Our Lead Advisor is Rick Mortimer.
He is an aging Baby Boomer living in the beautiful foothills of the North Carolina Piedmont. When he hit the 65-year mark, he began his personal journey through the maze of everything Medicare. He was dismayed by the complexity of the decisions that had to be made, the lack of available strategies for answering them, and the convolutions of the system in place to provide this vital set of services to over 57 million Americans.
First licensed to sell health insurance in 1988, he worked as a trust advisor for many years. He knew his way around the industry and the terminology very well. Even with this background, he found the Medicare planning process so daunting and confusing that he decided to come out of years of medically induced retirement and get re-licensed, so that he could help others facing the wall of questions that Medicare generates. After a career noted for serial entrepreneurship, this move quickly led to the founding of Next Mountain Advisors Inc., a firm established to help fellow seniors navigate the changing requirements of living with an aging body, and a fixed or declining set of resources.
Mortimer has also seen the inside of the healthcare system as a too-often patient, surviving the challenges of prostate cancer and proton beam therapy, congestive heart failure and A-fib, near death after a stenting procedure, multiple ablations and other heart procedures, a deep staph infection caused by knee surgery, and now a diagnosis of Parkinsons disease. His new mission is what keeps him alive, and focused on delivering as much value to others as possible in his remaining years.
He is also the founder of the new American Association of Professional Medicare Agents, at MedicarePros.org, an organization dedicated to supporting and codifying the practice of impartially and thoroughly educating seniors on the decisions they face, and helping them get the products and services they need.
He works personally with clients all over North Carolina, and is available to speak at senior-focused events anywhere.
