Leadership isn’t about maintaining the status quo—it’s about seeing problems, rallying people, and creating solutions. In this episode, Lester Morales, founder and CEO of Next Impact, exposes the broken incentives in healthcare and how business leaders can take control.

Lester shares how his family’s devastating financial struggle with medical bills ignited his passion for fixing the system. He explains why healthcare isn’t "broken"—it’s working exactly as designed, just not in the public’s favor. With costs skyrocketing, employers feel trapped, believing they have no choice but to accept double-digit increases.

Lester debunks that myth, showing how businesses can cut costs, improve employee benefits, and demand better care. He details a proven strategy: putting employees in charge of their care, eliminating deductibles, and leveraging cost transparency. Companies that adopt these models not only save millions but also become better employers.

If you’re a leader ready to break free from the healthcare trap, this episode delivers real solutions.

Want to learn more about Lester Morales' work? Check out his website at https://www.nextimpactllc.com/.

Connect with Lester Morales on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lester-j-morales-5064b91/.

Think you'd be a great guest on the show? Apply at https://podcast.allies4me.com/podcast-guest/.

Want to learn more about Craig Andrews' work at allies4me? Check out his website at https://allies4me.com/.

Key Points & Time Stamps:

• [00:01:09] Introduction to Lester Morales: His mission to fix healthcare.
• [00:04:02] Exposing healthcare fraud: Craig’s personal experience with medical billing scams.
• [00:06:08] Why healthcare costs keep rising: The problem with medical loss ratios.
• [00:08:07] Lester’s personal story: His family’s bankruptcy due to medical bills.
• [00:13:38] How business leaders can fight back: Why the "status quo" isn’t your only option.
• [00:18:33] The hidden truth about healthcare pricing: How location affects costs.
• [00:24:20] The Walmart model: How big companies negotiate better care at lower costs.
• [00:27:49] The magic bullet for businesses: Eliminating deductibles and cutting costs.
• [00:30:40] How big insurers profit from rising costs: The real incentives behind premium hikes.
• [00:31:16] Lester’s healthcare documentary: A must-watch for business leaders.
• [00:32:49] Leaving a legacy: Why fixing healthcare is a leadership challenge.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment of my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;10
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on the show.

00;00;51;10 - 00;01;09;13
Craig Andrews
Today I want to welcome Lester Morales. He is the founder and CEO of Next Impact. He founded that Next Impact to support the education expansion of unique cost containment, health benefit strategies, and to bring transparency to health care.

00;01;09;13 - 00;01;22;25
Craig Andrews
Let me make it a little bit more personal for me. Anybody is familiar with my story? I saw the dark belly of the beast by spending three months in the hospital, and I was really disappointed when I saw.

00;01;22;28 - 00;01;53;02
Craig Andrews
And so I've been inviting people like Lester on the podcast to talk about that. But there's something else. I mean, health care expenses are quickly becoming the number two line item in businesses. And what's happening is not sustainable. People like Lester are fixing it. And I personally believe when he fixes it for businesses, he's going to fix it for the entire nation.

00;01;53;04 - 00;01;53;26
Craig Andrews
And so,

00;01;53;26 - 00;01;54;21
Craig Andrews
listen in.

00;01;54;21 - 00;01;57;02
Craig Andrews
I think it's going to be really interesting. Lester, welcome.

00;01;57;09 - 00;01;59;15
Lester Morales
Thank you. Greg. Thank you. Super

00;01;59;15 - 00;02;00;18
Lester Morales
pumped to be there.

00;02;00;18 - 00;02;04;20
Lester Morales
I enjoy these conversations and your story. Right.

00;02;04;20 - 00;02;16;09
Lester Morales
Is going to is going to ring true. So you're going to hear things and we're going to talk about things that's going to remind you of things that you went through. And the good part about this conversation, man, is that everybody is a consumer of health care.

00;02;16;09 - 00;02;21;16
Lester Morales
So there's not nobody that's going to listen to this. That isn't going to get some level of value out of it.

00;02;21;18 - 00;02;23;24
Craig Andrews
Well, you know, there was something that happened,

00;02;23;24 - 00;02;32;00
Craig Andrews
to me that didn't make sense for a long time until I started talking to people like you. And,

00;02;32;00 - 00;02;33;15
Craig Andrews
I had a company that was,

00;02;33;15 - 00;02;38;29
Craig Andrews
defrauding me. I'm not going to say their name on there, but they they're criminals. They're national.

