Blog 2 of the “Why I Do This” Series | By Anne Glorioso, CEO, Solidarity Health Network
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I know that title sounds like a terrible business strategy. Bear with me.
In the mid-1990s, I was asked to hold meetings for a group of workers who had just lost their jobs in a bankruptcy. These weren’t people browsing their options from a place of comfort. They were scared. They had families. They had just watched the rug get pulled out from under them and they needed someone to tell them the truth about what came next.
So that’s what we did.
The Truth About the Market
We sat with those workers and we were honest. Brutally, uncomplicatedly honest.
In most cases? COBRA was their best option. Or getting onto a spouse’s plan. The individual market at the time was not a friendly place for people coming out of a group plan — and we weren’t going to pretend otherwise to make a sale. We weren’t going to dress up a bad option and call it a solution just because it was easier than telling the truth. We weren’t going to put lipstick on something that wouldn’t hold up the first time someone walked into a doctor’s office with a real medical bill.
We held the meetings. We explained the options. We told them what the market actually looked like — not what we wished it looked like, not what would have been convenient for our commission checks — and we sent them in the right direction even when that direction didn’t involve us.
My commission checks that first year were not impressive.
But I slept fine.
What Honesty Actually Costs You
Here’s what telling the truth cost me: commissions. Enrollments. Numbers on a spreadsheet that weren’t there.
Here’s what it gave me: everything else.
The people I never enrolled started referring me to everyone they knew. People who never even used my services became my most loyal advocates — because they trusted me. And trust, in this business, is the whole product.
One of those referrals led to a phone call from a major labor organization. They had been through the presentations. They had heard the promises. They had watched those promises fall apart on the back end and left their members holding the bag. They were skeptical — and they had every right to be.
We told them the truth about the law and the way individual health insurance actually works. We explained that the plans they were being sold would not work — and exactly why. We showed them what would happen to their members when those plans fell apart at the point of care. We protected the members and we did it the hard way. Not the easy way that would have looked good in a presentation and hurt their retirees six months later.
They chose us. We have had that client for over 23 years.
Everyone else told them what they wanted to hear. We told them the truth. That was 23 years ago. They’re still with us.
The Retiree Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About
I want to address something that has been happening for years and is getting worse.
Employers are dumping retirees into individual plans to save money. I understand the impulse — group coverage is expensive and the math can look appealing on the surface. But here’s what the spreadsheet doesn’t show you: the savings usually aren’t really there. There are way more creative ways to save money on benefits and reduce the OPEB liability. And more importantly, you are leaving your retirees completely unprotected in a market full of predatory products designed to look like coverage and fall apart the moment someone gets sick.
We have told clients this. Directly. More than once.
Some listened. Some didn’t.
The ones who didn’t? A few years later, the phone rings. It’s them. And the conversation goes something like: “You were right. Our retirees are getting hurt out there. Can you help us fix this and bring them back onto group coverage?”
Yes. We can. We always could. But the retirees paid the price in the meantime — and that part is hard to fix.
This is exactly why we don’t tell clients what they want to hear. Because the people on the other end of these decisions are real people who worked their whole lives and deserve real protection. Not a plan someone put together because it was cheaper and easier and nobody wanted to have the hard conversation.
We have the hard conversation. Every time. That’s the job.
The Part About Referrals Nobody Talks About
The best referrals don’t come from your happiest clients. They come from the people who were not expecting total honesty – and got it anyway.
The dislocated worker I sent away with a COBRA recommendation instead of an enrollment wasn’t my client. But she told her union rep about me. Her union rep told a trustee. That trustee made a phone call. And that phone call turned into a 23-year relationship that is still going strong today.
You cannot manufacture that. You can only earn it.
One honest conversation at a time.
Next in the series: “I Was Not Going to Let CMS Win” — the $158 million project nobody saw coming.
Anne Glorioso | CEO & Owner, Solidarity Health Network, Inc.
Cleveland, Ohio | www.shninc.org | SOC 2 Type II Certified | Founded 1989
SHN employees are proud members of CWA Local 4340