Transcribed from the recording and lightly corrected. It may contain errors; the recording is the record.
00:00Brett Morris: I had a personal experience with one of my groups that showed me I was kind of losing sight of what I was doing. These high-dollar claimants were numbers on my renewals and spreadsheets, but the fact is they were real people, and most of them were struggling with the most difficult times of their lives.
00:19Chelsea Ryckis: You're doing what you're doing because it's what people need. It's what everybody needs: employers, employees, plans. And you're doing it from a great place, and you're just solving a real problem. So I commend you for that, and thank you for the work you're doing.
00:34Brett Morris: Why can't I fix this? Why can't I find an answer to this? Praying about it, focusing on it. And then it just kind of hit me: you know what, some things are not there for me to fix. That was brought on to fix me.
00:52Donovan Ryckis: Welcome to The Business of Benefits.
00:53Chelsea Ryckis: The Business of Benefits is your no-BS, no-sales guide to real solutions.
00:57Donovan Ryckis: No gimmicks. The truth about how to take control, transform your benefits, and care for your most valuable asset: your people.
01:06Chelsea Ryckis: If you're tired of the same old sales pitch and you're ready to rethink your benefits, this podcast is for you. The truth is out there. Are you ready to hear it?
01:15Chelsea Ryckis: Today we have Brett Morris of the Good Samaritan Fund Program. This program is absolutely incredible, especially for self-funded plan sponsors who are looking for additional cost containment strategies. I specifically put this episode out right now, the end of August, early September, so that plan sponsors listening can consider this for their 1/1 renewals. It is an incredible, incredible solution. It really does create what we like to call win-wins, where the plan is winning and employees are winning. That's really the only time you should make any type of change or implement any type of point solution. So on the Samaritan Fund Program, you're going to hear about how Brett started the company, and how he uses access to charity funding and good Samaritans to fund really important, critical, high-cost claims that actually get removed off of the plan sponsor's health plan in a legal and compliant way, which we dive into a lot, the compliance side. So enjoy this episode. Can't wait to hear from you. Don't forget to like, share, subscribe, and keep tuning in, guys. It's getting better and better every single two weeks that we launch these episodes. So always appreciate your feedback. Hit us up on LinkedIn, and enjoy our conversation here with Brett.
02:30Chelsea Ryckis: Hi everybody, welcome to The Business of Benefits. I am your host, Chelsea Ryckis, and today I am joined by Brett Morris, the founder and CEO of the Samaritan Fund Program. How are you, Brett?
02:40Brett Morris: I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.
02:42Chelsea Ryckis: Yeah, I'm excited to chat. I know your program because we use it. It's incredible. And I'm really excited for the plan sponsors who listen to this podcast to learn about it, and hopefully be able to take what they learned today and actually make a huge impact on the sickest part of their population. So without further ado, why don't you give your background, and then let's transition into why and how you founded Samaritan Fund.
03:08Brett Morris: Yeah, sure. I always tell everybody I'm a recovering broker advisor. I started my career as a financial advisor. That was my degree in college. I got a degree in mathematics and economics. And it was a very tough industry, especially being young. They said, "Hey, let's develop your natural market. How many people do you know with a million dollars liquid cash?" And I'm like, look, my people are in debt and still partying in college. So I needed to learn how to sell several years out of my peer group, but it was certainly a great start to my career. Taught me a lot of things about life. I transitioned from that into employee benefits, and then more so into self-funded medical plans, just because my analytical mind was there. There's got to be something better than just quoting like all the brokers out there. What can I do to really stand out? And so I started my career doing that and really transitioned, did well, had a large book of business, mostly in the Southeast United States. I'm here in Metairie, Louisiana, which is right outside of New Orleans. And I had a personal experience with one of my groups that showed me I was kind of losing sight of what I was doing. I was losing touch. These high-dollar claimants were numbers on my renewals and spreadsheets, but the fact is that they were real people, and most of them were struggling with the most difficult times of their lives. They were just diagnosed with a disease and they don't know how to pay for it. And a combination of that, I felt the industry needed a place to turn to, to help the people that they find. As advisors, we are a conduit of information that doesn't exist anywhere else. And what can you do when you find someone struggling? There should be a place for our industry to turn to, to find them the help. And so that's really where the inspiration came from to start the Samaritan Fund Program and the Samaritan Fund Foundation.
