Rising health care costs are putting employers under pressure—and giving knowledgeable brokers an opportunity to prove their value.

In this episode of The Noble Agents, Tom Stein sits down with John Nelson of TPAC, whose underwriting career began in 1988, to explore how brokers can help employers understand their costs and take action to control them. From underwriting with adding machines and graph paper to today’s flexible self-funded and level-funded plans, John brings decades of perspective to the conversation.

They discuss direct primary care, the hidden cost of referral patterns, why the location of care matters, and how pricing transparency can help brokers guide better decisions. They also examine broker compensation and what it takes to earn the employer’s trust.

For agents looking to strengthen client relationships and improve renewal outcomes, this conversation connects plan stewardship with practical ways to deliver greater value.

Take the Red Pill: Kelly Fristoe on Breaking the Healthcare Status Quo

Kelly Fristoe didn’t plan on building a career in health insurance.

He started out trying to become a pharmacist, struggled through school, sold supplemental insurance door-to-door, failed forward through several early career moves, and eventually built a successful benefits agency. Along the way, he became deeply involved in NAHU—now NABIP—and ultimately served as the final president of NAHU and the first president of NABIP.

In this episode of The Noble Agents, Kelly joins Tom Stein for a wide-ranging conversation about what happens when a broker stops simply selling insurance and starts questioning how healthcare is actually financed.

They discuss the extraordinary difference between healthcare prices and costs, including Kelly's example of a procedure priced around $6,800 at the Surgery Center of Oklahoma versus roughly $46,000 through a traditional hospital/network arrangement.

Kelly also explains why Direct Primary Care, transparent pricing, alternative plan design, and better incentives can fundamentally change the economics of an employer health plan.

One of the central ideas of the conversation is simple:

Healthcare and health insurance are not the same thing.

Healthcare is the care delivered by physicians and medical professionals. Insurance is one of the financing mechanisms used to pay for that care. Confusing the two makes it much harder for employers and employees to understand where their healthcare dollars are actually going.

Tom and Kelly also dig into broker compensation and incentives. Kelly describes moving away from relying solely on traditional commissions and toward arrangements where his firm can participate financially when it creates measurable savings for the employer—making it much clearer whose side of the table the advisor is sitting on.

The conversation ultimately becomes a challenge to brokers, especially those early in their careers: learn the industry deeply enough to uncover its secrets rather than simply becoming programmed by the existing system.

• How Kelly went from aspiring pharmacist to health benefits advisor
• Why persistence matters more than a perfect start
• How NAHU/NABIP helped Kelly develop as a broker and industry leader
• Why competitors can—and should—learn from one another
• The difference between healthcare delivery and healthcare financing
• Why hospital chargemaster prices can distort the conversation around healthcare costs
• What the Surgery Center of Oklahoma teaches us about transparent pricing
• Why Direct Primary Care can improve both access and incentives
• How rising healthcare costs can consume money that otherwise could become employee wages
• Why broker compensation structures influence behavior
• Moving from commission-based compensation toward value-based advisory relationships
• Why small employers still need sophisticated benefits advice
• The books Kelly recommends to brokers who want to understand the healthcare system
• Why the next generation of brokers should be willing to “take the red pill”
• How industry relationships and collaboration can make brokers dramatically better at solving client problems

Never Pay the First Bill — Marshall Allen

The Price We Pay — Marty Makary

Kelly recommends both as starting points for brokers who want to understand healthcare pricing and begin questioning assumptions built into the traditional system.

The best benefits advisors aren't merely shopping insurance policies.

They're learning how healthcare is priced, how it is financed, where incentives are misaligned, and how to build plans that leave more money with employers and employees.

As Kelly puts it through the Matrix analogy, brokers have a choice: accept the system as it is—or take the red pill, pull back the curtain, and learn how it actually works.

Get out there. Fight for Main Street. And go help somebody.

This episode of The Noble Agents features a wide-ranging conversation with Garrick from The Phia Group about what separates great consultants, brokers, and benefit professionals from everyone else.

Garrick shares his unconventional path into the healthcare benefits industry, beginning as a claims analyst working on subrogation and eventually moving into business development. His story becomes a broader discussion about curiosity, initiative, incentives, consultative selling, and the willingness to admit what you don’t know.

A central theme is that great selling is not about pushing a product. It starts with understanding the client’s actual problem, defining what a successful outcome looks like, and then determining whether your solution can realistically get them there. Sometimes the most credible thing an advisor can say is, “We’re not the right solution for you.”

The conversation also explores why organizations need cultures where people can ask “dumb questions,” challenge assumptions, and contribute ideas from every level. That same mindset applies to brokers working with employers: clients often don’t know what they don’t know, so the advisor’s job is to create an environment where uncomfortable questions can be asked and real problems can be uncovered.

Tom and Garrick dig into one of the biggest mistakes in healthcare consulting: starting with a solution—or a conclusion—before proving there is actually a problem. They discuss claims audits, plan documents, stop-loss contracts, vendor arrangements, and the danger of chasing sophisticated cost-containment strategies while ignoring the basic infrastructure of a self-funded health plan.

The episode ultimately identifies the trait Garrick sees in the best benefits consultants: high agency combined with curiosity. The strongest advisors aren’t married to a carrier, vendor, program, or ideology. They continually investigate new ideas, understand the technical details, remain skeptical when appropriate, and choose the solution that best serves the client.

The conversation closes with a deceptively simple question: What is insurance? Traditional insurance protects against catastrophic risk, yet modern health insurance has evolved into something much broader—often functioning as a mechanism for paying nearly every healthcare expense rather than simply protecting against catastrophe. That distinction raises important questions about what employers are actually buying and what risks they should be managing themselves.

The takeaway: Great advisors stay curious, define the problem before prescribing the solution, master the fundamentals, retain control where they carry the risk, and keep iterating until they find a better answer.