Back in the old days, doctors did business a little differently – rather than making the patient come to them, they went to the patient, medical bag in hand. The society was more rural at the time, hospitals were fewer and further between, and most patients would either recover or die at home, in their own bed. Over time, this started to change – physicians realized they could do more business and provide better results by seeing patients in a set location, so they traded in their black bag for a clinic with a waiting room.

Sometime later they stopped taking chickens and pigs as payment, opting instead for cash and insurance. The funny thing is, the majority of insurance agents still do business like the doctors of yesteryear. No, we normally don’t accept farm animals in lieu of commission, but we do make “house calls” most if not all of the time. That’s certainly how I got my start in insurance. In 1997, I was hired by a Medicare Advantage company – at the time it was called Medicare + Choice – to sell their Medicare HMO product.

I spent all day calling on seniors in their homes, and like anyone who’s done that job can tell you, it was an eye-opening experience. I have a million war stories, most of which you probably wouldn’t believe. At the time, this seemed like the logical way to do business – frankly, it never occurred to us that there might be another way. Danielle and David Kunkle, a brother-and-sister team in Fort Worth, seem to have found the other way. Their company, Boomer Benefits, specializes in Medicare products, and they’re quick to tell you that they don’t make house calls.