Well…it’s not all good news my friends, but mostly. In time, you will see what we have all been hoping for, for what seems like a decade or more.
Not just lower taxes, more jobs and greater prosperity returning to main street America, but actual legitimate solvency for regular folks where they have money to spare and spend. Unfortunately, many won’t save even if they had the extra money to save but they will spend.
And they will start doing more of the things they’ve put off for years. You watch.
The other major things that will happen, that you already know if you have perspective on economic history, is the market will get worse before it gets better. Right now, you see short-lived elevation from investments pouring into the market because Trump was elected. Investors now know that there will be stability, which will make the American Dollar strong again (the beginning of which is already happening).
Having an improving dollar and record stock market is not all positive. First of all, the money that has fueled the growth in our markets and real estate over the past few years has not been American Money; instead foreign investors have been driving up major markets. They are able to do this because the dollar has been weak for an extended period.
When that money leaves, and it will, the market will go down quickly. The price drop, in return, makes equities more attractive to domestic institutions, yielding some stabilization.
As a catalyst to this, you will see interest rates rise, which is the key to just about everything including your patients being able to afford their dentistry, write checks and get credit among other things.
Interest rates going up is beneficial for anyone who has cash reserves because they earn more on their money. That is another reason people have put so much into the stock market because it’s the only place they thought there was any upside, despite the increase in associated risk.
Now, when you can safely keep your money in a savings account or bonds and earn more interest, there will be a feeling of security and the purse strings will loosen. People will be more willing to let go of their cash.
The other big factor will be instead of companies cutting back they will be stocking up, expanding, driving growth and hiring people. When taxes go down, profits go up and those profits get reinvested.
The whole idea of a progressive tax is of course nonsense. What should happen, as everyone with money knows, is high income earners should pay less through a regressive tax because they will reinvest more and when you reinvest (whether that is in buying things, building things or employing people), everyone wins.
That is the real driver of everything, not taxes, but the movement of money to greater employment, spending and investing.
Remember this, when money is transferred to the government it stops – dead in its tracks. When money moves through the economy, it goes further, spreads quicker and grows faster.
You will see that Trump will liberate capitalism and cash-flow. That is going to put a lot of people back to work who have stayed home because it wasn’t worth the effort or real opportunities weren’t available to them.
It is a very exciting time and while it usually takes years it won’t with the Trump Administration. For those who pay close attention (and not through media filters), you know what has to be done and undone. There have been major structural barriers put into the American economy that will be blown up and it will make major differences in the living rooms and pocket books of everyday Americans.
Now…this brings us to our topic of conversation for today and this Special Report…
The State of Insurance in Dentistry and what happens when ObamaCare gets repealed and replaced.
And anyone who is an advocate of ObamaCare isn’t on it, hasn’t used it and has no earthly idea of how it actually works (or I should say doesn’t work), certainly not in dentistry.
What it did was crush profitability for practices taking insurance as the scale tipped to requiring more patients in order to maintain previous levels of production because insurance became the crutch of every patient.
Especially the patients who needed it the most. And all the people with good insurances through good companies were not immune as either the companies or the insurance carriers started making cuts… and guess what when down: dental benefits.
The best example is the $1,000 benefit that once covered two or three or four crowns 20+ years ago, doesn’t cover one crown today. Everyone else has been making more money except the dentists because the company paying the bills have kept their payments the same while every related expense went up.
The other trend has been the communistic collusion of insurance companies banding together to strong arm dentists to become providers with the threat of running their underwear from a flag pole and ostracizing the practice in front of their patients.
All of that is about to change. And change for the better.
Before it does, you have to understand that the biggest problem you will ever face will always be the way patients see, understand and rely on their insurance “benefits.” It doesn’t say and will never say “comprehensive care” insurance. Insurance is always designed to be supplemental. No matter what they tell you, it is not a parent picking up the tab. Regardless of what happens in the coming years, you have incredible work to do to change the mindset of your patients.
