3 sides to this story

A broker, a TPA and a debit card guy walk into a bar … Guess who got carded? The rooftop bar at the Hilton Atlanta is empty and there’s no booze. So - jokes aside - why are we even here?

Apart from being a great spot to take some photos, we have an opportunity to talk with three rising stars in the field of employee benefits. These professionals might be young - well below the average in the health insurance industry - but they have a long list of accomplishments that continues to grow.

They also have a few things in common. They started young, but not necessarily in this business. Each of them possesses an entrepreneurial spirit, a constant, burning desire to innovate. They all embrace technology - in fact, each of them insists it can solve a lot of our problems. And they all have a passion for consumerism in health care; actually, they don’t believe the industry can survive without it.

At a time when health reform threatens the role of insurance companies and insurance agents, they see nothing but opportunity. Instead of focusing on the problems, these eternal optimists are excited about the possibilities. Morale in our industry has been a little low lately - to put it mildly - so here’s hoping these stories inspire you.

Not your average broker

Like most of us, Todd Miller had a life before insurance a pretty interesting one, in fact.

At 19, Miller (now president of Worth Benefits & Consultants Inc.) started his first business an independent film production company called Spurgeon Productions. He made several short films, and his last project shot back in 2003 emerged as a full-feature production called “Pale Blue Moon.”

Along the way, Miller stumbled into professional wrestling while researching for a script. He adopted the persona “The Blue Hawaiian” and spent the next four years as a “heel” (the “bad guy”) in professional wrestling.

He still makes occasional appearances across the state of Texas. Through professional wrestling, Todd honed his skills in front of large audiences, and to this day he benefits from the confidence he gained in the ring and on the microphone.

Todd also spent time as an amateur boxer at one point and rode bulls as a hobby while in college at Texas Wesleyan University. His motto? “If it’s a bad idea, I’ll try it twice.”

And the bad ideas kept coming, like drinks at an open bar. Take the three-and-a-half years he spent as the lead test rider for Rucker Performance, a builder of high-end custom motorcycles. He had a lot of fun, but after learning his wife’s insurance wouldn’t cover on-the-job injuries, he began to consider a career helping others instead of endangering himself.

Miller isn’t your average broker far from it. He approaches the business the same way he approaches everything else with a desire to try anything and the confidence that he’ll succeed.

Miller is a forward-thinking insurance brokerage with a goal to become a strategic partner with each and every client or colleague. Apparently he’s doing something right just this year, Miller was honored as one of the top “40 under 40” in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

So what’s the secret of his success? It’s simple, really: technology, communication, industry involvement and community service.

In Miller’s eyes, technology and communication go hand in hand. Each of his group clients receives a customized benefits portal that gives employees 24-hour access to all of their benefits information in one convenient location. But it doesn’t stop there. Worth Benefits also uses benchmarking tools that allow companies of all sizes to see how their benefits package stacks up against the competition information that was previously reserved for large employers. And to keep people informed about health insurance and health reform, Miller has started a blog called HealthInsuranceForDummies.com.

Miller is also a firm believer in industry involvement. He’s an active member of the National Association of Health Underwriters and the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors. And he doesn’t just sit on the sidelines. Miller has written letters to his congressmen, senators, and even President Obama.

As Miller says, “We’re the ones on the front lines here, and it’s important that we contact our elected officials to make our opinions known. We deal with this stuff every day, and our leaders need to know how their decisions will affect our industry and affect our clients.”

But Miller’s real passion is community service. He spends a lot of time with a group called e-Partners In Giving doing hands-on charity for a number of organizations in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. For example, he and another volunteer recently spent all day in the rain chopping down dead trees at a homeless shelter.

“I like spending time giving in our community, the same place I live and will raise my family,” Miller explains. “It is important that my kids know the value of a great community and how they can be an integral part of it.”

At just 34, Miller has accomplished a lot, although he’s not without his critics: “My parents would say that I’ve wasted a lot of time and they are right. But I see life being lived, no questions asked. I’m lucky to have had those opportunities and look forward to trying the next hare-brained idea.”

The future looks bright for Worth Benefits, which kicked off a strategic partnership with The Provado Group in Fort Worth. Together the companies provide full HR consulting abilities, business coaching, employee and team assessments, and new hire partnerships.

Miller says that “Worth Benefits was born with the idea that we can bring large market practices to small and mid-market companies. Now we can provide clients with technology, communication, carrier negotiations, benchmarking, and other tools and services that many brokers struggle with or don’t even know exist. We make brokers more effective.”

Long story short

When William Short was a student at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., he participated in the prestigious Olin Cup Competition, an annual event where aspiring young entrepreneurs could submit their ideas for new business ventures.

He submitted “Fitness Rx,” a firm that would develop customized, cost-effective wellness programs for individuals based on various statistics and risk factors. It was way ahead of its time, and he ended up losing to a classmate whose parents were in the hotel business. The other guy’s submission? Another hotel. Short felt cheated and argued his idea was much more innovative and that he lost only because it wasn’t a proven concept yet.

It seems Short lost the battle but won the war. Years later, still convinced he was onto something big, he established his first business: Virtual Technologies, a company that developed disease management information systems with the goal of controlling health care expenditures through preventive medicine.

Today, Short is president and CEO of AmeriFlex Inc., one of the leading third-party administrators in the nation.

One of the first thoughts to cross your mind when you meet Short is, “How old is this guy?” He looks to be about 18, but a quick glance at his extensive resume will tell you it would take a few more years to accomplish so much.

