Basey: 24:16

Okay, well, that's a great question. So that's the thing we were talking. You mentioned supplements. Uh, one thing that we haven't talked about, that's a big component of cost is, is medication, the cost of medication. And so what I do for people at no charges, if they will provide me a list of medications and the list typically has. The name, the dosage and the frequency people. I do this all day for people. They provide that to me and then I provide back to them. I, I have a couple of nice tools, but I can do some nice analysis. So let's just say someone in Los Angeles, California, or Miami, Florida, I, they send me that list and I will send it back and I need either zip code as well. I will send them and it will show the cost of those medications. At different retailers, be it, the Walmart store, the CVS or Walgreens from, or these different locations. And it'll even show it across the different carriers. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna mention several major carriers that are here in the us. None blue cross blue shield, Humana, United healthcare. And so I can show them that. So, yes, to your point, I, I do that, shoot me an email on, find me on any of those social media platforms. Shoot me an email with, with that information. And I will shoot you back and say here in your area. And so it allows people to optimize it. And so here's the thing I'll say this I'll, I'll give you two quick examples. Someone a year ago, the lady is actually on 23 medications. I went to the, her house. Mask on didn't go inside. And I, I, I took an image. I took a phone snap of each one of her medication labels, and I built her that list. At least she had it then. So one, I built that for, and then two, I ran that analysis for her. Now on 23 medications, the result was depending on which carrier she, she went with, she was gonna save$500 per month. So that was gonna be, that was gonna be wonderful savings for her. And conversely. The other thing I would offer this this year, within the past week, the drugs that are developed and then advertised on TV, they pay big bucks to add execs, to come up with clever names. They have funny names and they advertise'em on TV to address certain medications. Those are often quite expensive. And so for this lady, it was actually for her mom, there's a particular one. That's kind of addressing a skin condition. If you. That thing on all the carriers, except for one, most of the carriers, they, that was not covered. Every carrier has a, a list. They call it the formula. These are the drugs that we cover. If it's not on there, it's not covered, then you have to pay the retail costs. So for that one drug for using it once or twice, uh, a month, it's kind of a small injectable pending. On all the carriers is gonna be$80,000 a year, except for one of those carriers that I mentioned it was on their formulary. So it's only gonna be$1,200 a month. So it's a huge savings for that link. So that's, those are my, that's my response there. So yes, I'd love to do, uh, complimentary, uh, drug price optimization for folks.

Magic Barclay: 27:02

Wow. Listeners. That is absolutely huge. Now, Tom, we're gonna wrap up this episode and I'd love you to join me for the next, because I really would like to delve into implications of what we do and health insurance. So listeners, this was your episode one 19. Thank you again for your time. Go forth and create your magical life.

Tom Basey: 27:27

Hi everyone.