Most practices over the past few years have felt they had no choice but to give into insurance minded patients. They blame insurance or they blame their patients, but they made the decision to diagnosis to benefit plans instead of diagnosis to patients’ mouths; to treatment plan to insurance money instead of treatment planning to the health of the patient.
This led to more single tooth dentistry than we’ve seen for 30, probably 40 years and it led to step by step treatment plans where at best they are doing something once or twice a year coupled in with their hygiene appointments.
So, you now need a greater number of new patients to survive. This is everyone’s worst and most expensive position to be in; no matter what insurance you take, whether you are fee for service or in every network on earth.
The culture has changed. With your team’s communication, with your patient engagement clinically, in the way patients make decisions and the expectations they have for their care.
To be clear, I did say it was about to change for the better in a very big way. If you are smart you will take advantage of it. If you are well-positioned you will profit and grow your practice like never before.
But, there is bad news.
What isn’t going to change now or ever is Insurance Companies’ desire, necessity and obsession with maximizing their profitability.
Let’s go back to the very basics… how do insurance companies make a profit: the same way every other business on earth does, by paying out less (expenses) than they take in (revenue).
So, when you take in lots of money (all of your premiums are coming from your policy holders), then you have big corporate offices, expensive executives, all the people who support the company, operational overhead and eventually you get around to what your purpose is … taking care of policy holders as your customers and using the money they gave you to support their healthcare.
Plus, the big secret to insurance companies that most regular people don’t know is that they are investing all of those premiums in real estate, equities, bonds, foreign governments and other markets that you could never imagine. They are never really moving a dollar from a policy holder’s premium back into the policy holder’s life but investing it, compounding it and paying out as little as possible.
This will not change.
At the end of the day, how do Insurance Companies regulate their spending and control their profit… by giving less benefits to policy holders. But that looks bad so they can’t make that the most obvious thing because they do have to be attractive to their customers since they compete on benefits. Therefore they have one place to get back their profits: from the providers.
This battle will never change. Enter Donald Trump.
The Make America Great Again Part…
More people with insurance, but not the way you think of insurance today. There will be an explosion of health savings accounts and companies opting for more private based insurance instead of selling out to some plan.
And on top of that, insurance companies will now have to compete with one another. This will dramatically lower the overall premiums and they will be wooing companies to get on board and driving new policy holders in droves.
This will also result in the most substantial and significant bonus implication of all… dramatically better benefits.
Proactive healthcare returns. It has no choice. Because every person involved will be penalized for waiting or delaying.
When something isn’t mandated (there will be no penalties for lack of insurance), that drives down deductibles. This means that patients will have more motivation to take care of problems because their minimums will be used up much faster and therefore no justification for delay.
This will be a complete mind shift and the practices that get out ahead of it will capture large amount of treatment and help their patients finally get healthy.
Of course, with all good news, there will be bad news.
Simply put, patients and policy holders win, providers still not so much. This isn’t a Trump thing and you would never want it to be. The day government dictates what you can earn, will be the worst day of your life. The fewer regulations, the better, but that means insurance companies stay in control over what they want to pay for certain procedures.
The not so great part… in the short term the costs will go up for these insurance companies and they will strive to earn back their profits from providers. They will aggressively look to lobby more dentists into their networks and they will do everything possible to push patients towards corporate dentistry where they have sweetheart deals. This allow them to keep the integrity of their preferred provider plans.
You must refuse. Resist. Do everything in your power to not join into any more networks. Instead, get your patients the old fashioned way: through referrals, grassroots, community exposure, by relying on your reputation, your existing patients, your team and understand that your biggest benefit in the Trump Economy will be the fact that you get three things that everyone dreams of…
1. Lower taxes
2. This means more vendors competing for your business, which means lower prices
3. More patients with control over their own health and insurance decisions
#3 is the big victory for you. And you should celebrate, because you don’t want a victory being insurance company further infiltration into dentistry. Instead you want your victory being patient controlled healthcare and provider driven decisions.