00;02;38;29 - 00;02;40;05
Craig Andrews
Oxygen. They provide,

00;02;40;05 - 00;02;41;26
Craig Andrews
portable oxygen concentrators.

00;02;41;26 - 00;03;05;11
Craig Andrews
It's a national company. And I can say they're criminals because in 2018, they settled a lawsuit with the DOJ, and they had and they were fined $10 million, and they admitted to charging people for equipment that they never delivered knowingly. And when I came out of the hospital, I started getting all these bills. I had a stack of bills just like anybody else.

00;03;05;14 - 00;03;24;06
Craig Andrews
And my wife started writing checks and she saw a bill for oxygen. She's like, yep, he's on oxygen. She writes. It turns out they had never been an oxygen provider. I'd never been one of their customers. And when I got off oxygen, the bills kept coming. I'm like, wait a minute, what's this? And I was like, I finally called them up and said, you guys are defrauding me.

00;03;24;06 - 00;03;42;13
Craig Andrews
And they're like, no, we're going to you have the equipment, we're going to keep billing. You tried that twice. I called Blue, Blue Cross, Blue shield. The person I talked to confirmed. Oh, yeah. You weren't getting double billed from two different companies. Let me see if I can fix it. They didn't fix it. Kept coming. I finally had to sue them.

00;03;42;16 - 00;04;02;16
Craig Andrews
And I reported the fraud to Blue Cross Blue Shield in Blue cross blue shield said. Yeah, we don't see anything wrong here. And I never understood why until somebody explained it in the context of medical loss ratio. What is that? Why did they do that? Why didn't Blue Cross Blue Shield going to fix that?

00;04;02;18 - 00;04;37;29
Lester Morales
So the way I like to start the education on health care's not Broken Crag Health Care's design and incorrectly. And the reason it's foundationally designed incorrectly is misaligned incentives. So let's start with that question. Why did the carrier, the insurance company, the people you pay money to to offer you this coverage? Why didn't they want to do anything, what you call premium, they call revenue.

00;04;38;01 - 00;05;28;23
Lester Morales
Who wakes up in the morning wanting to lower their revenues. Right. So if your claims, which is a function of how much you pay in premium, continue to go up, they continue to be able to justifiably raise your premium. So unfortunately, when we have this dynamic that this entity typically a publicly traded company, wants to increase their revenues and therefore their profits to their key stakeholder, which is their shareholders, you have a misalignment of incentives on the proper KPI is right that a normal human being would want you as the customer.

00;05;28;23 - 00;05;57;06
Lester Morales
The patient would have wanted to pay less. You would have wanted to pay what's fair. You got billed for something that wasn't there. The reality of it is they just don't care because they're going to charge premium. If they lose this year, they're going to win back that money. And in any other scenario, when somebody might be bigger and be self-funded, they're just writing a check out of somebody else's checkbook.

00;05;57;09 - 00;06;01;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, and it and

00;06;01;19 - 00;06;08;27
Craig Andrews
the thing I didn't fully understand was this medical loss ratio, which if as I get it.

00;06;08;29 - 00;06;40;27
Lester Morales
I could explain it for you. So here's the thing. What the MLR, the medical loss ratio rule, which was part of the Affordable Care Act. So intentions, good execution, terrible intentions were hey, can we limit the amount of profit an insurance company can make? Set a different way. Hey, out of every dollar they collect and premium, we are going to require a certain percentage of that dollar to be paid out in health care claims.

00;06;40;29 - 00;07;17;00
Lester Morales
So this is just arithmetic. Greg. If I limit how much per dollar that you can make in profit, then as a publicly traded organization, for profit, somebody wants to make money. If I limit per dollar how much you can make, how do you make more profit? You charge more dollars. That's it. It's arithmetic. So what they tried to do over here, the game of Whac-A-Mole pat this ugly head off over here, which is hey, wait a second.

00;07;17;04 - 00;07;34;21
Lester Morales
It's why it's crazy how much rates and costs have gone up since Obamacare, when it was intended to try to lower costs. They completely missed the boat on the real things that actually could help now.