05:34Chelsea Ryckis: That's incredible. So let's dive a little bit deeper into what exactly the Samaritan Fund Program does. And I actually didn't realize there was a foundation, so I'd love to hear about that as well.
05:45Brett Morris: Sure. What the Samaritan Fund Program does is we find individuals that are struggling with high-cost and difficult diseases, and we find them through the employer. When we identify them, we then find them insurance alternatives, like on the individual market, one that's acceptable to them, has all their doctors, drugs, and hospitals. Then we source them funds from our third-party sponsors that we call, of course, Samaritans. And we raise them enough funds to pay for all of their cost share. That would be all of their premium up to their out-of-pocket maximum. We want to bring their cost to zero. And so it's a tremendous help to them at a time when they really need it, and they decide to come onto our program. It's completely voluntary, but it's a tremendous help to them. But also when that happens, they make the decision to waive off of their group plan. A very powerful byproduct of what we do is the savings it could generate for a plan by having those claims leave. It is absolutely tremendous. So it's a huge win for not only them, but the employer and the plan as well.
07:07Chelsea Ryckis: Is there a component where, so you talked about raising funds, is that also taking advantage of any type of charity funding that you can find, whether it's hospital, government, different associations? I know certain groups have funds like that. Are you basically going out and finding every dollar that's available out there when you say you raise?
07:33Brett Morris: It is. And that was really a tremendous compliance component of what we do and how we do it. The rules are clear as far as an employer: you can't directly incentivize your employee to leave your plan. You also couldn't indirectly incentivize, meaning you couldn't pay my company and then I turn around and offer it to them. It certainly would make what we do a lot easier, but that's why we have to take the cumbersome and rather expensive step of making sure that all of the funds come from our third-party sponsors, and none of it comes from the employer or my company either. And that's what makes it compliant. I get that question a lot: well, who are these Samaritan sponsors? And I say, I only think about that at three o'clock every morning. The fact is that they are other foundations and charities. Most of what we do is we find our private money. We don't do much government grant writing, just because, I mean, I'm open to it, but there's a whole other element to that. It makes it a little bit more difficult. But essentially, we're making these connections with these other people that want to help. Even when I was an agent, I was on the board of a foundation. I'd meet a lot of these other ones and I'd ask them all the same question: who are you trying to help? And they'd say something like, well, we want to help kids with cystic fibrosis. I'm like, okay, well, that's great. How do you find the kids? And they'd all kind of hem and haw and maybe have a different answer there. But I'm thinking to myself, I had several hundred thousand lives of data underneath my book. I know where you are. I know exactly where these kids are. I know which ones need the most help. Would you like to know? And that's where my eyes were really opened. Man, we are in a unique position in the employee benefits industry to have access to that. And so essentially our pitch to them is, we can help you fulfill your mission and your cause by making that connection to the people that you're trying to help. And there's also an element to that where we can bypass all of their cumbersome application processes and reimbursements by the use of our debit card system. It makes it a lot easier on everybody. But essentially, that's how we make these connections with our sponsors to the people that we're trying to help.
10:04Chelsea Ryckis: When I've brought up your program, or something similar to it, to plan sponsors — and I actually don't think that there's something similar to Samaritan Fund, I do think that there's other vendors in the space that maybe focus on one thing in particular, as opposed to all high-cost claims like you do — but nonetheless, the compliance part is always, well, how can we do that legally? And, to your point, you can't incentivize people to come off of your plan. So I guess I'd be curious, and I'm sure plan sponsors are curious, and I know how we do it, but I'd love to hear how you facilitate that, and who has that conversation when we're talking about a particular high-cost claimant under a certain plan.
10:47Brett Morris: For compliance?
10:50Chelsea Ryckis: Yeah.
