Meet the born teacher who makes health insurance and healthcare policy understandable.
Independent Women’s Forum is pleased to announce that Kansas state Senator Beverly Gossage, a nationally recognized authority on health insurance and healthcare policy, is the latest entry in our popular series of Champion Women profiles.
Beverly was pursuing her dream in education, when her mother asked for some help with the paperwork relating to health insurance for employees of the family plumbing business.
When she first undertook to help her mother, Gossage did extensive research — she was an educator after all — and became skeptical of employer-based insurance plans. “Who came up with this idea? It simply doesn’t make any sense,” Gossage thought.
Gossage’s sister, a tax accountant, subsequently asked for assistance finding the right policies for her clients. Before long, Beverly was being asked to speak at chambers of commerce around Kansas and other conferences for small businesses nationwide. In 2005 she was invited to participate in a conference on health insurance and HSAs with then-Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Her love for teaching was put to use as she changed her mission to educating families, businesses, legislators and Presidents on how to lower the cost of health insurance and health care. “I’m very mission-minded, and helping people understand health insurance became my new mission,” Beverly says. Gossage launched HSA Benefits Consulting 20 years ago.
Gossage is a Kansas native. “I was born in Wichita, and neither of my parents went to college,” she recalls. Beverly wanted to be a teacher from the age of four. “I thought, ‘I’ll probably have to go to college to be a teacher and I need to figure out how to do that.’” To defray the cost of college, Beverly won scholarships, saved her money from various jobs she held from age ten when she sold her home-made pot holders door-to-door. She married her high-school sweetheart, Robert Gossage, whom she met at church. Sadly, Robert, who campaigned for Beverly when she entered politics, died shortly before she was sworn into the state Senate.
Although Beverly had originally thought she’d retire after a single term, she’s changed her mind as her constituents have asked her to run again. So, she is preparing for her campaign for re-election while helping her clients and educating the public on health policy.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Gossage’s class just may be the best way to make a complicated subject clear and just maybe help bring about reform as a result.