00;07;34;23 - 00;07;37;25
Craig Andrews
And it's sad because,

00;07;37;25 - 00;07;58;09
Craig Andrews
I'm, you know, I'm not the average consumer, especially the average consumer of portable oxygen. And most people don't have the, the chops to take on the provider and the health care to dig that down. And so a lot of people just get ripped off. Now, before we get too far, I want to go back,

00;07;58;09 - 00;07;59;20
Craig Andrews
and you mentioned something.

00;07;59;20 - 00;08;07;08
Craig Andrews
I love to understand this a little bit more. There was word bankruptcy or near bankruptcy for you tied to medical debt.

00;08;07;10 - 00;08;19;06
Lester Morales
Yeah. So, you know, the my whole story with the passion that I have about this business and what ultimately ended up being my life, you know, mantra here in business,

00;08;19;06 - 00;08;32;09
Lester Morales
when I was 15 years old, my dad was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. That's cancer of your bone marrow. So he had a bone marrow transplant, chemo, radiation, and hundreds of thousands of dollars of bills.

00;08;32;12 - 00;08;59;08
Lester Morales
And when I was 17 years old, my parents had to file bankruptcy. Now, I remember at that moment that bankruptcy, to me, was something that people who completely mismanaged their money is dead, right? The people that are overspending and trying to keep up with the Joneses in my head as a teenage, you know, male, those were the people that file bankruptcy.

00;08;59;14 - 00;09;25;14
Lester Morales
My parents both had jobs. Mom worked for the VA hospital. Dad worked for a bank. They both had health insurance. We had coverage from both organizations. But when you look at it, the family deductible and out of Pocket Maxes were $15,000. Now, an average middle class family, both of my parents combined at that moment weren't making $90,000 a year.

00;09;25;17 - 00;09;55;20
Lester Morales
And when you have 15,000 of it that you're going to pay for health insurance, plus your mortgage, food, groceries, sending your kids to baseball camp, putting Air Jordans on their feet and zuckerbergs on their on their high knees? What family has an extra $15,000 laying or, you know, around for this? So my parents had to file bankruptcy. So when you look at it, it's like, well, wait a second, how does somebody who have insurance actually file bankruptcy?

00;09;55;20 - 00;10;19;11
Lester Morales
And when you look at the stats, 67% of people who file a personal bankruptcy does so because of medical expenses, and over half of those people actually have insurance. So if that doesn't tell you, and then when you look at it worldwide, we are the only country that has people filing bankruptcy because of medical expenses.

00;10;19;13 - 00;10;20;24
Craig Andrews
Yeah. It's crazy.

00;10;20;24 - 00;10;21;27
Lester Morales
Crazy.

00;10;21;29 - 00;10;28;25
Craig Andrews
Well, and one thing, I hit my deductible three years in a row, you know, the year I was in the hospital,

00;10;28;25 - 00;10;38;03
Craig Andrews
then the next year, you know, that guy brought up my mouth and I had to have reconstructive surgery, and I hit my deductible that year. And then the year after that, there was another effect.

00;10;38;03 - 00;10;44;19
Craig Andrews
You know, from having a catheter for a long period of time, I had to go back in for more surgery.

00;10;44;21 - 00;10;56;28
Craig Andrews
And so I had my deductible three years in a row. And I would imagine your dad hit his deductible. It wasn't like one year he hit his deductible. It was multiple years that 15 K, 15 K.

00;10;56;28 - 00;11;24;10
Lester Morales
And you know, on things that again think about the the when I think about this, my parents when I finally kind of understood what was going on after I was an adult and went back and had a real conversation with my mom, like we didn't lose our house. So like, I kind of didn't know what bankruptcy like, I wasn't allowed to get a limo for prom, you know, things of that nature where, like, my parents just didn't have the money and I just figured, you know what?

00;11;24;10 - 00;11;51;06
Lester Morales
That's what working parents have to do, right? You just make these decisions. But as an adult, going back and having conversations with my parents, my parents were $60,000 in debt on a credit card. Trag. And I think about the mental anguish that is happening at that time where you're having to make real big decisions on do I pay for cancer treatment or do I make my mortgage payment?