Because more competition for insurance companies will be present it will drive premiums and deductibles down. More affordable coverage will attract more companies to provide health insurance for their employees. This drives new patient growth and more people seeking dental care than ever before.
In addition to that, because healthcare will not be mandated and premiums will not be someone’s entire paycheck, they will have the choice of self-insurance or to participate in health savings accounts. All of which will have little impact on dentistry other than the best impact of all…
Less reliance on insurance altogether.
Now, we can celebrate.
It may take some time but that’s okay. I predict actually only 6-9 months after the big government mandate is eliminated from healthcare and it is returned to free enterprise that you will see an amazing revelation by the American people. They will go back to doing what they choose instead of focusing on what they are limited to.
You will see a surge in investing in larger cosmetic and rehabilitative treatments and procedures; you will see a surge in new patients; and you will see people coming out of pocket like never before.
They will be liberated and released from the shackles of ObamaCare (or no care at all). Which they believed to be their only two choices.
On the flip side, you will also see an acceleration of dental marketing and you will have to work hard to protect both your patient base.
The practices that will win are those who move back to customized care regardless of size, number of team members or new patient numbers. Those who desire to give patients focused attention and cultivate long term, relationship-based care across a comprehensive treatment plan with the intent to achieve optimal health.
Hygiene will boom. If that’s your game, fine.
More importantly, patients will want to move from just getting by to getting healthy.
I can honestly say (and without exception, as my dentists agree – and do I have the very best of course), there has never been a better time to be an independent dentist who controls your own destiny and your patients’ future health.
I will finalize this special report with your top seven priorities going into 2017 and the beginnings of the Trump Economy.
1. Solidify Your Identity… you must know the type of patients you want and the type of dentistry you want to do. With the influx of patients coming into dentistry in the next several years, you will have capacity problems if you don’t discern who you want as a patient. You must be for a certain person with a specific vision in mind.
2. Re-establish Your Patient Relationships… this is and will always be what you should be about.
3. Position Yourself to Remove Any Bottom Tier Insurance… and I could make a case to pull the plug on all insurances once and for all. You can wait until the battles begin but when they do, it will be your greatest chance. Change is always the time for more change.
4. Focus on Growth Through Referrals… you will create the greatest high quality patient growth through referrals. It works in a down time and it will work exponentially in a time when everyone is seeking health and has more access, knowledge and awareness about dentistry and the care they deserve.
5. Increase All of Your Fees… and be prepared to get paid straight up through any new insurance. Though they will provide less coverage on dental care as a whole, your patients will have greater understanding of supplemental insurance and it’s purpose for their maintenance but not for their restorative care. You will be able to one-up insurance and secure your practice with more consistency than ever before.
6. Fix Every ‘Insurance’ Loophole and Gap… in your team communication, diagnosis, treatment planning and case presentation. Learn the proper way to control patient expectations and be prepared to handle their questions as the elimination of ObamaCare and how you can take care of them without insurance through your approach to customized care. Take control and win big both for you and for your patients.
7. Maximize Your Profits and Investments… because you have just been given the greatest gift any business owner in the world could ever hope for. You have the opportunity to, perhaps, 10x your wealth and retirement over the next 7-10 years. With your retained tax dollars and reinvestment into your business, you should see double digit growth on the top line of your production dollars and quadruple, at least, to the bottom line of your income. I sure hope you make the most of it.
Thank you for your interest and preparing for the greatest decade ever to be a dentist. More multi-millionaires will be made and more seven-figure dentists will be created in the Trump Economy than any time before in our great history.
I will be doing a follow-up and expanded training all about the strategy of preparation, execution and tactical steps to ensure you’re ready for 2017 and the New Year. The announcement will be made just after Thanksgiving. Stay tuned.
Back with more…and another Special Black Friday Profit Report next week.
