I was 18, sitting in the back of an ambulance, holding a stranger’s Medicare card.

That was my first job out of high school. I had earned my EMT certification in vocational school, graduated top of my class, and even won first place in Ohio at an EMT competition with my buddy Dylan. I thought I knew what helping people looked like.

Then I started doing transports, from hospitals to nursing homes, and from nursing homes to doctor’s appointments. Almost every patient I rode with, about 98% of them, was on Medicare.

And I started noticing something I couldn’t shake.

The Question I Couldn’t Shake

Some of those people were taken care of. Their plan covered them, and the ride was just a ride.

Others got hit with a copay every single time. Every appointment. Every ambulance trip.

These were people who had worked their whole lives. Now they were sitting in front of me, worried about what this ride was going to cost them.

Same ambulance. Same care. A completely different outcome, all because of a plan someone had picked for them, or one nobody had explained.

I couldn’t understand how that could happen. And nobody around me could tell me why.

Five Minutes With My Uncle

In 2014, my grandfather passed away. At his funeral, my Uncle Bracken pulled me aside and asked how I was doing. I told him I was working with a lot of people on Medicare.

That’s when I found out Medicare insurance was all he had done since the late ’80s. He had built his whole business in Kentucky on referrals alone.

So I asked him the question I’d been carrying for months: Why are some people set up so well, and others so badly?

He answered it in five minutes.

Not long after, he called me. His team was overwhelmed during enrollment season and needed help. I was working 24-hour shifts, but I said yes without thinking twice.

In December 2015, I got my license and started helping people over the phone on my days off. And I fell in love with it. For the first time, I wasn’t just watching people get hurt by the system. I could actually help.

By the summer of 2016, I had started my own agency. In 2018, it became Medicare Senior Options.

Do People Right

My uncle taught me one thing that I’ve built everything on: do people right.

Help people into the right plan for them, and be honest with them, even when it pays you less. Do that, and they’ll trust you. They’ll tell their friends. And that trust is worth more than any commission.

“Do people right.”

Today, we’re a family business. My brother works beside me, and every client we help gets lifetime support and a no-cost plan review every year.

Because I still remember those faces in the back of that ambulance. And I never want anyone to feel that worry again when they don’t have to.