10:51Brett Morris: Yeah, of course, we're kind of the pioneers on what we do and how we do it. And so we spare no expense and time on making sure what we do is absolutely compliant. A huge part of it: when we started the program, we got several legal opinions on what we do across the country, but our main one, we went to a firm out of Washington, D.C., called Nixon Peabody. And we chose them. They're one of the top firms in the country in that field. But what was unique about what they did for us is they also invited the Department of Labor in to audit and flip our program upside down. Pretty scary at the time, but you know what? If what we're doing is wrong, we need to know. So we're happy to say that the Department of Labor came out and said, look, the way we see that you're doing things is compliant. They make mention of that in their opinion, which we're happy to share with everybody. We're quite proud of it.
11:59Chelsea Ryckis: Yeah.
12:00Brett Morris: So I get people that say, look, we don't think what you're doing is compliant. And I'll say, well, you disagree with the Department of Labor by thinking that, for one.
12:10Chelsea Ryckis: Right.
12:10Brett Morris: And that was a big element when we were young. You really can't say now that it's something brand new. We have been investigated by at least six regulatory agencies, and each one of them has decided what we're doing is compliant. Some of them even wrote us letters of endorsement saying they think what we're doing is great, on top of it being compliant. So we have been through the fire. And it gives people peace of mind that the regulatory agencies that would come down on us have investigated us. It just makes us all that much safer.
12:57Chelsea Ryckis: Yeah. And you know what I find really funny about the compliance piece is, usually when there's hesitancy around something like this, it's coming from an incumbent broker who's trying to protect their land, right? They're just like, oh, that's something innovative. And, oh, you're going to need access to data. And if you need access to data, then you need to be self-funded, and I don't know how to do that. I only know how to write Blue Cross, right?
13:24Brett Morris: Right.
13:24Chelsea Ryckis: Or the alternative: if they're being paid a percentage of premium, I don't want people off the plan. I mean, I don't think that brokers are traditionally that nefarious. However, just the misaligned incentives — if you are in a program like that, it doesn't really lend itself well to risk avoidance, which is exactly what this is. Yeah, no, I appreciate you going into depth on the compliance side. And I just find it funny that plan sponsors will question something like this, but then they'll turn around and do like the wellness tax incentive. Have you heard about that? There's a name for it, I think it's SIMERP. It's such a questionable legal loophole play, and it's really schemey. And then something like this, which it's not whatsoever. So anyways, I digress. I wanted to take a moment to sort of educate plan sponsors on where this falls in terms of risk management, and I'd love your opinion on it. The way that we approach healthcare risk,
14:26Brett Morris: Sure.
14:26Chelsea Ryckis: we look at it in four quadrants. So you can avoid risk altogether, you can reduce it, you can transfer it, and you can retain a healthy amount of risk. When you're self-funded, you can retain risk. And because you have more control, you can do all the others as well. You can transfer some to stop loss. You can reduce risk by paying less for care, so instead of $100,000 for a drug, you can source it and maybe pay $10,000, whatever that is. Or reference-based pricing, paying a percentage of Medicare as opposed to a large dollar amount. Avoid would be something like this: we're literally removing risk off of the plan and finding other funding for those needs. Transfer is the most expensive mode of risk management, and usually what we see is, the larger the transfer, the larger the commission to the broker — I'm going to sell this risk to Blue Cross, or I'm going to sell this risk to United. Have you ever thought about the risk matrix, or any insights on that and how that correlates with Samaritan Fund?
15:30Brett Morris: You know, the transfer — not only, as you say, could it be expensive, but the way it's done, it could be risky as well, which is why I think people, when they first hear about what we do, not understanding how we do it, they're skeptical. Because the main thing that I think even sparked our success is that we put our participants first. I say that the tremendous amount of savings that goes to the plan is a byproduct of what we do. And it is voluntary, and it has to be great for them to make the decision to move forward with that. And so that transfer, transferring that off, that is always available to members of a plan. Anybody can decide to waive off of their group plan and elect an individual plan. Anybody can go out and start their own GoFundMe and try to raise funds for themselves. And so what we're doing at the Samaritan Fund Program technically exists without us. But when people are struggling with a disease and trying, they don't know where to turn, it can be very cumbersome. We try to put them first, bring the help to them, and let them make the decision to come off of the plan. I was going over some old war stories with other brokers, and I think if you've been in the business long enough, you've been in the situation where you'd have a group, maybe they have a $2 million claimant and it's blowing up everything in the renewal. And you're sitting there with the CFO and CEO and they say, man, this is going to cost us so much. Everybody out of the room. I want to talk to Brett, just me and Brett. And what do they do? Brett, we've got to bonus this guy, right? I'm going to walk him in, I'm going to level with him. I'm going to tell him, I'm going to give you this big bonus.
