Ralph Weber’s Journey: From Personal Tragedy to Healthcare Advocacy (Ep. 1)

[00:00:01] Group benefits are more than just numbers on a spreadsheet. They're a powerful tool for attracting top talent, protecting your team, and securing your business's future. But too often, they're sold as a commodity, leaving untapped potential on the table.

[00:00:19] On this podcast, Ralph Weber will share insider insights, strategies, and secrets to help you optimize your benefits, cut healthcare costs, and design plans tailored to fit your business and your people. By the end, you'll have actionable tools to create smarter solutions for your employees and your company. Let's dive in.

[00:00:44] Hello, and welcome to the Benefit Whisperer podcast hosted by Ralph Weber. Ralph, it's a real pleasure to meet you. This is your inaugural episode for this podcast. It gives us a chance to get to know you, understand you a little bit better, and delve into the kind of passions that have driven you to this point to become known as the Benefit Whisperer.

[00:01:10] And it is one heck of a story. So I'll start by saying, hi, Ralph. How are you? Hi, Bill. I'm great. Thank you. It's great to be here today. I've been looking forward to this for a long time. As have I, because clearly you and I have been speaking a number of times before we decided, hey, you know what? Let's just get on YouTube and record a podcast.

[00:01:36] Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I think you have a compelling story. It's a really compelling story. The podcast is obviously the Benefit Whisperer. And this is a podcast about making the most of your healthcare costs and how you can help employers and employees design better benefit programs and save money while doing it, but also while taking care of the people that work for them.

[00:02:02] And that kind of begs the question, Ralph, of what is it that happened in your life that brought you to this point? Why is this the passion that drives you now? Well, Bill, that is a very interesting question. And there have been a few major events that happened. I grew up in Thailand when I moved out there when I was a kid. I just turned five years old.

[00:02:32] And English is actually my third language because we spoke German at home. I learned Thai in kindergarten, then English when I started going to school. But when I was, I just turned 11, my sister was killed in a tragic accident, car accident. And I was just 11 years old. I didn't know how to deal with it. My parents were never the same after that. And I found myself, number one, having to grow up very, very quickly.

[00:03:00] After that, we were sent away to boarding school. We never really talked about it because we were a German family and we just, you know, didn't. So we really never dealt with it. About a year and a half later, my dad was diagnosed with cancer. And after I had just lost my sister just a little while before, you know, I'm thinking like, I don't want to lose another family member. Wow. So, you know, at first the cancer started in the nose and then moved to the throat.

[00:03:30] They were doing radiation and then they got to the point where this is the safe maximum dosage. If we stop the radiation, then the cancer is down here now. It'll kill you. But if we keep radiating, we might give you radiation poisoning. So he's well, keep going. So for about a year, he was a little bit better. And it ended up buying him about three years of extra life.

[00:03:58] After about a year, year and a half, he started to really kind of go downhill. I was taking care of him. I was bathing him, feeding him. You know, he lost his eyes, his sight. He lost his hearing. And then he was really, really disoriented. You know, I was taking him to the bathroom and I missed a lot of school, Bill, during those years because I was taking care of my dad. Were you even in high school at this point? What we would think of as high school?

[00:04:26] Yeah, I was. Let me see. When I came back from Thailand to Canada, I came back in the 10th grade. Most of the 10th grade, he was still OK. But then it was like towards the end of 10th grade and beginning of 11th grade. You know, that's what I was doing. I was like taking care of him, helping, you know, to take care of him. And, you know, like because of it, my grade suffered. I barely passed. And then then he died when I was about 16. And I was there when it happened.

[00:04:56] He was only 49 years old, Bill, and my mother had never worked as an adult. So and then the third major monumental event was my mom. And this only happened four years ago. She was living in Western Canada. I live in Houston now. And I used to go up there, you know, when she got into her mid 80s, I went up there, you know, four or five, sometimes six times a year just to, you know, spend some time with her.

[00:05:25] Once in a while, her neighbor would call and say, you know, we have to take your mom to the hospital. And I just jump on the next plane and get up there to be her advocate. During the pandemic, you know, she gave up her driver's license. So she was really isolated and really lonely as a lot of seniors were. Oh, yeah. And her blood pressure started going up. It was low her whole life. It started going up.

[00:05:48] And her GP, who was in his mid 80s, he was really old, was not managing her meds very well because she was seeing a naturopath and a GP. So he said, you need to get an echo. So it took about seven months to get an echo, which is pretty fast in Canada, believe it or not. Then another four months to see a cardiologist. The cardiologist changed all her meds and she was retaining a lot of fluids.

