MTA: Jerry, you’ve been in the US health insurance industry for over 33 years, can you tell us a little about your background and history?
Turney: Wow, it is hard to believe that 33 years ago I got into the insurance business entirely by accident! I actually took an insurance industry job rather than a promotion with Procter & Gamble and moved to Detroit to be a sales manager in the Institutional Cleaning Products Division. I went to work for a wonderful gentleman named Clifford Barbanell of Barbanell Associates in San Francisco, California.
He actually wanted to hire and train someone in the Taft-Hartley Labor Trust consulting business and wanted someone who knew absolutely nothing about the industry. I certainly met his low skill requirements, got the job and here I am 33 years later, still in love with the industry.
I stayed in the Labor Consulting business with Mr. Barbanell for a number of years and learned the major medical insurance, pension and Union Labor Trust business from him. I was then recruited by Blue Cross of California to be a Labor and National Accounts Group Rep in their San Francisco office and shortly thereafter moved into the San Jose office as Regional Director.
That move started a long, enjoyable career in the Blue Cross-Blue Shield system and gave me the opportunity to develop a broad range of expertise spanning all lines of business and levels of sales and marketing management. During that period I managed offices in San Jose, Sacramento, Fresno, Oakland and Los Angeles. I ended my “Blue Career” in Phoenix managing sales and marketing for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona and still have a warm feeling for the “Blue System.”
After Blue Cross of Arizona I joined The Harden Family of Companies and its parent company, Anchor Pacific Underwriters, as Vice President of Marketing and as a member of the Board of Directors. My years with this large third-party administrator exposed me even more directly to self- insured medical programs and the ever-rising costs of medical services in the US.
This was really when I started thinking that there had to be a better way to address the issues of quality care at affordable rates, however, my recognition of the role Medical Tourism could play in this crisis had to wait a few years, until the Medical Tourism Association came along. We sold The Harden Family of Companies to a private investment group and I went to work for Pan American Life Insurance Company of New Orleans, Louisiana.
It was as Sales Director at Pan American that I learned about Limited Benefit Medical Plans and their place in the ever-changing U.S. employer-employee medical insurance world. I enjoyed my time at Pan American and worked with some wonderful people like Deborah Tatro, who is now Vice President of The Manhattan Insurance Group and a brilliant innovator in the limited benefit and worksite worlds, David Lindsay of USNow, John Ferguson, developer of FlexMed Insurance, Bob Edelheit of United Group Programs and several others. We all worked with Pan American Life to push the envelope in plan design, program packaging and market development.
Since leaving Pan American Life, I have continued to work with them and other companies like USNow, AIG, American Medical Life Insurance and many others to continue the product development evolution of Limited Benefit Medical Plans and support the critical role medical tourism can play in their consumer effectiveness.
At The Consolidated Marketing Group, we are absolutely committed to Medical Tourism and ensure that every product we develop, sell or on which we do consulting work has Medical Tourism embedded in the plan design.
As I reflect on the last 30-plus years in an industry I love, my main memories are of the wonderful people with whom I worked and am thankful that I still am working with many of the same people I have known for most of these years! What an industry!
MTA: You were formerly with USNow: can you tell us a little about what USNow does and how they are a leader in a niche industry of health insurance plans?
Turney: I have known David Lindsay of USNow for ten years, since my Pan American days, and was actually an employee of USNow for a period of time before joining The Consolidated Marketing Group. I continue to work closely with USNow and Pan American Life (among several others) in the development and distribution of their Limited Benefit Medical Plans and medical tourism involvement.
Last year David Lindsay and I were talking about medical tourism and the critical role it could play in the plans we were selling in our predominantly Latin marketplace. David immediately grasped the potential of medical tourism and put the program into all new business and existing USNow groups. The effect of this strategic decision has been to rocket the USNow/Pan American Plans into the forefront of the Limited Benefit Plan marketplace.
MTA: You were at the forefront of USNow’s adoption of medical tourism into its health insurance plans for all of it’s new employer groups that enroll, can you tell us why USNow implemented medical tourism?
Turney: The decision to implement medical tourism had several considerations. Our largely Hispanic and Latin customers at USNow are at the entry level of the benefit world. A Limited Benefit Medical Plan does a number of things for the people who are covered. It gets them benefits for their day-to-day medical expenses, of course, but it also gets them a plastic ID card so a physician will see them, as well as access to PPO discounts so they are not forced to pay retail for their care (I wrote about this concept extensively in an article at www.worksitemagazine.com in the inaugural issue).
The limited nature of the benefits payable in these plans means that any benefit of any reduction in the cost of procedures will accrue directly to the customer. The cultural aspect of medical tourism is especially attractive to our customers who often will feel more comfortable in facilities in Mexico, Panama or other non-US locations, especially considering the level of facilities participating in this program.
A final consideration for medical tourism was the market focus of Pan American Life and their position as a primarily Hispanic/Latin-focused company with offices in several Central and South American countries. It is interesting to note that this has been their focus for most of their almost 100 years in business.
MTA: There are some people in the medical tourism industry that are skeptics and don’t believe U.S. insurance companies or employers are implementing medical tourism. Coming from a company that is actually doing medical tourism and has implemented it, what would your response be to these skeptics?
Turney: I would say they should follow me around for a week in my consulting work or sit in with me on my many conference calls with insurance companies, insurance agents, private employers, unions and cultural affinity groups! Each of these groups has their own distinct reasons for pursuing medical tourism. For example:
- A self-insured employer responsible for the first $50,000 in claims from each of his employees looking for an employee-friendly way to take a $50,000 procedure and reduce the cost to $20,000.
- A cultural affinity association looking for me to design a medical plan for their members that will encourage them to return to their homeland for quality care and to re-establish cultural ties for themselves and their families.
- A union which has 80 percent of its members are already going to Mexico for care with no ability to predict or control quality.
- An insurance company who just lost out in a competitive bidding situation on a large group because their competitor has a medical tourism plan composed of providers participating in the Medical Tourism Association.
- An insurance agent who just lost a long-time key client because someone else showed medical tourism to that client.
- The list goes on and on but the one constant is that the Medical Tourism Association has pulled together all the pieces and provided the leadership that is giving medical tourism the critical mass I see working every day.
MTA: How fast do you see medical tourism being adopted by other employers and insurance companies?
Turney: I think you will see medical tourism plans being incorporated into the vast majority of insured and self-insured medical programs over the next three years. The real key now is for all of us involved in any aspect of this industry to support the Medical Tourism Association as we move as one body to ensure continued evolution of the concept and to promote it with the goal that the consumer use of these programs becomes as commonplace as going to a medical specialist across town.
Think of where this concept was three years ago. The association and the dedicated work of its staff and international membership moved a mostly abstract concept into the collective consciousness of medical providers, governments, employers and insurance companies while spurring the development of a number of new supporting industries, such as facilitators. Not a bad day’s work and I have a feeling they are just getting started.
MTA: Will you be attending the upcoming World Medical Tourism & Global Health Congress in Los Angeles this year at October 26-28th?
Turney: This must be a trick question – you are kidding me, right? I love what I do and I love being around dynamic, creative and energetic people with a vision! The San Francisco convention last year was the most exciting gathering of its type that I have had the pleasure of attending and I still speak almost daily with business contacts I made there. I will be speaking again at the fall convention in Los Angeles and am already excited, I wish it were starting tomorrow!
If any readers retain anything of what we have spoken of today, I hope it is this: this is an exciting time for medical plan insurers, medical care providers, medical care consumers and medical tourism professionals and we are at the forefront of its evolution. Get involved with the Medical Tourism Association and help move this concept to the level to which it can be developed.
