“After all, there are worse things in life than death. If you’ve ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman, you know what I’m talking about.”…Woody Allen, Love and Death.

Porn Valley- There are worse things than health insurance being available to porn performers who belong to the Free Speech Coalition, and this past week, Lynn LeMay and I had on as a phone-in guest on KSEX, Alan Stearns from Locton. Locton is the world’s largest privately-held insurance broker.

Stearns was on to talk about the announcement made last week: www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=24955.

Before Stearns got on the phone, attorney Michael Fattorosi who was an in-studio guest had a few comments and observations to make. Fattorosi brought the deal to the table.

“In another part of my business, www.adultbizlaw.com, being a lawyer I deal with a lot of insurance brokers,” he explained. “And the gentleman on the phone, Alan, is from Locton. He approached me two years ago about providing insurance services to the adult entertainment community. And so I brought him in and made the introductions.”

“My thoughts on this are, if the industry wants to be taken seriously, if they want to have power in Sacramento and Washington- one of the things I hear over and over again when I go up to Sacramnto during lobbying days- one of the things I keep hearing, is when is the industry going to clean up its act? What they mean by that is better employee treatment, better employee benefits, health care, those types of things.”

“Those are issues that politicians can point to, and health care is a national crisis,” Fattoriosi continued. “It’s even more of a crisis in this industry. So it was easy to bring them [Lockton] in and say, there is a need, you can supply the insurance and put it together.”

Fattorosi also emphasized that he wasn’t getting remuneration in the Locton equation.

Lynn LeMay took over the interview from there.

“I hear you’re excited about working with us,” she tells Stearns.

“Absolutely,” says Stearns, noting that he was a partner with Lockton.

“We’re insurance brokers and usually when people start talking insurance, it’s when they start tuning out.”

To make his point, Stearns referred to comments made earlier by Fattorosi about people who are bored with programming tend to tune to other channels.

“And think that’s what the adult industry has been facing a lot in the insurance world,” says Stearns. “They’ve kind of been dealt one hand. They don’t like it, fold and move on.”

According to Stearns, Lockton tries to do a lot of things that are creative and innovative.

“Right now we’re the largest privately held insurance broker in the world,” he continued. “And being the size we are, we’re able to do what we want. And to be honest with you, I think the adult industry is a market segment that has extraordinary buying power and financial wherewithal but they just aren’t being approached by some of the top organizations- whether it’s insurance or different capacities of business.”

“Michael has been kind enough to listen to someone who didn’t know much about it but wanted to get involved. He got me into the mix and there’s a lot of Fortune 500 expertise and experience my firm has we’d like to bring to an industry that has been vastly underserved.”

“How difficult is this going to be for the girls to get?” asks LeMay.

“We’re talking employee benefits,” Stearns replies. “We are dealing with insurance and insurance is an underwriting process. So there’s no perfect way and perfect system. Pne thing we’ve tried to create through Michael and the Free Speech Coaliion, is a creation of options. I know past opportunities with insurance you were given one option and that was it and it was an expensive option.

“The one thing we try to provide our clients and provide your listeners and viewers is choice,” Stearns goe on to say. “What I mean by choice is, we’re looking for the opportunity to provide various employee benefits, carrier options to your folks and the people in the industry so they can at least see what the options are in front of them to see if one, it’s financially viable; and, two, if it meets what their expectation is from a health care perspective as far as obtaining coverage.”

“You bring me to a group of people and each person gives me what they think they can do for me, and I pick the one that’s best for me?” asks LeMay to clarify.

“Yeah,” says Stearns. “What we’re trying to do is when people call in to us, we’re going to approach a handful of carriers that fit within the geographic market whether it’s California, Texas, Florida, wherever people are located.

“We’re going to explore those carreirs and work with those carriers to provide underwriting background on the information people provide about themselves and their historical, medical background. And then we’re going to be able to get carriers to provide various pricing options as well as coverage options that will hopefully meet their expectations and meet their health care needs.”

“Hopefully this is going to be cost-effective for an individual, right?” LeMay asks.

“Absolutely,” says Stearns. “What we looked at and, granted, this is before anyone has underwriting information in front of them, but the one thing we try to do is create some pricing options. And there’s a wide range. What we will explore for people ranges from catastrophic coverage where maybe you pay more of the money up front but a very low premium if you’re a person who has pretty good health, doesn’t need that much of the services but maybe if they get in a car crash or has a certain medical condition that pops up, all the way to the person that maybe has more consistent needs from a health care perspective.

And maybe they’ll pay a little higher premium but maybe a lower deductible.”

“We’re going to try to range all the options and the pricing range can go from $150 a month to $600 to $800 a month, just depending what a person’s need is from a health care perspective. We’re going to try to provide a wide spectrum.”

“Can 18 year-olds get their own health insurance through you,” LeMay asks.

“Not a problem at all,” says Stearns. “Our carriers work with all people and obviously if you’re 18 or of adult age, there’s no issue with any age.”

“Even old men who work in my company can get health insurance?” LeMay further asks.

“Yes, absolutely,” says Stearns. “Obviously when you’re dealing with individuals of different ages the biggest thing they look at in employee benefits is they look at your medical history. And that is basically how they do their underwriting. There is services available- it all depends on your medical history as they perform the underwriting, but there’s options available for everybody.”

LeMay then asks: “We have a clinic inside of our industry now that’s kind of an urgent care, they do our blood work; they do our initial testing if we’re not feeling good- then they send that out to the various places if we need testing, or, if we’e really sick, to the emergency room. How does it compare, our urgent care basis versus your insurance?”

“As well know the way insurance works,” Stearns continues, “is you’re going to be contracted where you’e going to have access to specific doctors, access to specialists. When you go to urgent care centers, you might be dealing more with a patch-and-treat or short term fixes.”

Stearns remembers a situation, when he was between jobs, of going to a wedding and knocking his head into a light post. It cost him $1,000 for ten stitches.

“It was the most expenive head bump I’ve ever had,” he relates. “But as we’ve all experienced,going to urgent care or going to an emergency room without health insurance can be very expensive.”

“In the long run this can be a better deal for us?” says LeMay.

“Absolutely,” says Stearns. “It’s going to cover you in case you have issues from catastrophic to more immediate meeds. And you’re also going to get access to specialists that are goiung to be able to treat you.”

LeMay said because she’s gotten her teeth into this issue, she’ll agree to be a test case.

“I’m going to be the first person you’re going to insure,” she announced.

“I look forward to putting something on the table that’s going to make your organization very, very happy,” said Stearns.

“Then I want you to come in two weeks and I want to tell all the girls what it was like to do this,” LeMay continued. “So maybe they can get insurance, too. Because this is something that’s close to my heart. People I know get sick. I’m getting older, now. I will be the first person, and I will tell the girls how hard this was. We’ll see how it works.”

Stearns welcomed the opportunity, further saying, “Your industry has proven there’s not one set way about how things are done.

“Every thing is fluid, every thing is organic. And I think that’s the way this program is going to work,” comments Stearns.

“It might start in one form, but as we get acceptance and get some power, we can go to the carriers; we can create more and more better plans, wider ranging plans. And I think this is just the beginning to assist the adult industry in doing things they want to do that are good for their employees.”

LeMay hoped this was going to be an easy undertaking.

“That’s right- we’re going to make it as easy as insurance can be,” agreed Stearns.