Independent insurance broker Robert S. Welk, who owns Welk Security & Trust on Spokane’s North Side, isn’t interested in offering his personal views on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare.

He is hyper-focused, though, on helping consumers and small-business owners understand the notoriously complex law well enough to make smart choices on health care coverage and to maximize their financial benefit with minimal effort.

To that end, he has written what he calls an apolitical book on the topic, titled, “Maximizing Obamacare: Your Prescription for Understanding America’s New Healthcare System.” He also has created a website, at simplifyobamacare.com, that includes videos designed to help consumers make the best choices based on their personal situations and needs.

“This thing is so utterly complicated. There is nothing short of a book that is going to solve this problem. The videos explain how to change things in their favor,” Welk says.

His 71-page book, which he published in late June after devoting most of his waking hours over two months to write it and hiring an accountant to vet it for accuracy, is available at a few local bookstores for $10 and through Amazon.com for $6.99 for a Kindle e-reader version, or at audible.com. He says he built the website with help from his office manager, Mary F. Steppe, and launched it about a month after the book.

Welk’s eight-year-old insurance agency occupies a basement space in the North Spokane Professional Building, at 5901 N. Lidgerwood, just north across Central Avenue from the Providence Holy Family Hospital complex. It provides insurance and financial services to more than 1,000 clients—including some small businesses—in the Inland Northwest.

Serving additionally as a field manager for AARP, the nonprofit organization intended to help people 50 and older, he says he supervises seven agents. Since becoming immersed in Obamacare, he also has been appointed to the advisory committee for the Washington Health Benefit Exchange, and says he’s the only insurance broker on that committee, which meets once a month.

The Exchange administers the Washington Healthplanfinder online enrollment program, at www.wahealthplanfinder.org, and the advisory committee provides expertise and professional perspectives to the Exchange board on an array of issues.

Welk was recognized earlier this year by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., for enrolling more Washingtonians than any other insurance agent in Eastern Washington for the first Affordable Care Act open enrollment period from Oct. 1, 2013, to March 31, 2014.

Five years ago, in another indicator of his activist approach to health care, he was recognized by state Sen. and Republican Deputy Whip Jerome Delvin for playing a key role in the passage of Senate Bill 5480, which seeks to protect consumers from health insurance fraud.

The bill required discount health plans, typically offered on radio, TV, and the Internet, to be licensed by the Washington state insurance commissioner. It required companies offering such plans to submit an annual financial statement, a list of providers, and details of exactly how their plans work. Welk had sought legislative action on behalf of a client who had been victimized by a company purporting to offer discounted health plans.

Welk says on his insurance agency website that he began his career in health insurance 14 years ago with the goal of helping people understand all aspects of insurance coverage in their lives. He says he developed that sense of mission after working for a time as a pharmaceutical company representative.

“I enjoyed the job, but I realized that my calling was to do something health care related with more impact. Ultimately, I decided to transfer what I learned to marketing health insurance in a more holistic way by addressing all of the challenges that clients face,” he says on the website.

With the crush of people enrolling in Obamacare, and the state’s sheer inability initially to cope with the more than 2 million phone calls from consumers seeking information, Welk says, “I could see the problem, and I could see that the solution was education.”

With his book and the website, he says his desire is to focus on “the reality on the ground,” which can differ in perspective from the information that official sources are disseminating about Obamacare. 

“A lot of the things in the book,” he says, “the Exchange isn’t going to tell you.”

 The book is designed to be about a two-hour read, and Welk says in the introduction that most of the book is targeted at people purchasing a plan through the Exchange with a subsidy.

He says in the book’s introduction that most of the changes he proposes and suggestions he makes can be implemented immediately, with a retrospective financial benefit, especially in the area of taxes.

He says near the end of the book’s introduction, “I hope this book allows you to start a productive conversation with your doctor, pharmacists, financial adviser, health insurance advocate, and/or tax preparer because they are all key players in this new interdependent system.”

Welk hasn’t sold a lot of copies of the book yet, but he doesn’t seem discouraged by the slow start. 

Although his first book has been available for less than three months, he says he’s already making plans to write another one next year, this time about Medicare.

Reflecting generally on what’s driving him to be a local source for understandable health care reform information, he says, “Trying to do the best for my clients is what’s most important. My mission is to make sure everyone gets through this thing as smoothly as possible.”