17:41Chelsea Ryckis: Just don't elect our plan, and go anywhere else.
17:44Brett Morris: Yeah, right. And it's a logical conclusion. You can see a CEO doing that. And then your HR is like, no, we can't do that. But the CEO's like, what are they going to fine me? Is it going to be $2 million? If they fine me $1 million, I'm to the good. So they're trying to do the math in their head. And so there's got to be a better way. There's got to be a compliant way. And that's when you have to make it better for the participant, to where they win and you help them. And that's not only what makes it compliant and safe, the kids call it plot armor. What we're doing is a good thing. And so nobody's going to be upset if it's a good thing for everybody.
18:30Chelsea Ryckis: Win-win, yeah. You're significantly cooler than I am. I don't even know what that means, plot armor. I hear kids say things these days and I'm like, I am not old enough to be this out of touch with what kids are like, you know what I mean? With like, what is it, pop culture? See, I don't even know. I'm such an old person.
18:51Brett Morris: Well, I've got two teenagers, so I have to speak a little bit of the language. But I'll give you another example. One of the states that was investigating us, making sure that we're compliant, we had a meeting with them. We had set up with my compliance team, and the person from the department got on. And the first thing they said was, okay, Brett, you can call off the dogs. I was like, what do you mean? What are you talking about? She says, our office has been inundated with emails and calls saying what Samaritan Fund is doing is great. What are you doing an investigation on them for? I mean, they're helping people. It'd be a nightmare PR-wise if y'all did anything. So we do not want to get sideways with you. What you do is great. We just want to get a little bit of information to make sure that you're compliant. And we got through that. And so again, it's not that it is a legal defense, but the fact that we are putting people first, we are helping people. Who can be against that?
20:06Chelsea Ryckis: One hundred percent. Right, exactly. Can you explain to the plan sponsors listening, if they were like, okay, so how does this actually work in practice? So we have our renewal meeting, we see we have an end-stage renal disease that's blowing up the plan, or whatever it is, multiple potentially. Oncology obviously is huge right now as well. So there's that issue. We don't have Samaritan Fund. What would be our next step?
20:34Brett Morris: Well, the first thing I'd tell not only the advisors but the employers involved: let's quantify the kind of savings that would occur if the Samaritan Fund Program is successful. And that'd simply be by the way you look at your quotes, look at your renewals. They can do that through their stop-loss carrier, maybe get a no-laser quote, and then get a quote with as much laser as possible with as much rate relief as possible. Then, hey, if this person were to leave the plan, this is the amount of savings that we can bring, which is tremendous. Once we decide that that's going to make a tremendous difference, we want to roll it out to the group, but we want to be finished with that rollout before open enrollment even begins. And that's because the participant is going to decide to mark waive at open enrollment, and they're not going to do that unless everything is in place and they feel comfortable with it. So we get with the employer, they decide what of our materials they think would get that message across to their employees, and then they roll it out. It's a very simple process getting that message out. And we engage with them. And after about two weeks from when we get that form, we're able to come back to them and say, hey, we found a solution, and this person did in fact decide to come onto the Samaritan Fund Program. And having that information, maybe ideally 45 days out from renewal, that's just powerful information to have for your renewal. Now you know that you can take that laser quote, or you can use that in your negotiations. And it's going to move the needle quite a bit and make a tremendous difference in the math and looking at the expected.