[00:06:17] So the cardiologist said, you've got to lose a lot of this because it's like it's on your heart. It's it's everywhere. So after about a month, she wasn't responding to the meds. So she called back the cardiologist office and she said, I need to get back in to see the cardiologist. They said, no, it's a one year wait. You have to wait a year. Even though she's an she's an existing patient. Yeah. Yeah. And the meds weren't working. You know, it's like, let me come. Let me come in. Right. So they said no.

[00:06:47] And then a while later, she got this letter. I don't know if it was connected or not about something called the medical assistance in dying program made. Yeah, we've heard about that. That is a program that is in Canada. And it's real. Yeah, it is. And they said the waiting time is only two weeks for this program.

[00:07:18] And she said, well, wait a second. I just really want to see the cardiologist. She had a treatable illness, Bill, a treatable. That's why you heard that didn't take a breath on my part, because I'm like, thank you. Wait, do I understand this properly? Yeah. She has a cardiologist. She has medication. She wants to go in and have him review it because it's not working. It's not being effective. But she's being treated. And she receives this letter. Yeah.

[00:07:47] So she's at the point where she can't get health care that she needs. And they're offering, let's let us euthanize you, basically, in essence. So she said, fine, fine. 13 days later, doctor and nurse. And I went up there as soon as I heard this. My sister called me. I flew right up there. And 13 days later, they came to her house and that was it. Delivered the lethal dose.

[00:08:15] So these are very, to me, these were very, very profound events. And they've kind of shaped what I felt I needed to do. You know, and we'll talk about what I did earlier. But, you know, the three elements that are my passion right now in what I do are finance, health care and mental health. And when my sister died suddenly and we didn't deal with it, we were sent to boarding school.

[00:08:44] I was 11 years old. Today, you know, we'd be seeing counselors and stuff. Right. So that was not addressed. And that is, I think, a big part of what we need to address in health care. And then the finance, when my dad died, he was 49. My mother had never worked. OK, so the finance, financial part. And I'll tell you another story, maybe in a little while, about Dr. Bernard, how he influenced that part as well.

[00:09:12] And then the other part is the health care. You know, when I was taking care of my mom and she couldn't get access to it. So those are my passions, health care, finance and mental health. And they wrap together right now with what we're doing. And I tie those three events very, very closely to that. Well, it's not hard to see why. Not hard to see why at all. I think this is a great place to take people on a quick detour, actually.

[00:09:42] So, listeners, grab a hold of yourselves because Ralph's going to explain to you he is a man of crooked paths. He's taken it to where he is today. It has not been a straight, right to it path. Because you didn't get into this right away, did you, Ralph? You were in high school and you were dealing with your father and life at that point had some different choices for you.

[00:10:12] And why don't you tell us about that? After I was taking care of my dad, I missed a lot of school. So my grades slid from a straight A till I was barely passing. So I had a hard time getting into college. So I got my commercial pilot's license and became an air traffic controller. Okay. Air traffic control was, for me, at that time, a lot of fun. I loved it. I absolutely loved it.

[00:10:41] Very, very challenging. Only, at that time, only seven out of every thousand people that wrote the test even passed the test. And the year that I went through the school, only four out of 480 passed. Okay. They put in 40 people every month and only four of us out of 480 passed. So it was very, very challenging. In air traffic control, you can't make a mistake, period.

[00:11:09] You have to be 100% on, 100% of the time. There's no gray. Okay. You have to be that much on. And I found that I really liked the challenge. I really liked the challenge of air traffic control. But I knew that it was very, very high stress. And long term, you know, I discovered at a young age, I was bringing up a young family. And it wasn't really what I wanted to do long term.

[00:11:38] So I got into management. And then I said, I've just got to work for myself. Because I like helping people. I like solving problems, uncovering issues and just crafting a plan to solve them. And I needed to be more connected with people. And, you know, as I said, the health care and the finance. And so what I did is I went into very deep, intensive study.

[00:12:07] Became a certified financial planner, which was huge. The test alone was 12 hours. Registered employee benefit consultant, group benefit associate, chartered life underwriter, chartered financial consultant, accredited estate planner, chartered advisor in philanthropy, chartered special needs consultant. So I got into these graduate level programs throughout my career, throughout the last, you

[00:12:33] know, 25, 28 years, because I always wanted to improve and be better and find these creative solutions that I could help people with. You were a well-papered individual. You are indeed certified in a number of different things. And that is incredibly, incredibly impressive. And I mean, I have a sense of why you would choose to focus specifically on health care and

[00:13:00] finance and employee benefits because of the early things that happened in your life. But it doesn't seem like it's just a natural thing to do. So why did you choose to focus specifically on health care and finance? Well, you know, with air traffic control, I had a really good analytical, sharp mind, very, very quick.

