Partner & Co-Founder, McCarthy Stevenot Agency, Inc.
Ted Stevenot is a small business health insurance speaker and writer with more than 35 years of experience helping employers and advisers make sense of difficult health-insurance decisions.
Speaking • Webinars • Podcasts • Interviews • Guest Writing • Media Commentary
Contact Ted About Speaking or Media
Health Insurance Is Complicated. The Business Decision Does Not Have to Be.
For more than 35 years, Ted Stevenot has worked directly with small employers navigating health insurance renewals, contribution decisions, funding options, market changes, and difficult benefit decisions.
His work begins with the questions employers actually face.
- Should we offer health insurance at all?
- What should we do with a substantial renewal increase?
- Should we change carriers or change strategy?
- Where do level funding, MEWAs and ICHRA fit?
- How much should the employer contribute?
- How do benefits affect recruiting and retention?
Ted’s approach is practical and educational. The objective is not to turn every problem into an insurance sale. It is to understand the tradeoffs, ask better questions, and make a more informed business decision.
Small Business Health Insurance Speaker Topics
What Small Employers Should Know Before Their Next Health Insurance Renewal
Health insurance renewals can arrive with substantial increases, benefit changes, confusing comparisons, and pressure to make a decision quickly.
Ted walks through how small employers can evaluate a renewal, determine what has actually changed, compare alternatives intelligently, and decide whether staying put or making a change makes more sense.
Best for: Business owners, HR professionals, chambers of commerce, family businesses, manufacturers and contractors.
When the Renewal Gets Ugly: How Small Employers Can Think Through Their Options
A difficult renewal can send an employer immediately shopping for another carrier. That is not always the best first move.
Ted explains a practical framework for evaluating plan design, employer contributions, alternative funding arrangements, carrier changes and individual-market strategies while keeping the employer’s workforce and business objectives in view.
Best for: Business owners, CFOs, controllers, HR professionals, manufacturers, contractors and trucking companies.
ICHRA and Group Health Insurance: How Should an Employer Decide?
ICHRA, now increasingly presented as a Choice Arrangement, gives employers a fundamentally different way to provide health benefits by allowing employees to purchase individual coverage.
Ted explains how the model differs from traditional group insurance, where each approach has strengths and limitations, and the practical questions employers should ask before choosing between them.
Best for: Business owners, HR professionals, CPAs, CFOs, payroll professionals, chambers and business advisers.
Should Your Small Business Even Offer Health Insurance?
The first question should not always be, “Which health plan should we buy?”
Sometimes the better question is whether the business should offer a group health plan at all.
Ted examines the reasons employers offer coverage, when it may not make sense, what alternatives exist, and how the decision changes as a company begins hiring and competing for employees.
Best for: Entrepreneurs, growing businesses, SBDCs, chambers, CPAs, attorneys and family-business organizations.
Health Insurance Is a Business Decision: Cost, Recruiting and Retention
Health insurance sits at the intersection of compensation, workforce strategy and one of an employer’s largest expenses.
Ted looks at contribution strategy, healthcare inflation, employee expectations, recruiting and retention, and the tradeoffs employers make when trying to control costs without undermining their ability to compete for people.
Best for: Owners, executives, HR leaders, manufacturers, trucking companies, contractors, family businesses and CFOs.
Audiences
Ted’s presentations can be adapted for:
- Small-Business Owners
- Manufacturing
- Trucking & Transportation
- Construction & Contractors
- Professional Firms
- CPAs, CFOs & Controllers
- HR Professionals
- Family & Privately Held Businesses
- Growing Businesses & First-Time Employers
Topics are adapted to the audience, with greater emphasis on workforce, cost, renewal strategy, recruiting and retention, financial planning, or benefits administration as appropriate.
Speaking, Media & Content Formats
- Conference Presentations
- Webinars & Virtual Presentations
- Workshops & Lunch-and-Learns
- Conference Calls & Executive Roundtables
- Panels & Moderated Discussions
- Podcasts & Audio Interviews
- Video Interviews & Recorded Conversations
- Radio & Broadcast Interviews
- Guest Articles & Contributed Commentary
- Media Commentary & Source Interviews
Presentations can be adapted from shorter conference sessions to longer educational programs, workshops and Q&A formats.
Experience
Ted’s speaking is built around practical experience rather than theory. His presentations draw from decades of working through actual employer renewals, benefit decisions, changing markets and difficult tradeoffs with small-business owners.
Midwest Bitcoin Summit
Columbus, Ohio
Insurance and Hard Money
A conference presentation examining insurance, risk, inflation and hard money.
FreePAC Morning in America
General-session conference presentation before a large audience.
Miami University Voice of America Learning Center
Workshop instruction in a smaller educational setting.
Ted has also spoken extensively at workshops, civic organizations, public forums and educational events throughout Ohio.
Selected Writing & Commentary
Ted writes Broker’s Desk, a practical series built around real health-insurance situations and the decisions they create for small employers.
Should Your Small Business Even Offer Group Health Insurance?