00;11;51;08 - 00;11;55;07
Lester Morales
Like I can't even imagine the stress,

00;11;55;07 - 00;12;31;25
Lester Morales
that my parents were going through. Meanwhile, my brother and I, you know, are going to college and my parents, like, insulated us from all of this. It's why, you know, the the, the leaders and legacy thing. I was left a legacy for my parents and like, thinking about this. My parents were unbelievably brave in battling this big beast that we didn't even know was really occurring, to then end up 60 plus thousands of dollars in debt when they had insurance coverage.

00;12;31;27 - 00;12;48;26
Lester Morales
But we didn't take vacations. My parents didn't drive fancy cars. My mom died in the same exact house they bought in 1984, and she died in 2017. Just to give you an idea like we were just a normal, hard working, you know, family,

00;12;48;26 - 00;12;57;03
Lester Morales
and, and that's the kind of stuff. And it's happening way more than anybody ever expects.

00;12;57;03 - 00;13;18;11
Lester Morales
And so when I, when I talk about this and an audience, I'll ask people, hey, who knows somebody who's actually filed bankruptcy for health care and people raise their hand, who knows people who are struggling and to even make ends meet because of health care. You ask those two questions. 100% of the hands in a room go up.

00;13;18;13 - 00;13;38;12
Lester Morales
My next question after that is, is that what we designed this to be like? Are we out of this? Like we should look at that as a complete failure as an industry, but also as business leaders and consumers of health care? We need to demand more. And that's been, you know, kind of my mission ever since.

00;13;38;15 - 00;14;03;14
Craig Andrews
Well, and let's so let's talk a little bit about businesses because I think there's a tension I mean, obviously there are business owners out there. They're just horrible misers. And they they they don't want to support their employees any more than they have to. But I think, you know, most of the business owners that I meet would love to give wonderful health benefits to their employees, but it's getting so darn expensive.

00;14;03;17 - 00;14;12;21
Craig Andrews
And there's a sense of hopelessness and a sense that, well, this is just the system. I don't have any options.

00;14;12;21 - 00;14;28;17
Craig Andrews
But that's kind of what interests me about what you're doing is I think you're creating some options that, yeah, they're not, you know, they're not like the old days of health care, but they're a lot better than what the you know, what's out there.

00;14;28;19 - 00;15;00;05
Lester Morales
Yeah. You know. So so let's just boil this down now. Stats are so let's go year end game 2024. The average employer is spending $13,500 per employee per year on health care coverage. The average family will spend just shy of $25,000 in total cost to cover their their family, a family of four for premium and out of pocket liability.

00;15;00;10 - 00;15;12;27
Lester Morales
25 Craig. When when I started driving, $25,000 would buy you a nice car. Like I just think about that like that's that's a material amount of dollars. So.

00;15;12;28 - 00;15;29;08
Craig Andrews
Well hang on. When you talked about your your dad's deductible 15,000 deductible, the calculation I did in my head was the cost of my first car. I could have bought my first car three times back in the 80s for the cost of your dad's deductible.

00;15;29;16 - 00;16;02;07
Lester Morales
It's it's crazy, right? It's nuts when we think about it like that. And so, you know, I was fortunate to get into this business. I did it kind of the normal way as a health care advisor. So employers, companies is all have insurance brokers, agents, consultants, you know, whatever they call them. And those people, you know, help that employer kind of negotiate it and decide, you know, what type of insurance coverage, you know, what carrier, what's the plan design and all of that stuff.

00;16;02;08 - 00;16;26;11
Lester Morales
Well, health care costs have risen every year since 1968. So as a as an industry, I could say good job. We found. Right. The reality of it is if we look at CPAs and it's funny because I'll actually draw it here on the on this piece of paper, you know, health care costs have done this, right. So when we look at it, health care costs have done this right.

00;16;26;17 - 00;16;27;01
Lester Morales
David.

00;16;27;01 - 00;16;29;14
Craig Andrews
For those who are listening, it's an exponential curve.

00;16;29;16 - 00;16;59;12
Lester Morales
Yeah. And I what what's funny is I'll talk to employers all day long about what it is that they do. And, and, Craig, companies will throw a party for negotiating $0.10 on a cream of paper off their negotiation with the local supply company, but then they just think it's normal to get a double digit rate increase on their health care year over year over year over year.