[00:13:25] And that's required in finance, you know, to be accurate and to, you know, see through numbers. It's almost like numbers talk to me. So that was the finance part. And the health care part was because of, you know, a lot of what happened to my family. Along the way, I met a gentleman named Dr. Marius Barnard.

[00:13:51] His brother, Christian Barnard, and he, the two of them, jointly performed the first heartful, sorry, successful human to human heart transplant. Right. I was going to say, I know the name Dr. Christian Barnard. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Marius Barnard was the one that removed the heart from the donor. And Christian was the one that put it in the recipient. And Dr. Barnard, they were from South Africa.

[00:14:19] They did the heart transplant December 2nd, 1967. I met him in the, I guess it was in the 90s, 90s. Yeah, in the 90s, a few times. What he told me was very, very impactful. First of all, he talked about the Hippocratic Oath, which starts out, first, do no harm. Right. And he took that very seriously. And he took it a little bit further to mean harm includes financial harm.

[00:14:46] And he said that while he, what he and his brother were doing was revolutionary. Prior to that surgery, you had a heart attack and you died. Yeah. Very low survival rate. And if you have a family that relies on your income, you have life insurance. It pays. Financially, they don't have to sell the house. But if you have a heart attack and you have a heart transplant or if you have a stroke or cancer,

[00:15:15] you know, some really, really critical illness, you chances are now that you will survive. Okay. But you could be out of work for a while, for a long time or forever. Or you could be back to work 20%, 40%, 60% of the time. And although disability will cover part of that, he lobbied the insurance company's bill to,

[00:15:41] and he created a product called critical illness insurance that pays a lump sum upon diagnosis of one of these critical illnesses. So what he said is that when his patients came for their three-month, six-month interview, he had just extended their life by giving them a new heart. Okay. And instead of coming in and saying, Dr. Bernard, I'm so happy I'm alive. Thank you for giving me an extra life. They were coming in angry.

[00:16:10] And he couldn't figure it out. He said, wait, wait. Like, yeah. Like, dude, I mean, I just give you a new heart. You're alive because of me. Right. They were angry because even though physically they were alive, financially they weren't. Okay. So they had suffered financially. Okay. So that's where the finance part comes into healthcare.

[00:16:34] Because we have brilliant doctors that can do things that were not even thought about 30, 50 years ago. They can extend lives, save lives, but often we're not the same as we were before. So we need that part taken care of as well. The financial part, whether it's through insurance, whether it's through really good healthcare benefits.

[00:17:02] But 56% of Americans, Bill, 56% of Americans have some medical debt. With insurance. 56% of Americans with insurance have some medical debt. 59% of Americans without insurance have some medical debt. Yeah, no, no, no. I mean, anybody, the connection, the nexus between health care and finances is clear all the time.

[00:17:30] In fact, the number one reason for bankruptcy in America has to do with health care costs. Absolutely. So, you know, what do you think or why do you think the U.S. health care system is so inefficient and costly? It's very costly. It's the most costly system in the world. We spent over $5 trillion per year on health care.

[00:17:58] We have in, I think, starting 2024 was the first year it exceeded $5 trillion. This year it's supposed to be even more. $5 trillion, by the way, there are only two countries on the planet that have GDP exceeding $5 trillion, and that's the U.S. and China. Every other, Germany is next. It's like $4.8 trillion. So what we spend on health care alone is bigger than the GDP of all of Germany. Okay? Wow.

[00:18:26] We spend almost about twice as much as any other developed country per capita, and it's about almost 18% of GDP. It's a ton of money. There's so much waste. And that's a much longer topic, but I'm happy to get into that and talk about where the waste is and where we need to fix it.

[00:18:48] I can't help but think that over the course of these podcasts, not necessarily this episode, I'm sure we are going to explore this topic on a much deeper level. Absolutely. You mentioned Dr. Bernard. How did his philosophy on health care and finance harm influence what you do today and how you consult with people?

[00:19:13] It influenced me a lot because a couple of reasons. Number one, individuals, business owners, employees, people. Okay? If they have a critical illness. Okay? Chances are they will survive with today's medical technology. Okay? However, chances are they may be bankrupt. Okay?

