Before joining Ameritas as a group sales representative in Cleveland, health insurance agent Ingrid Martin was a casualty of higher healthcare costs.
She had developed a passion for insurance after starting in a data entry position for a local agency while going to school. Years later, however, she found herself laid off from a privately held healthcare benefits company and actively searching for another position – all at the height of Obamacare malaise.
A change encounter with the President himself reversed her fortunes, however, and she won a role as account executive and continuing education instructor at CBIZ Inc. before moving on to her current position.
“It was amazing,” Martin said of meeting Obama. “I had just come back from Washington, D.C. from NAHU’s Capital Conference [in 2010] when I heard President Obama was coming to my town to speak. I thought, ‘I’ve got to hear what this gentleman has to say.’”
Martin arrived early, got a front row seat, and was approached by Obama following the meeting.
“He asked me what I thought [of the Affordable Care Act]. Lucky for me, I’m a dreamer and planned what I would say if the President ever asked me that,” she recalls. “I had an answer – he just did not like it.”
Martin told Obama she felt the root cause of high health insurance premiums was the rising cost of healthcare. Instead of the heavy changes implemented in the ACA, she felt more efficient electronic health records and other aspects of provider care “would be the ideal fix.”
After that, Martin says, she was “all over the place.” She spoke on radio stations about her encounter and was flown out for interviews to places as far as Boise before joining CBIZ.
More so than the exchange with the President, Martin says it was her continued membership with NAHU that helped her secure the new position.
“I think people see that someone who has continued to pay those dues despite not having a job has a real dedication to the industry – that it’s a passion and not just a job,” she said.
