I banned a word from my office about two years ago, and the word was “quote.”
People still slip it in. Clients call and say “hey, can I get a quote on a family plan?” Lourdes will catch herself drafting an email with “I’ll send over a quote.” Even I do it sometimes — old habit. The whole industry runs on the word. Every billboard, every Google ad, every robocall. “Get your free quote in 30 seconds.” It’s everywhere.
That’s exactly why it had to go.
A Quote Is a Number. Health Coverage Is Not a Number.
When you get a quote on a fence install, you’re getting a price. The fence is the fence. There’s no version where the fence has a hidden formulary or a network that doesn’t include the right post-hole digger. You pay the price, you get the fence. Quote works there.
Health coverage doesn’t work that way. The number on the front of the plan is one of about fifteen things that matter. Premium is one piece. Deductible is another. Network is another. Formulary is another. MOOP is another. Whether your specialist is in or out of network is another. Whether the plan covers your spouse’s specific medication on Tier 1 or Tier 4 is another. Whether the carrier has a reputation for paying claims cleanly or for fighting every dollar — that’s another.
If I send you a “quote,” all I’m doing is sending you a premium. That premium is meaningless without the other fourteen pieces. And the second I send it, you’re going to do what any rational human does — compare it to other premiums. You’re going to pick the lowest one. And there’s about an 80% chance the lowest premium is the wrong plan for you, because the carrier got the premium that low by cutting something that’s going to matter when you actually use the coverage.
So “quote” doesn’t just undersell what we do. It actively misleads.
What I Started Calling It Instead
A few years ago I had a client — single mom, two kids, school teacher who’d gone full-time freelance over the summer — call me asking for “a quote for marketplace coverage.” I quoted her. She got three other quotes. She picked one of the other three because it was $40 cheaper a month.
Six weeks later her older kid broke an arm. The orthopedic surgeon her pediatrician referred her to wasn’t in the network of the plan she picked. She paid out of network rates. The “savings” disappeared in about 90 minutes.
That call sat with me. I had done my job — given her the quote she asked for. The problem was the job she asked for wasn’t the job she needed.
So I started calling it a healthcare review instead. Sit down. One hour. We go through your situation, your family, your doctors, your prescriptions, your budget, your tolerance for risk, your past experience with the carriers. Then I pull options. Plural. From the carriers we represent. I lay them out side by side, in plain English, with the trade-offs explained.
You leave the conversation with a recommendation, the reasoning behind it, and a written comparison you can take home and sit with. No pressure. No “this offer expires at midnight.” No call center.
That’s a healthcare review. It’s a fundamentally different thing than a quote.
Why This Matters for the Business Model
A lot of agencies don’t operate this way because it’s slower. A quote takes five minutes. A healthcare review takes an hour. If you’re trying to run a high-volume call center where reps churn through 40 leads a day, an hour-per-client model doesn’t work.
We don’t run a call center. Insured American Family is a small, family-operated agency. My wife Lourdes runs it. I’m the COO. We have a tight team. We know our clients by name and by family situation. When you call us, the person who picks up has probably handled your file before. If they haven’t, they can pull it up and be caught up in 30 seconds because we actually keep records that mean something.
We work for you, not the carriers. That’s not a tagline I came up with for a Facebook ad. It’s how the agency is set up. We’re carrier-independent — we don’t owe loyalty to any single carrier, which means we can recommend whichever one actually fits your situation. If Humana is the right answer, you get Humana. If it’s BlueCross, you get BlueCross. We’re not graded on hitting a quota for any specific carrier.
The healthcare review model also means we have to be right. If I push you into the wrong plan to close a sale faster, you’re not staying with us long. You’re going to use the coverage, find out it doesn’t fit, and leave. The whole business runs on renewals and referrals. There’s no version of this where pushing the wrong plan is good for me long-term. Doing the actual review is good for both of us.
A Word About the Free Part
The other reason I dropped “quote” is that the word “quote” usually shows up with “free” right in front of it. “Free quote.” “No-obligation quote.” That phrasing is everywhere, and there’s a reason — it’s trying really hard to lower your resistance because the rest of the experience is going to be high-pressure.
The healthcare review is also free. It always has been. There’s no scenario where we charge a client to look at their situation and recommend coverage. The carrier pays us when a policy gets placed. That’s the business model.
But I don’t bury “free” in front of “review” the way the industry buries it in front of “quote,” because I want the review to feel like what it is — an actual professional consult, not a sales gimmick. The value isn’t that it’s free. The value is that you walk away with clarity. Free is just the price of admission.
What “Plain English” Actually Means in Practice
Plain English isn’t a marketing word for us. It’s a working standard. If I’m explaining a plan to a client and I say “MOOP” without immediately translating it to “the most you can spend out of pocket in a bad year before the insurance company covers 100% of everything,” I’m doing the job wrong.
A client of ours once told me, “Craig, you’re the first insurance guy who’s ever explained something to me without making me feel stupid.” That’s the bar. If I can’t make a 70-year-old understand the difference between Medicare Advantage and Medicare Supplement using nothing but a napkin and a pen, I shouldn’t be in this seat.
The industry has gotten away with confusing people for so long that confusion is basically a business model. Confused customers don’t ask hard questions. Confused customers don’t comparison shop. Confused customers default to whatever sounds easiest, which is usually whatever has the biggest marketing budget.
Plain English is the antidote to that. It’s also just the right way to talk to humans.
What This Means for You
If you call our office and ask for a quote, we’re not going to lecture you about word choice. Lourdes is too polite for that, and I’ve mostly mellowed out about it. We’ll just gently redirect you to what you actually want, which is a clear understanding of what your real options are and what each one would cost you in a normal year versus a bad year.
That’s a healthcare review. One hour. Free. Plain English. Real conversation with a real advisor — not a script, not a chatbot, not a transfer to a different department. Coast to coast in all 37 states we’re licensed in.
If you’ve been quoted to death and you’re tired of it, you’re not alone. Most of our clients found us because they were sick of the carousel. Come sit down. We’ll do this the right way.
Want a real conversation about this? Book a Healthcare Review — one hour, free, plain English.