[00:19:38] So what we have to do, I think, as health care professionals, and by health care professionals, I don't mean doctors. It's not their job. But what we have to do for people is we have to not only keep them physically well and restore their health. We have to watch their financial health too. That's the bigger job. So a poorly designed health plan, 56% of Americans with health insurance have medical debt.

[00:20:06] So why do we have medical debt when we have good insurance? Okay? That's really the question. And why are there so many? So that is one of the biggest areas in this country that we need to work on, that we need to repair, that we need to fix. Yeah. You know, I have an odd and may seemingly off-the-wall statistic that I – when I was a reporter, I was in Iraq.

[00:20:34] And I was talking with an officer. We were loading up a medical evacuation plan with wounded soldiers. And he said to me that 97 – he said, if we can get the wounded to a field hospital, to a battlefield hospital, survival rate is 97%. Wow. And I said, wait a minute. I said, I'm going to stop you because I think you might have made a mistake.

[00:21:03] He said, no, no, that was not a mistake. He said, the survival rate is now 97%. But what that means is that we now have people surviving with injuries that never survived before with greater impact on their life. Yes.

[00:21:19] And, you know, in his mind, and I'm going to say in his heart, he felt like it created a greater responsibility for the medical community in terms of recognizing that simple reality. And you just reminded me of that with that because now I'm thinking, yeah, yeah, because now you have people who are capable of surviving and living but not necessarily thriving. Correct. Correct.

[00:21:49] Yeah, absolutely. And like Dr. Bernard used to say, you know, first do no harm includes financial harm. You know, if you are fixing a problem and bankrupting a family, are you helping them? Okay. And that's what he struggled with. That's what Mary as Bernard struggled with. If I am fixing a person's health and bankrupting the family, sometimes two generations of the family, you know, what good am I doing?

[00:22:18] So he had a broad holistic view and he really impacted me, Bill. He really had a large effect, you know, getting to know him. Well, I tell you what, this is a perfect place to break on episode one because I want to get into that impact and how it's shaped you and your advocacy on this issue. So let's put a pin in it, as they say.

[00:22:47] Come back to that in just a moment. For people who are listening to this podcast, Ralph and are thinking that you sound like somebody that they may want to get in touch with or maybe want to get in, you know, have a conversation with or reach out to in terms of questions. Who would those people be and what is the best way for those folks to get in touch with you? I think I narrow it down to about 380 million Americans in this country. Only 380 million. That's okay. That's all.

[00:23:17] You can deal with that. No, I mean, you know, seriously, Bill, you know, I work with all people, but most of the people I work with are business owners or, you know, they don't have to be business owners. They're people with financial needs. Most, a lot of what I do is group health care benefits. Whether you have 200, I've got, you know, employers that have, you know, a couple thousand employees and I have some that have, you know, 25.

[00:23:47] So if you have employees and you want to set up a health plan, we've got several divisions of our company that I deal with with larger groups and with smaller groups. So really, those are the people that would probably want to talk to me, you know, reach out and have a conversation. And how would they do that? Two ways. You can email me, Ralph, at thebenefitwhisperer.com or call me at 832-924-3330.

[00:24:18] Excellent. The other thing I would suggest for those of you listening to this podcast, if you're not already a subscriber, and since this is an inaugural episode, the odds are a lot of you maybe aren't, become a subscriber. That is easy. Just reach out and hit that follow button. Hit that subscribe button. The beauty of that is that every time Ralph drops a new episode of the Benefit Whisperer podcast, you're notified. You don't have to think about when did I hear it? How often does he do this?

[00:24:48] None of that. You're notified immediately that there's a new episode ready for you to listen to. And there will be a lot, Bill. Yeah. True. Share it with people. Tell people about it. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Word of mouth promotion is a most welcome tool and we would very much appreciate it.

[00:25:13] So until next time when we're going to get into the impact and advocacy of Ralph, thank you for taking the time to listen. I'm Bill Tucker on behalf of Ralph and everybody at the Benefit Whisperer. We'll see you again in the next episode. And remember, you can go out today and have a great day or not. The choice is yours. Until next time. Thank you for listening to the Benefit Whisperer podcast.

[00:25:42] Click the follow button to be notified when new episodes become available. Looking to reach out? Visit our website at www.thebenefitwhisperer.com Or give us a call at 832-924-3330. And don't forget to click the follow button to be notified when new episodes become available.

[00:26:06] The information covered and posted represents the views and opinions of the guest and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the benefit whisperer. The content has been made available for informational and educational purposes only. The content is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional investing advice. Always seek the advice of your financial advisor or other qualified financial service provider with any questions you may have regarding your investment planning.