00;16;59;12 - 00;17;23;18
Lester Morales
It's crazy. We call it health care's biggest lie. And it's simple. People think they can't do anything to control the cost of health care, and that's simply not true. And so the interesting part is you gotta get people out of that. You know, that that mindset that it's just like, thank you, sir. May I have another thank you, sir.

00;17;23;18 - 00;18;05;02
Lester Morales
May I have another? And I'm just hearing it over and over again. That company, that company, everybody's in the same boat and and there are absolutely two ways of changing the paradigm. But that paradigm shift needs to be started by breaking away from the status quo. That's the first thing. Like, you have to think, if this organization calls premium calls revenue, what I call premium, and they have huge market shares and are hundreds of billions of dollars of company, what is their vested interest to change?

00;18;05;05 - 00;18;33;12
Lester Morales
Meanwhile, the average consumer is asking for change. I need change as a consumer, I. I can't afford it. Eggs are more expensive. Electricity is more expensive, groceries are more expensive. And the differences between rate increases and wage increases basically means every single year that if somebody's got any level of wage increase, it's more than covered by the increase that they're going to have to pay out of their pocket for health insurance.

00;18;33;14 - 00;19;06;09
Lester Morales
And so it's the first, you know, fundamental thing is people need to think about health care and health insurance differently. If you control health care, where somebody is going to access that care, your health insurance cost will come down. So let's give you a couple of examples. An MRI Greg, where's home for you?

00;19;06;11 - 00;19;07;18
Craig Andrews
Austin, Texas.

00;19;07;21 - 00;19;47;25
Lester Morales
Austin, Texas. So in Austin, Texas, I would imagine in a 20 minute radius from you, if the cost of an MRI will range from $4000 to $600, it's the same machine. There's only a couple of manufacturers of MRI machines. It's probably very close to the same radiologist reading it. It's literally just the difference of getting an MRI at a hospital versus getting an MRI at a freestanding, independent imaging center.

00;19;47;27 - 00;20;16;09
Lester Morales
It's also the difference of using insurance versus not. I encourage your audience to just test me on this. I want them to call the local imaging shop and ask if they don't have insurance and they paid cash, what is the cash pay price for an MRI? And then I want them to call the hospital and ask the hospital that they're on a $5,000 HSA plan through insert insurance carrier here.

00;20;16;09 - 00;20;23;18
Lester Morales
I don't care and say, what should I budget to spend on that same MRI? I saw a,

00;20;23;18 - 00;20;40;25
Lester Morales
an Instagram you know, thing the other day. The girl who was on there giving it 5100 versus 700. Yeah, 700 versus 51 using insurance, 50, 100. Not using concur insurance. Paying cash 700.

00;20;40;28 - 00;20;50;07
Craig Andrews
I had that happen myself. I had to get a Cat scan. And this was for the residual thing from being categorized. And,

00;20;50;07 - 00;21;16;24
Craig Andrews
my doc scheduled the Cat scan at the number one imaging provider in Austin. It took three weeks to get in and two weeks to get an appointment, and it was going to be like 8 or $900 literally across the street, directly across the street was another imager, and they were I think they were three.

00;21;16;28 - 00;21;20;12
Craig Andrews
They were less than half the price. There were 350 bucks.

00;21;20;12 - 00;21;31;13
Craig Andrews
But that was only because they said I, they said, are you using insurance? Not that was I was still having to pay it out pocket because of my deductible. Right. But just for the hassle, filing the paperwork.

00;21;31;13 - 00;21;40;11
Craig Andrews
They charged me 350 if I, if they if I hadn't required that they filed the paperwork, it was going to be like another 50 or $100 cheaper.

00;21;40;14 - 00;21;41;22
Lester Morales
It's it's nuts.

00;21;41;29 - 00;21;49;29
Craig Andrews
And it was next day. Next day appointment. I got better service, faster service, cheaper service all in one.

00;21;50;01 - 00;22;19;20
Lester Morales
I was literally going to go there. So what people don't understand, like real estate location matters. Number one. Number two, unlike everything else that we buy, if you buy a nicer house, you're expecting to pay more money. If you buy a nicer car, you're expecting to pay more money. Health care most of the time has an inverse relationship between quality and cost, where amongst the highest quality of health care is some of the most less expensive.

