GoHealth CEO on public debut, future of medicare
GoHealth CEO Clint Jones joins the On the Move panel to discuss the company's public debut and the future of medicare.
Video Transcript
JULIE HYMAN: You're watching "On the Move" on Yahoo Finance. I'm Julie Hyman, alongside Adam Shapiro. We are watching shares of a company that just began trading today. It's called GoHealth. It raised about 913 and 1/2 million dollars in that IPO, and the shares are up about 16% today, after going public at $21 a share. We are joined now by the co-founder and CEO of GoHealth.
That is Clint Jones. He's joining us from Chicago. And the company is basically a-- a Medicare marketplace, if you will. Clint, thanks for joining us. Congratulations on the IPO. So it seems like there are-- are sort of a decent number of these marketplaces out there right now. What makes GoHealth different from those? And-- and your numbers so far have been pretty good.
CLINT JONES: Yeah, no, if you think about it, this-- this market is evolving similar to how the travel industry changed in the early 2000s. This is a product which has traditionally been sold face to face. You're seeing more and more consumers go online, want transparency, want to choose different options, and talk to somebody over the phone. And really, out of the safety, think about the senior population being more vulnerable with-- with COVID.
This is a great opportunity for them to actually buy and research out of their-- out of the comfort of their home without having to allow anybody in their house or go somewhere to talk about it. So you're seeing a surge of those consumers now leveraging marketplaces like ours. And, you know, we've really invested a lot of technology to help match consumers and the-- and the particular needs they have with the different plans our-- our carrier partners offer.
ADAM SHAPIRO: Clint, I'm closer to being one of your clients than I would like to admit, but I am curious. You know, the pandemic is raising a lot of discussion about overhauling health care at the, you know, out of Washington DC. Would that potential, if Democrats take power, have an impact on what you're doing?
CLINT JONES: Well, when you turn 65, feel free to give us a call. We can help you out. And all-- all joking aside, so, you know, you've got kind of support on both sides of the aisle for Medicare Advantage plans, which is where-- really where we focus on. And I think where the health care debate is really-- really focused is on the under 65 Obamacare and the uninsured market, so I think that's where you'll hear a lot of this fall around that particular market, which is a very small portion of what we do.
We're focused really on the senior side and helping people that are over 65 get covered, so we don't see a ton of movement there. One of the-- you know, one of the options is to bring down the age of Medicare to buy in at 60 versus 65, which obviously would-- would be a, you know, a big windfall for us. But, you know, we operate in the, you know, primarily over 65 market today. We don't see a lot of changes there.
RICK NEWMAN: Hey, Clint, Rick Newman here. I'm just wondering, even though you do focus on 65 and older, with what's going on in the economy with all the job losses, I mean, there are estimates that several million people have lost their health care. I mean, there are some older people still working. Are you noticing changes in the-- how people are shopping for insurance or in the need for insurance or anything like that on account of the recession?
CLINT JONES: Yeah, we are seeing people that are, you know, laid off or, you know, kind of between jobs or lost their job that need coverage, and we're seeing more and more people come to our marketplace that are under 65 and-- and looking for options. We have different options for them. I think the other thing we're-- we're noticing is because of the unemployment rate, you know, we're hiring 1,000 people this year. And there's a lot of great talent on the sidelines that we're able to tap into and help get employment, so we're excited about that. And, you know, as people need coverage, we're-- we're here to help them.
JULIE HYMAN: Clint, it's Julie again. I think about my mother-in-law trying to navigate her computer for various tasks.
CLINT JONES: Yeah.
JULIE HYMAN: And it's-- it's not always the easiest for older people who have not grown up with this stuff. How do you make that process easy for them? Because not only is technology not necessarily easy for them, but Medicare is not exactly simple to navigate.
CLINT JONES: No, you're absolutely right. Both of my parents are in their 70s, and we have the same challenge with them. So we-- we have a lot of phone-based enrollments, where people just actually call us. So we have over 2,000 licensed advisors that actually can walk people through their plans. You know, we can understand what medications you're on, what doctors you go to.
Really narrow that down and explain all the benefits that are available to you in your area, where I think a lot of consumers just don't know that all these different plan options exist. And, you know, a lot of people that don't understand how to use the internet or-- or aren't comfortable using technology, we've got a great option for them to connect over the phone. And again, it's out of the safety of their house, you know, where they can do this.
