There were some things at this year’s Benefits Selling Expo thatdidn’t surprise us—namely the talk of health care reform,especially as the expo was held shortly before the Supreme Courtwas expected to rule on the constitutionality of the PPACA. Andthen there were some surprises—for example, read what Howard Deanreally thinks about the Obama’s reform bill.

Still, this year’s expo—the magazine’s seventh—did what it aimsto do: educate attendees and get them to think a little outside thebox. During sessions on voluntary benefits and self-funding tokeynotes, industry insiders talked top trends. Others focused onsurviving in an industry that faces massive change and massivechallenges.

And from inspirational speaker and Benefits Selling columnistBrian Hicks to polarizing political figures, the Benefits Sellingexpo keynotes drew crowds and delivered on entertainment.

Here’s a sampling of what went on.

‘Keep the flame lit’

Brian Hicks finds his motivation in Thomas Edison.

So much so that the Benefits Selling Expo’s opening keynotespeaker has trademarked “Astound yourself today”—based after anEdison quote—as his personal slogan.

And that was Hicks’ message to expo attendees Wednesdayafternoon.

When brokers feel threatened by health care reform and vastregulatory changes, they can’t settle for mediocre, Hicks said. Asa model, they should simply pick up their cell phones and think ofEdison.

The worst thing a salesperson can do is sit around. Sales,simply put, is about people and calls.

“You can be the most educated person, but if you aren’t seeingpeople all the time, it doesn’t matter. Sometimes we confuse simplewith easy. If we did all the things we’re capable of doing, we’dliterally astound ourselves.”

“You are sitting there waiting for the phone to magically ring.But no one is calling and saying ‘we were thinking we should buysome more insurance, and thought you’d be the guy to call.’”

“But here’s the problem—what if they don’t show up?” he said.“They aren’t coming.”

Hicks said to lessen the blow of the “seismic changes” happeningin the health care industry, brokers are waiting for achange—waiting for the Supreme Court, for an economic upticks, forthe election in November.

But that doesn’t work—changes have to be made by you instead ofwaiting for someone else to do it for you.

So what’s a broker to do?

Walk on water

In a book called “If you want to walk on water, you’ve got toget out of the boat”—a title he said is much better than his ownbook’s “The Tinderbox Tapes,” author John Ortberg talked aboutPeter and the other disciples. When Peter walked on water, therewere 11 other guys that didn’t move, he said. And that Biblicaltale applies to all of us.

“For the vast majority of us, we gotta get out of the boat,”Hicks said. “There’s a comfort zone that you’ve been in for a longtime.”

Affirm the truth

Think like Jimmy Buffet, Hicks urged. In Margaritaville, Buffetevolved from saying it was nobody’s fault to finally admitting itwas his “own damn fault.” Be a Jimmy Buffet.

When Hicks said he saw “a furry pregnant woman” in the mirrorrecently, he could only blame himself and his love of biscuits andgravy.

“You think about how having an apple a day keeps the doctoraway,” he said. But when realizing that it doesn’t do anythingafter a day, that’s when people start realizing donuts taste betterthan apples. A few days doesn’t add up, but years down the road,you’ll realize you made a bad decision.

That’s the case with sales calls. Making five extra calls dailydoesn’t do much, but it amounts to more than 1,200 extra calls overthe year.

Preaching in the field

John Wesley became famous for preaching in fields at a time whenthat was considered taboo. Conventional wisdom said that if apreacher didn’t have a church, he was illegitimate. But Wesleyturned out to be so good that people often hitched up the horse andbuggy and traveled for days just to see him in action, Hicks said.Late in his life, a reporter asked how he managed to draw thosehuge crowds.

Wesley said, “God just lit me on fire and people came to watchme burn.” So Hicks asked the audience who is coming to watch youburn?

“With all the stuff going on right now, it’s easy for your flameto go out. It’s real easy to get focused on all that other stuffand not tend the flame.”

Dean: Mandate not necessary

Governor Howard Dean told a crowd of brokers—who had slammed theformer presidential candidate’s position on health care—that theindividual mandate provision is “one of the very large blunders” ofthe Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and predicted theSupreme Court will rule it unconstitutional.

“It was never necessary in the president’s bill; they shouldhave never put it in,” Dean told a packed room during the secondday of the expo. “Both Republicans and Democrats are allessentially libertarian; we hate to be told what to do by thegovernment.”