22:29Chelsea Ryckis: I mean, I have an example from just about a year ago now. It's one of our smallest clients, I think they've maybe got 150 insured. [details removed] This one member was impacting renewal by over $250,000. And that's exactly — we basically did this process, and the entire $250,000 was negated, which is pretty incredible. And to your point, the byproduct is the financial savings. The best part is that he [details removed]. So he got a significantly cheaper plan. Obviously with you guys, it would be no out-of-pocket expense, which is incredible. That's the real win there for that member. So I love the idea, and we talk about it all the time, of you have to create win-wins, right? This is obviously one way, but like incentivized plan design, steerage to direct contracts, or no out-of-pocket for specialty drugs, or whatever the bundled savings that we have, you have to really give people a reason to want to do something a little bit different. So I think what you're doing is absolutely incredible. So tell me, do you have any good stories of things that have happened recently that you'd want to share?
24:20Brett Morris: I mean, we're always collecting testimonials from our participants. If you see our social media and all the collages of people saying this helped us and saved our lives. You never realize how much the financial aspect of battling a disease plays a part in that, and the stress and worry that that causes. And that stress and worry has a physical effect on people.
24:51Chelsea Ryckis: Absolutely.
24:52Brett Morris: And when you're trying to battle a disease and now I'm worrying about this. Being able to alleviate that from them is just a tremendous feeling. And getting that feedback is fun, absolutely. But a unique thing that happened recently, we got a picture of a participant, and he said, look, I was at my company and we're at a wedding and I saw a good friend of mine. I've been battling cancer, and he had been battling something too. And we started talking, and I said, look, I joined this Samaritan Fund Program. They're taking care of me. It's amazing. Thank God for them. It's really helped. And as he's talking, his friend reaches out in his wallet and pulls out a Samaritan Fund card, because he had gotten it from his employer. So they took pictures with their cards, unbeknownst to each other. So I thought that kind of came full circle to me. Like, man, we've made an impact on the industry to where we're starting to get recognized amongst people. And so that was a great story for me.
26:02Chelsea Ryckis: That really is. And you started this at a time — and I say this because we started Ethos Benefits, it says you did this 15 years ago, and that's right around the time that Ethos started as well. And this type of cost—
26:15Brett Morris: Not 15. I started the Samaritan Fund Program in 2021, so I've kind of been in it since the heart of COVID. Fifteen years is how long I've been in the industry, as an advisor.
26:32Chelsea Ryckis: Okay. Did you say you started this after COVID?
26:36Brett Morris: Kind of right in the heart of COVID.
26:36Chelsea Ryckis: Nice.
26:38Brett Morris: It is. One of my VPs, she loves the startup story. One of the pictures I have is, I had two little desks in this side office that I have. One was for my son, the other one was for my daughter. I've got a screen with each of their teachers on, because they're at home doing remote learning. So I had teacher here, teacher here, I had some books here. On the other side, I had a mock-up of what our logo might have looked like for the Samaritan Fund Program. And of course, my lab's laying in the middle of the floor. And I was like, yeah, we're juggling a lot, but this is where it came from. So it was weird times, sometimes difficult times, but it was exciting. But yeah, we started in 2021. I did 13 cases. I was just by myself that year, a lot of building.
27:33Chelsea Ryckis: You did them start to finish?
27:36Brett Morris: What's that?
27:36Chelsea Ryckis: You did all of that start to finish? Like you sourced the charity care or the assistance, you did everything, the communication?
27:43Brett Morris: A lot of compliance and legal reviews in that first year. And so I worked on that kind of all year, and then got a couple of participants. And thanks to my employers, you know who you are, that really took a leap of faith on a new strategy there. And so I did 13 cases just by myself that year. And now we've grown into over 2,000 employer groups across 49 states and in the Virgin Islands. So it's been a tremendous journey, and we've got a lot to go.
28:18Chelsea Ryckis: So how do you guys get paid, and how do you make money?
28:24Brett Morris: We charge a fee for each successful case that we have, and we designed it that way. You mentioned the risk mitigation strategies, and it's very indicative of those kinds of strategies to charge a percentage of savings.
28:40Chelsea Ryckis: For sure.
28:40Brett Morris: Yeah, I hated that as an employer. I didn't want to take advantage, and we've done $5 million lasers. It'd have been easy to charge $1.5 million for that case. But I was like, no, I don't want to take advantage of situations. I wanted to stay consistent with my message and how we do that. And we're in it for the long game. And also, we wanted to tie when we charge our fee to the same thing that triggered the savings for the employer, which is, if it's successful and those claims leave the plan and those savings are generated, that's also when we send our invoice. So there's no risk to roll it out for an employer to do that. We have employers that roll out our program that don't have a case. Maybe they had one in the past, but they don't now. But they know that statistically, if they keep rolling the dice, seven's going to come. So they want to have their people aware of it, and so they continue with the campaign to roll that out to their employees.