Short is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis and is an adjunct scholar with the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy. He also holds the series 7, 63, life, and health certifications and has been published in several national publications on topics that range from health care to financial modeling. Before joining AmeriFlex, Short was director of Healthcare Services at UMB and, later, senior vice president at First Horizon Msaver. And in 2006, he co-founded Medical Commerce Direct, a company aimed at increasing health care price transparency. The company’s Web site, www.DoctorPricing.com, allows consumers to compare prices for health care procedures, an essential ingredient in consumer directed health care. So far, 700,000 doctors have signed up to be part of the network.

A self-proclaimed caffeine addict (8 to 10 cups a day), Short’s secret passion for computer programming and all things engineering still rings true today his friends and colleagues call him a “techno nerd.” He’s clearly a driven individual with the heart and soul of a true entrepreneur.

One of Short’s many duties as president and CEO is to find good people to help grow the company, but his hiring practices are a little outside the norm. He doesn’t like yes men (or women), preferring instead to surround himself with people who will challenge him, which isn’t always easy for someone with his competitive and stubborn nature.

And yet, Short insists, he is not afraid to acknowledge his own strengths and weaknesses, provided he’s able to surround himself with people who, in his words, “can pick up where I leave off.” Recruiting and empowering “the best people possible” has served Short well throughout his career and, he believes, is something that sets him apart from those who have more years of experience under their belts.

“To achieve the best results for a team, individuals must have ownership in the process from start to finish,” he explains. “I’m not afraid to stand in the shadow of their success in order to bring out the best talents and abilities in others.”

Growing up in a household where both of his parents were doctors, Short has always had a passion for health care. But Short’s interests lay not in how medicine was practiced, but rather, how it was paid for and delivered. He found his love of technology and his mathematical, numbers-oriented way of thinking could help him analyze health care costs and identify savings opportunities. Consumer-driven health care, as one might imagine, fit perfectly.

And like any good mathematician or engineer, William believes there is a formula that will give us an answer to the complex equation that is today’s health care crisis. For that reason, he’s not too worried about the future of consumer-driven health care.

“Simply put, I believe that CDHC presents the best option to align all stakeholder incentives in the health care industry which will, in turn, make for a more efficient marketplace and ultimately cause prices to decrease,” he says. “At AmeriFlex, we’re working on solutions that will help reduce costs for employers and participants, accelerate payments to providers, and simplify the payment process for all users.”

Working with a bunch of animals

When people learn Mark O’Leary grew up in Omaha, Neb., the first question they usually ask is, “Did you ever meet Marlin Perkins?”

Perkins was the host of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom from 1963 to 1985, and O’Leary did have the opportunity to meet Perkins at the age of 6 when his father was working for Mutual of Omaha. That was when he finally understood what his father did for a living he worked with a bunch of animals. Of course, the same could be said for those of us working in the industry today.

O’Leary spent his entire career in health care and financial services. He serves as senior vice president of business development for TSYS Healthcare in Minneapolis. TSYS is one of the world’s largest payment services companies, offering a broad range of issuing and acquiring payments technologies. In 2007, TSYS Healthcare was created as a division of TSYS to provide end-to-end solutions tailored to the emerging market of consumer-directed health care.

O’Leary’s passion for CDHC comes from a number of sources. When he was general manager for the health care business at Deluxe Corp. in the 1990s, he spent a great deal of time with physicians and other professionals understanding how health care is really delivered.

As O’Leary explains, “Back then we were all concerned about how this huge component of GDP could be so horribly inefficient and leave so many people wanting for proper care and coverage. Back then it was Rodham-Clinton and Ira Magaziner; now it’s Obama and Baucus, but the story remains the same.”

O’Leary does know a thing or two about politics. He helped manage a campaign for a Minnesota senate race a few years back, and that experience laid the foundation for his strong belief in both people and the power of ideas.

O’Leary’s passion is also personal. He and his wife have a 7-year-old son who was born with autism. This challenging and wonderful experience has allowed them to view CDHC from all sides. O’Leary and his wife both believe that the U.S. health care system is the best in the world and feel very fortunate to know that their child has received the best care available. They also fully understand the value and benefit of a payment system to assist with expenses and a payment card to help track those expenses for income tax purposes.

O’Leary views CDHC as a step in the right direction to empower people to manage their health care spending and outcomes. His prior work as an executive at UnitedHealth Group and Exante Financial Services (now Optum Health) in the very early days of CDHC was, in his words, “a great opportunity to be on the front lines and measure the positive impact of CDHC for employers and consumers.”

O’Leary only wishes that every American could have access to the same level of health care expertise that he and his family have experienced: “We need to find a way, a system, which will reach out to the disenfranchised so that every person in this country in need of such care would have equal access.”

O’Leary is doing his part to make a difference.

“My goal is to make an impact on health care through our work,” O’Leary says. He points to the gaps between consumer retail payments and health care payments, “If our efforts could make the system more efficient, the savings could easily fund areas of acute risk in the [United States] Ð proper pediatric care, coverage for the disenfranchised, etc.”

O’Leary seems to get great satisfaction from building businesses that fuse health care and financial services. And that’s exactly what TSYS Healthcare does. The division provides financial institutions, insurers, participants, and third-party administrators with the expertise and support to navigate all aspects of health savings accounts, health reimbursement arrangements, flexible spending accounts and lines of credit. Its new processing model enables consumers to use a single card to access all of their health care dollars.

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