But he’s unsure what will happen because court lawyers made abrilliant case trying to convince the justices that without themandate, the bill will fall apart.

Still, Dean said he expects the rest of the bill will remainintact as the court will be “very reluctant” to get rid of all ofit.

Despite Dean’s history of support of universal health care, hesaid he wasn’t “a terribly big supporter of the president’s healthreform bill. But we have what we have.”

His lack of support for the PPACA is due to a lack of costcontrol in the bill.

Health care in the United States has long been plagued withunsustainable costs increases.

“There is almost no successful economic incentive to drive thecost down,” Dean explained. “And it’s simple: I’m a physician, youcome to me, I tell you what to buy, we send the bill to the thirdparty and I get paid for everything I do whether it works or not.The more I do to you, whether it works or not, the more I getpaid.”

The entire incentive in this system is to spend as much as youpossibly can, and that’s why health care cannot continue as itis.

The solution? Pay by the patient and not by the procedure, Deansaid.

“It saves us money if we invest in prevention,” said Dean, whois a former physician and former chairman of the DemocraticNational Committee. He noted Kaiser Permanente as an example of asystem that does that. He also said large corporations whoself-insure are also successful in that because with low turnover,they invest in their young employees health-wise because it willbenefit them in the long-run.

Small and middle-sized companies don’t have those sameincentives, he noted.

“Today we have an illness system—you don’t come and see [adoctor] unless you get sick. Now we’re going to have a realwellness program if we make this change,” he said.

If Obama wanted to be serious about cost control, he would havecapped Medicare in the PPACA. “They didn’t have the nerve to do itbecause it’s political dynamite,” he said.

Some of the unintended consequences of the PPACA will be mosteffective, Dean said.

For one thing, “the president’s bill leaves a chance for theprivate sector to actually reshape health care reform.”

Dean also mentioned the controversial McKinsey report, whichcame out last year stating that employers would drop their coverageat record numbers due to the PPACA. Though the government had saidat the time the “flawed study” was an “outlier,” Dean saidemployers dropping their coverage to employers “will absolutelyhappen.”

“By droves, small business owners will get out of the healthinsurance business …pay the fine…and go to the exchanges.”

And at some point, large employers will follow suit.

“[The PPACA] is going to get employers to do get out of thehealth insurance business, and I think that’s a good thing.”

That’s because health care inflation is disadvantaging Americanbusinesses when competing against other global businesses who don’thave that same problem, he explained.

Though it will help make an “economic impact,” he told brokersfor them it will take “an enormous change.”

After admittedly “pleasantly surprising” brokers in the audienceon his views on health reform—as The American Worker’s Jon Duczaksaid—one broker asked if his fellow Democrats would agree withhim.

But Dean said that’s not likely—at least publicly. “It’s anelection year, they say what they think they have to say to getelected.”

He also doesn’t expect presumed Republican presidential nomineeMitt Romney to overrule the PPACA as he promised if elected becauseObama will win reelection.

“The election is over,” he said. For one thing, Romney hasn’twon support of Hispanics, without which, he won’t be able to win.Dean, though, said “Romney is a good man and would have been a goodpresident.”

During his roughly 55-minutes on stage, Dean touched on theimportance of personal connections (despite the youngergeneration’s reliance on the Internet, “there is never a substitutefor personal contact”), death panels (“The only death panel youneed is the family… they make rational decisions about people theylove”); and tort reform (“It’s not as big of a problem as theRepublicans say it is, and not as small of a problem as theDemocrats say it is. But it is a problem.”).

He also talked about the trend of consumer-driven plans andreiterated the importance of personal responsibility.

On health savings accounts, he said, “I don’t think HSAs are abad thing but they certainly won’t get us anywhere close to solvingthe problem.” Though they help with “the little stuff,” they’re nothelping with the major expenses or surgeries.

The most important thing Americans can do at this point is thinkabout long-term consequences to daily decisions—from choosing whatto eat to exercising.

“We have to understand we can complain about the bureaucracy ofthe insurance companies and the doctors and the drug companies, butessential problem in health care is us…It’s very hard to look atsomeone else’s expenditures when you aren’t willing to limit yourown.”

