From the State Insurance Commissioner Be Wary of Misleading Health Insurance Marketing

Scams involving health insurance plans and other products have increased exponentially recently. Robocalls, social media advertising, search engine advertisements, mailers and endless telemarketing efforts aim to steal from consumers seeking comprehensive health insurance. The Oklahoma Insurance Department is taking action to identify and combat the improper marketing of these health plans.

Unfortunately, these deceptive marketing practices have moved into the Medicare Advantage and prescription drug plan market to target seniors. At OID, we’ve received more complaints about the misleading marketing of Medicare Advantage plans and are investigating these complaints. Most, but unfortunately not all, of these complaints can be traced to sources outside our state. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the complaints about marketing practices for Medicare Advantage and Medicare Prescription drug benefit plans increased by more than 200%, from 15,497 in 2020 to at least 39,617 in 2021.

How to Protect Yourself from Improper Marketing

The OID’s Medicare Assistance Program division provides accurate and objective counseling, assistance and advocacy relating to Medicare, Medicare supplements, Medicare Advantage, longterm care, Medicare fraud prevention, and other related health coverage plans for Medicare beneficiaries, their representatives or people who will soon be eligible for Medicare. MAP can assist beneficiaries if they suspect potential continued from page 10

Medicare fraud but aren’t sure what to do. A MAP counselor can also help review the situation and provide guidance to beneficiaries, such as contacting the provider, notifying CMS or helping them file a report submitted to the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General.

In addition, consumers can contact the Consumer Assistance division at OID and request mediation or file a complaint if they think they may have become victims of these improper marketing scams. The OID processes and investigates all complaints lodged against insurance companies by the public. In 2022, our Consumer Assistance team answered over 12,000 consumer calls and resolved over 2,000 complaints and requests. OID recovers millions of dollars for Oklahoma consumers every year. Visit oid.ok.gov/complaint to file a complaint.

I encourage consumers to work with a licensed, local agent or someone they know and trust to evaluate plan options carefully. I hope Oklahomans will contact our department’s Consumer Assistance or MAP Division if they have any concerns or questions about manipulative and deceptive advertising and sales. Our mission is to protect the people of Oklahoma. To identify and investigate these bad actors in the improper marketing of health plans, we need consumers to reach out to us and utilize our services.

With your help, we can further investigations and prosecutions of those entities, coordinate appropriate enforcement actions, and strengthen our laws to protect Oklahomans better.

• When people are disciplined, your company is disciplined. Jim Collins’ research on why successful companies later tanked noted that the failures were due to “the undisciplined pursuit of more.” Leadership teams simply kept grabbing at every opportunity vs. exercising disciplined thought. As a result, these companies were soon swept up into the vortex of simply trying to stay alive. The missing element was discipline: Instead of wanting more, they should have wanted less – and then focused on those initiatives.

• We tend to think of ‘discipline’ as a cold and uncaring word. We see it as having a negative connotation. But in its purest sense, discipline isn’t a harsh word; we just perceive it incorrectly. In fact, discipline grants a sense of freedom (vs. rigidity) because discipline will serve you by giving you more time to do what you need to do, to figure out what you should say “no” to, more energy to think about what will catapult your company into the future, more excitement as informal leaders seize the right opportunities at just the right time to give of their thoughts and talents, more openness – which will allow you to solve problems sooner vs later, etc. Discipline, then, is a main artery within your organization. It’s required for greatness.

Discipline: It’s a two-sided coin.

On one hand, discipline requires a sense of order – all those tangible things that are simply “the way we operate this company.” On the other hand, though, it has to honor the intangible – the organic emergence of informal leadership. Within the essence of informal leadership is a sense of urgency to do really good things, to share wisdom, to not fear repercussion. When your people begin to lead (in the right way) without being directed to lead, you’re coming closer and closer to having a disciplined organization. You’ll be amazed to discover, too, the intellectual capital that lives within your company. When you can harness that kind of capital, you will have leveraged your company for an incredible future.

The company I was working with needed to spend time committing to a new way of working (i.e., to a new way of leading). They admitted they were a chaotic bunch – leading, in turn, a chaotic organization. But if they wanted to be a truly great company, then they were going to have to work on figuring out exactly how they could better balance the two sides of ‘discipline.’ It’s definitely a journey for most any leadership team.

The other thing about discipline is that it doesn’t just serve an organization. Most CEOs I work with truly do desire to leave things better than they found them; they desire to make a difference. If you want to be a truly great leader, then understand the tangibles and intangibles of building a disciplined company, because if you can accomplish that feat, you will have not only built a great company; you will have also defined your own legacy. For most of us, that matters

Your BIGiOK Consulting team stands ready to help you connect with Cathy or other members of our Elite Professionals Network as your needs arise. sara@BIGiOK.com