29:59Chelsea Ryckis: Interesting. Yeah, I really love the fact that it's essentially utilization-based and performance-based, in the sense that we've already delivered value. That's what we're always looking for when we're sourcing vendors and whatnot. That's incredible. Are there any things, when you look back on the last few years of business, anything that you would have done maybe differently early on that you've learned the hard way?
30:28Brett Morris: You know, I think some of those things that I learned the hard way, I needed to learn the hard way.
30:37Chelsea Ryckis: I hear you.
30:39Brett Morris: I had to grow a lot as a person on some things. And recently I had an issue that I was trying to work on, and I just could not fix this issue. And I'm a fixer, and I'm stubborn too. So I will attack it until it gets done. And I was like, why can't I fix this? Why can't I find an answer to this? And praying about it, focusing on it. And it just kind of hit me: you know what, some things are not there for me to fix. That was brought on to fix me.
31:18Chelsea Ryckis: Ooh.
31:20Brett Morris: And I needed to grow beyond that to realize that. And so I don't know if it could have happened any other way, or shortcuts I could have taken. There are lessons that I needed to learn, and that make us who we are. And so I don't have regrets.
31:38Chelsea Ryckis: Yeah, no, I understand. They say that running a business is basically like the highest epitome of professional, spiritual, personal growth. It's like you're looking in a mirror every single day, especially when you're growing as quickly. You've scaled quickly, and as have we at Ethos. So I also know firsthand. And when you're doing mission-driven work too, there's that added component of you're just so passionate that there is no quit, right? There is no stopping the fight. We're going to find a solution. It's not, can we help this person? It's, we're going to help this person, and I just don't know how yet, but we're going to make it happen. And yeah, it's such an all-in proposition when you're doing work like you're doing. So I want to recognize you for that. There's a lot of vendors and a lot of PE activity coming into this healthcare space, and they're doing it because there's a lot of money on the table for people. And you're doing what you're doing because it's what people need. It's what everybody needs: employers, employees, plans. And you're doing it from a great place, and you're just solving a real problem. So I commend you for that. And thank you for the work you're doing.
32:54Brett Morris: No, I appreciate that. Thank you. Our mission is to give the peace of mind and the healing to the participants that we have. But I have kind of moved into another slogan as well: insurance, medical insurance, is not really that old. The first HMOs came out in the 1970s. What did people do before medical insurance, when they were struggling? People helped each other.
33:28Chelsea Ryckis: Right. There you go. Yeah.
33:29Brett Morris: I mean, directly.
33:31Chelsea Ryckis: Yeah.
33:31Brett Morris: And I think we've lost sight of that. Everything's gotten so complicated, the compliance and the policies and this and that, when we still can help each other. And it is still the most efficient way to do that. And I think we need to take a step back and do more of that. And that's what we're trying to bring back to the industry.
33:52Chelsea Ryckis: Especially with the way that the industry — I mean, all industries are changing with AI, becoming less and less personal, right? I think what you do is going to become more and more important. So I wish you continued success. I hope the plan sponsors that have been listening today understand the invaluable nature, honestly, of what the Samaritan Fund Program is offering. If they want to connect with you, what's the easiest and best way for them to do so?
34:20Brett Morris: Easy. If you want to look at us, you can go to samaritanfundprogram.com. If you want to look at the good things our foundation is doing, samaritanfundfoundation.org. And of course, you can always reach out to us at service@samaritanfundprogram.com if you want to inquire about learning more about us. We host live webinars several times a week. We'd love to have you on, where you can ask questions. We walk you through from beginning to end on how the program works. And that'd be the best place to get started. We're happy to send you that invitation and welcome you to what we do.
34:59Chelsea Ryckis: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Brett, for being on the show. And I look forward to connecting with you again soon.
35:05Brett Morris: Thank you, Chelsea.