Karen Hughes stumps for Romney

A s roughly the total political mirror of morning speaker Gov.Howard Dean, Karen Hughes, former G.W. Bush Administration insiderand Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and PublicAffairs, told Thursday’s Benefits Selling Expo audience a thing ortwo about her hopes for America—and her strong faith in thepolitical future of presumed Republican presidential candidate MittRomney.

Hughes, who lives in nearby Austin, was also able to providesome interesting insights from her experiences inside the WhiteHouse, through moments including Sept. 11 and the early days of theIraq War. “Those were three very intense years at the StateDepartment,” she noted

Mostly, Hughes—who now works as global vice chair ofinternational PR company Burson-Marsteller—made it very clear thatshe feels that President Obama has done a major disservice to theAmerican public, and has a good chance of being defeated this fall,as a result.

Hughes contends that Bush’s decisions to begin the TARP industrybailout program (“a very politically unpopular move, although theother option was the world’s economy going over the edge,” shesaid) as well as the equally unpopular notion to stage aneventually victorious surge in Iraq (“it’s a big deal to lose awar, as we found with Vietnam,” she added), both ended up beingpolitical gifts to Obama that the current administration has bashedfrom the beginning.

“We’re living in anxious and uncertain times, with the longestperiod of continued discontent that pollsters have seen since theystarted measuring these things,” Hughes said. “People arefrustrated, angry and deeply worried. After years of being toldthat we could all achieve the American Dream, people my age, thebaby boomers, are sincerely worried for our kids.”

Hughes says she believes that while Americans had the best ofintentions in electing their first African-American president, thepayoff in good will has been squandered over the last fouryears.

“People voted for an idea, the whole ‘yes we could’ thing, andtheir hopes were raised, but now they’ve been dashed. And clearlythe stage is set for a major philosophical debate, between thosewho support a limited role for government, and those with a morepaternalistic view. There’s a fundamental recognition that the pathwe’re on is not sustainable.

Having been through the experiences of life in the WhiteHouse—frantic speechwriting efforts, a mixed bag of globalresponsibilities and a “dizzying blur of meetings” on complicatedtopics—Hughes says she sincerely believes that Romney is the rightperson for the job, come this fall.

“I went to the White House and discovered that life there is aseries of really difficult decisions, and my role as Counselor tothe President was to help him become a disciplined decision maker;you need a relentless focus on what matters. I think that Romneyhas great experience making executive decisions, and he reallyunderstands the impact that policies have. He’s also shown himselfto be disciplined, steady and a good listener.”

Hughes added that she believes Romney’s experience specializingin “turnarounds” (such as his successful work with theonce-troubled Salt Lake City Winter Olympics) and his so-far quietcommitment to faith and his family will also resonate withembattled American voters.

Hughes says that any President needs to surround himself withpeople who aren’t sugar-coating the truth, and thus her time withGeorge W. Bush was particularly poignant—even if he did have atendency to occasionally make up words as he went along.

In sharp contrast to Dean’s remarks earlier in the day (“I thinkwe heard some wishful thinking,” she said), Hughes says shebelieves the reality at present is that Obama and Romney areactually in a “statistical tie” for the presidency, and thatRomney’s recent experience in more than a dozen debates puts him ata great advantage when the real action begins later this year.

“If I were on the Obama team, I’d be worried. If you look at itthrough the ‘right track, wrong track’ measurement, just 33 percentof Americans feel that the President is on the right track, rightnow. I think they’ve also seen a cautionary tale in the electionsthat have just taken place around the world, ones that have thrownout some huge incumbent candidate.”

On the issue of health care reform, Hughes said she wasn’t ableto predict the Supreme Court’s decision, though she believes eitheroutcome will provide political leverage for the Republicancamp.

“They’re going to be emboldened either way, but if the courtupholds the law, I think that Republicans will be white hot,” shenoted. “It all points to concerns about the declining trust in ourinstitutions. And a lot of Americans fundamentally believe that thefederal government can’t force you to buy something, especiallyhealth insurance.”

Despite the past few years of malaise and trouble, Hughes saidher experiences traveling around the globe and meeting people indeveloping and war-torn nations only served to reinforce her faithand positivity about the American example.

“I’m still confident the country can tackle the challenges weface. And I do truly believe that public service is a nobleendeavor, and that most people who get involved really do want tomake a positive difference. Everywhere I went around the world, Isaw Americans who were working to expand opportunities through adiplomacy of deeds.”