00;22;19;20 - 00;22;40;14
Lester Morales
Now that makes sense. If you take a step back and think about it. If I am an orthopedic specialist, I only do elbows and this is what I do. I do it at an orthopedic surgery center and I am just cranking these things out all day long. I see more patients, I see more cases. If I do them and see them more, I do them faster.

00;22;40;16 - 00;23;01;28
Lester Morales
If I do it faster, you're under anesthesia last, which is better for the patient. If I have more experience, it's better for the patient. If you're under anesthesia and I don't screw it less and I don't screw up on the surgery, it's a cheaper cost. So a lot of times, getting people to the very best health care is actually lowering the cost.

00;23;02;00 - 00;23;09;02
Lester Morales
The second thing about that is what do they call the last place person that walks across the stage at med school?

00;23;09;04 - 00;23;10;25
Craig Andrews
Doctor.

00;23;10;27 - 00;23;11;15
Lester Morales
And I think.

00;23;11;17 - 00;23;34;02
Craig Andrews
That was my urologist. That that's not the the person I was getting that cat scam for. I was thinking the exact joke she was in incompetent. I knew why I had the issue. I saw like this because I was Katherine. Her eyes, she's like, oh no, no, no, no. And I literally I my wife went with me to the appointment and we,

00;23;34;02 - 00;23;34;20
Craig Andrews
we're coming home.

00;23;34;20 - 00;23;42;04
Craig Andrews
I said, when we get home, I want you to Google. Can this cause this? Yeah. And within ten minutes of walking in the house,

00;23;42;04 - 00;23;54;13
Craig Andrews
according to the Cleveland Clinic, we had diagnosed my doctor who was charging me a fortune surgeon. Didn't know that answer until I went back later.

00;23;54;15 - 00;24;20;29
Lester Morales
So. So when you think about that. Right. So both the cost and the quality of health care changes and is different depending on where somebody goes and access is health care, but the average consumer doesn't even stop to think twice. We cut out 39 cent coupons for Lima beans on Sundays, but we don't stop to ask the question, hey, is there a cheaper way that I can do this?

00;24;20;29 - 00;24;47;17
Lester Morales
And so what we created as a strategy, and this really stemmed from Walmart and what Walmart was doing back in the mid teens of 2000 as, hey, they picked out Centers of Excellence coffees and they said, hey, if you're on our health plan as Walmart, we've decided that these are the 19 places across the country that you're going to go to for orthopedics.

00;24;47;19 - 00;25;13;11
Lester Morales
If none of them existed in Bentonville, Arkansas, they put people on the Walmart jet and flew them to there because they realized that if they could get people to highest quality and they've negotiated those rates, that the cost come down. Now let's flip the conversation of why this is the magic bullet, in my opinion, what we call over here, Craig, a deductible.

00;25;13;14 - 00;25;16;18
Lester Morales
What does a hospital call a deductible.

00;25;16;21 - 00;25;18;00
Craig Andrews
Liability.

00;25;18;02 - 00;25;53;14
Lester Morales
Accounts receivable. Yeah. So as the years have gone on, most employers have done nothing to actually control the cost of health care. And therefore they continue to pass on more and more dollars to the employees through more out of their paycheck, more deductibles, more out of pocket. Well, when somebody who now, on average, is spending $8,000 of an out of pocket walks into the hospital but has $500 in the bank, they go on a payment program, they pay payments.

00;25;53;17 - 00;26;20;09
Lester Morales
It takes 60, 90, 100 and 2080 days to actually get the insurance company to reimburse for the services. So a hospital looks at this and says, geez, I've become essentially a collection agency. So now let's take a step back. If this pen is what we call a deductible and we take the key constituents of health care, the employer doesn't want to charge their employees a deductible.

00;26;20;09 - 00;26;40;11
Lester Morales
They would love to give them the very best benefit. You said it earlier. They would love to do that. The employee doesn't want to pay it, nor can they afford it. And the hospital doesn't even want to collect it. So why are we charging it? So what we ended up doing again, using both quality data

00;26;40;11 - 00;26;50;16
Lester Morales
and cost data, is designing a strategy where we put a health care advocate, a concierge in front of accessing health care.