Start with the business decision, not the insurance product.
Before Your Health Insurance Renewal
Questions small employers should be asking before renewal season forces the decision.
What Does an ICHRA Benchmark Actually Mean?
A practical explanation of what an ICHRA benchmark does, and what it does not tell an employer about the coverage an employee ultimately selects.
Will ICHRA Become the 401(k) of Health Insurance?
A broader look at whether employer-sponsored health insurance may be moving toward a defined-contribution model.
ICHRA Is Now CHOICE: What Ohio Small Employers Should Know
What the changing terminology means, and what it does not change about the underlying employer decision.
Insurance and Inflation: The Problem With Long-Term Promises
A look at what inflation does to insurance arrangements and other promises extending far into the future.
Case Study: Reducing a 22% Health Insurance Renewal
A real-world example of how looking beyond the initial renewal can change the outcome for an employer.
View all Broker’s Desk Articles…
Media Experience
Ted has experience with live, recorded, print and broadcast media, including interviews with national and regional news organizations, multiple live in-studio radio appearances, television news interviews, and interviews at conferences and public events.
His current media focus is small-business health insurance, employer benefits, healthcare costs, ICHRA, and changes in the employer-sponsored health-insurance market.
Previous experience includes interviews with reporters from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Cincinnati Enquirer, and The Columbus Dispatch, as well as Cincinnati radio and television news.
About Ted Stevenot
Ted Stevenot is co-founder and partner of McCarthy Stevenot Agency, an independent Ohio health insurance agency focused on small employers. For more than 35 years, he has worked directly with business owners, HR leaders and advisers navigating health insurance renewals, contribution decisions, funding options and changing market rules.
His work is grounded in the real decisions employers face: whether to offer coverage at all, what to do with a large renewal increase, when alternative funding may make sense, and where ICHRA fits alongside traditional group coverage.
Ted writes the Broker’s Desk, where he uses actual market situations to explain health insurance in plain language without turning every problem into a sales pitch.
As a speaker, writer and interview guest, Ted helps employers and advisers understand the tradeoffs behind health insurance decisions so they can ask better questions, evaluate alternatives more clearly and make better-informed choices.
For Event Organizers & Media
Short Bio
Ted Stevenot is co-founder and partner of McCarthy Stevenot Agency, an independent Ohio health insurance agency serving small employers. For more than 35 years, he has helped business owners navigate renewals, funding options, ICHRA and difficult benefit decisions. He speaks and writes from practical, real-world experience with employers.
Medium Bio
Ted Stevenot is co-founder and partner of McCarthy Stevenot Agency, an independent Ohio health insurance agency focused on small employers. For more than 35 years, he has worked directly with business owners, HR leaders and advisers navigating health insurance renewals, contribution decisions, funding options and changing market rules.
His work is grounded in the real decisions employers face: whether to offer coverage at all, what to do with a large renewal increase, when alternative funding may make sense, and where ICHRA fits alongside traditional group coverage. Ted writes the Broker’s Desk, where he uses actual market situations to explain health insurance in plain language without turning every problem into a sales pitch.
As a speaker, writer and interview guest, Ted helps employers and advisers understand the tradeoffs behind health insurance decisions so they can ask better questions, evaluate alternatives more clearly and make better-informed choices.
Full Bio
Ted Stevenot is co-founder and partner of McCarthy Stevenot Agency, an independent Ohio health insurance agency that has served small employers for more than three decades. Since the early 1990s, Ted has worked directly with business owners, HR professionals and advisers as they navigate one of the most confusing and expensive parts of running a company: employee health insurance.
His experience spans traditional small-group coverage, MEWAs, level-funded plans, high-deductible strategies, individual-market options and ICHRA. Much of his work centers on the moments when employers need clear thinking most: a substantial renewal increase, a change in headcount, difficulty recruiting employees, uncertainty about whether to offer a group plan, or a need to compare fundamentally different funding approaches.
Ted writes the Broker’s Desk, a practical series built around real market situations and the decisions they create for small employers. His approach is educational rather than promotional. He is often as willing to explain why an employer may not need a group plan as he is to explain when one may make sense.
As a speaker, writer and interview guest, Ted translates health insurance into business terms owners and advisers can use. His topics include renewal strategy, ICHRA, healthcare inflation, recruiting and retention, and the changing relationship between employers and the individual health-insurance market. His goal is not to simplify away the tradeoffs, but to make them easier to see and discuss. He has spoken at conferences, workshops and public forums on insurance, business and related economic issues.
Downloadable Media Resources
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Speaking Photos
Midwest Bitcoin Summit, Columbus
Miami University Voice of America Learning Center
McCarthy Stevenot Agency, Inc. – Agency Logo
Contact Ted
For speaking engagements, webinars, podcast interviews, media inquiries or contributed writing:
Ted Stevenot
Partner & Co-Founder
McCarthy Stevenot Agency, Inc.
Email: ted@mccarthystevenot.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ted-stevenot/
Website: mccarthystevenot.com