00;26;50;18 - 00;27;15;28
Lester Morales
When an employee or a family member needs health care, they pick up the phone. They talk to the advocate. The advocate looking at this data is going to make a recommendation on where care should be accessed. If that member, that employee or their family member takes that recommendation. There is no cost, no co-pay, no deductible, no out-of-pocket. Why?

00;27;16;00 - 00;27;46;09
Lester Morales
We just talked about it. You can pay $700 for an MRI, or you can pay $5,100 for an MRI. If you have a $200 deductible or a co-pay or whatever, 700 plus 200 is still way cheaper than 5100. And so when you align the incentives between the patients, the employees and their family and the plan being the real payer of health care, the employer magic happens.

00;27;46;11 - 00;27;49;14
Lester Morales
And that's what we designed.

00;27;49;16 - 00;28;21;21
Craig Andrews
Well, that is awesome. And you know, the thing that I love about this is I think there's so many business owners that one provide great health care for their company, for their employees, and they're feeling hopeless. And the thing I love you just laid out the plan for hope. You can give your employees better health care at lower cost to you, lower cost to them, and that's amazing.

00;28;21;23 - 00;28;32;05
Lester Morales
And think about this, Greg, especially depending on what the industry is, right? The bluer the color, the thinner the margin. When you start doing,

00;28;32;05 - 00;28;45;29
Lester Morales
what a percentage of their overall expense is health care. It's crazy what you can do to the economics of that organization, you increasing margin and EBITDA

00;28;45;29 - 00;28;48;21
Lester Morales
just by controlling such a big expense.

00;28;48;26 - 00;29;15;16
Lester Morales
When you think about public sector stuff, you know, cities, county school districts, they don't produce a widget. The way they make money is taxes. So and teachers aren't getting fair raises. So being able to work with school districts, I mean, one school district in Florida has saved over $50 million doing the strategy. Well, now they're able to provide their teachers with a better benefit, better,

00;29;15;16 - 00;29;25;21
Lester Morales
salaries, better health care that are people that are teaching the kids of tomorrow, the future leaders, you know, of tomorrow.

00;29;25;21 - 00;29;55;08
Lester Morales
And so when I look at this, it's like, does this require a little bit more work? Absolutely. But we know how that story ends. You continue to do the same thing. Albert Einstein told us the definition of insanity, right, is thinking something's going to change. And so if that's anything that I can tell to your audiences, you know, you can do something about it, but it's not going to be found at the same place.

00;29;55;08 - 00;29;59;04
Lester Morales
You're finding your current thing that you're doing today.

00;29;59;06 - 00;30;10;20
Craig Andrews
And that wraps back to, you know, as we kind of wrap this up, that ties right back to where we started, the incentives. If you're getting your insurance through Blue Cross Blue Shield United's

00;30;10;20 - 00;30;13;22
Craig Andrews
the bookers as you guys call them. Yeah.

00;30;13;22 - 00;30;22;08
Craig Andrews
Their incentive is to have your, your premiums go. They want your premiums to go up and they're not working.

00;30;22;08 - 00;30;40;09
Craig Andrews
The only way for them to make more money because the medical loss ratio is for them to, pay out more and services. They're part of the reason the cost of health care is going up. And as long as you're tethered to them, you're going to be a part of that mechanism that's pushing the cost up instead of the mechanism that's pulling it down.

00;30;40;12 - 00;31;00;20
Lester Morales
You got it. And again, everybody in the food chain makes more money when the food chain pays more money, right? I mean, I think I'm an insurance broker. When I was a normal broker I got paid commission on premium. If their premium went up, I made more money. A hospital makes more money and more beds. A pharmaceutical company makes more money, more pills.

00;31;00;20 - 00;31;16;04
Lester Morales
A, you know, pharmacy gets more money the more people are taking pills. I mean, the whole system. It's why I say it's not broken. That's working really damn well the way it was designed. It's designed wrong. And I'll tell you, Craig, one free.

00;31;16;04 - 00;31;22;11
Lester Morales
And this is a selfish, it's selfless plug. We created a health care documentary.

00;31;22;11 - 00;31;24;01
Lester Morales
It's called it's not personal.

00;31;24;01 - 00;31;26;13
Lester Morales
It's just business. And,

00;31;26;13 - 00;31;32;20
Lester Morales
you know, hopefully in your show notes, we can put a link to the page if somebody wants the documentary to watch.

00;31;32;20 - 00;31;46;11
Lester Morales
It's about an hour and 15 minutes. It will open your eyes. Whether you're a business owner or a consumer of health care to the crap that's really there. But this was our way of trying to bang the drum

00;31;46;11 - 00;31;50;08
Lester Morales
a little bit more so that people understand what's really happening.

00;31;50;08 - 00;32;10;05
Lester Morales
And so you're going to get feedback from people who've worked at hospitals, people who have worked at the big insurance companies, the big pharmacy benefit managers, nurses, doctors who kind of understand how this all works behind the scenes and are now part of the solution, which we were all we have to admit it, we were all part of the problem.

00;32;10;05 - 00;32;10;24
Lester Morales
And,

00;32;10;24 - 00;32;36;24
Lester Morales
you know, my mom getting diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, so, you know, dragged out to close the story. I lost both of my parents by the time I was 40. My my dad ended up passing away from his cancer in 2012. Mom was diagnosed in 2014 with pancreatic cancer. She she lasted three years. And it wasn't until she kind of really encouraged me to to to go down this different road that we did.

00;32;36;25 - 00;32;49;03
Lester Morales
And, and now, you know, back to, you know, the leaving the legacy. I wake up every day making sure that there's not family is out there that are struggling, you know, with the same crap that we did.

00;32;49;03 - 00;32;56;26
Lester Morales
And, you know, I just thank you for bringing me on here because this allows me to spread the word a little bit more about why we did the documentary.

00;32;56;26 - 00;33;10;14
Lester Morales
And this is just something that every American is struggling with. And if we could just have a little bit of scrap, I mean, just a little percentage of such a big number of trillions of dollars, we can make a huge impact. So, so that's,

00;33;10;14 - 00;33;12;09
Lester Morales
that's the exciting part for me.

00;33;12;11 - 00;33;16;04
Craig Andrews
That's awesome. Lester, how can people reach you?

00;33;16;06 - 00;33;20;03
Lester Morales
You know, I would say the easiest way. I'm super active on LinkedIn.

00;33;20;03 - 00;33;23;04
Lester Morales
You know, for anybody that's in business, it's Lester J. Morales.

00;33;23;04 - 00;33;24;14
Lester Morales
Next impact,

00;33;24;14 - 00;33;25;17
Lester Morales
you know, and,

00;33;25;17 - 00;33;33;08
Lester Morales
in the show notes, I think we could provide my, my email address. It's Lester Morales at Next Impact, llc.com, and,

00;33;33;08 - 00;33;33;24
Lester Morales
you know,

00;33;33;24 - 00;33;47;19
Lester Morales
it's just, again, the the thing that I love about this, the thing I love about leaders and legacies, is every leader that's going to listen to this, they're business is their legacy.

00;33;47;19 - 00;33;57;17
Lester Morales
And I think of this because I have 20 something employees and the opportunity to lead from the front and do something different,

00;33;57;17 - 00;34;05;17
Lester Morales
is the opportunity to impact lives, which is the legacy that everybody wants to, to, to to leave. And so,

00;34;05;17 - 00;34;12;27
Lester Morales
I just think that this fits so harmoniously with your brand and your audience. I was just super pumped to be on it.

00;34;12;29 - 00;34;32;06
Craig Andrews
All right. Well, thanks. Thanks for sharing this. And I do hope people reach out because you are definitely one of the ones providing the solution. And we need more people pushing the cost down. And as opposed riding with the bookers as they take the cost up a a great thank you.

00;34;32;06 - 00;34;59;00
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Alize for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this

00;34;59;00 - 00;35;00;27
Craig Andrews
episode on social media.

00;35;00;29 - 00;35;24;09
Craig Andrews
Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend, or posted on the socials. If you know someone who would be a great guest, tag them on social media and let them know about the show, including the hashtag leaders and legacies. I love seeing your posts and suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content to make sure you don't miss anything.

00;35;24;11 - 00;35;32;16
Craig Andrews
Please go ahead and subscribe your thumbs up! Ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show. It means a lot to me.

00;35;32;16 - 00;37;34;21
Craig Andrews
It means a lot to my team. If you want to know more, please go to Alize for me.com. or follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.