HIGH PROFILE: Blue Cross and Blue Shield exec Jim Bailey credited with winning over Arkansas' biggest companies as clients

Bill Phillips remembers laughing the first time he saw Jim Bailey play golf, on an outing with other young go-getters at Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield. “He literally hit the ball sideways,” said Phillips, a lobbyist and Bailey’s former boss at the insurance company.

When they teed it up again some years later, though, Bailey won by 10 strokes. “I think he decided he wanted to learn how to play golf,” Phillips said. “That’s just the way he is.”

Stories about Bailey’s life and career tend to follow a similar pattern. He gets presented with a challenge, or decides he wants to do something, and goes about it with single-minded determination.

Sometimes it’s the stuff that reputations in the business community are made of, like helping his company land Walmart as a client when all other efforts had failed.

Sometimes it’s changing clothes in his car — as he races down Interstate 40 from Little Rock to Conway — to coach his son’s youth baseball teams.

This week, Bailey is being honored for his commitment to Junior Achievement of Arkansas, which reaches some 14,000 youngsters each year across central Arkansas with programs centered on entrepreneurship, financial literacy and workplace skills. A past chair and board member for 13 years, Bailey is receiving the organization’s Legacy Award on Wednesday.

“You never know who you’re going to ignite or set off,” said Bailey, senior vice president at Blue Cross and Blue Shield. “We need more Bills Gateses and Steve Jobses. I hope we will continue to give our kids an opportunity and let them know it’s OK to dream.”

Growing up in Mattoon, Ill., in the east-central part of that state, Bailey made good on his dream of using athletics to become the first member of his family — he has 11 siblings — to graduate from college. A tall, lanky all-around athlete who was all-state in track, Bailey weighed several scholarship offers before choosing Arkansas State University. He opted for Jonesboro because the coach at the time was a former 800-meter runner, which was Bailey’s specialty. He set a school record in the 800 that stood several years and was part of relay teams that did the same.

After earning a degree in education and political science, Bailey moved to Little Rock and taught civics for a year in the Pulaski County Special School District. That’s where he reconnected with his wife-to-be, who he’d known casually at ASU, after calling her sorority sister for a date.

“We went to dinner and six months later we were married,” recalls Fran Bailey, a Helena native who remembers checking with her sorority sister to make sure she didn’t mind before that first date.

Bailey left teaching for a sales job with a chemical company. But when the company wanted to transfer him to Omaha, Neb., Bailey declined — with a little encouragement from Fran.

“My lovely wife said, ‘I’m not going, you need to change careers,’” Bailey recalls.

TAILOR-MADE JOB

Bailey did, taking a job with Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the state’s largest insurer, in 1980. Rick Hooten, a former Blue Cross executive who started with the organization about the same time, said Bailey seemed tailor-made for the part.

“For a marketing guy, he’s got tremendous physical presence. He’s tall, good-looking. He dresses the part. He will walk into a room, and you’ll spot him and want to talk to him. It’s something you have or you don’t.”

But, Hooten added, “That’ll only get you so far.” Bailey is a big reader who would educate himself in every way he could on the insurer’s products and the needs of his potential clients, then consume books on history and leadership looking to glean whatever edge he could from them, Hooten said.

“It’s like a gifted athlete who also goes in there and reviews game film into the wee hours of the morning.”

Moving back to Jonesboro, Bailey’s first boss at Blue Cross was Phillips, who’d been an All-American football player at ASU.

“Probably the thing that stuck out most for me was his never-say-die attitude,” Phillips said. “If you told Jim Bailey he couldn’t sell a certain group, then that’s what he would do. He would go out and prove you wrong.”

Blue Cross promoted Bailey to account executive and then regional manager, moving him back to central Arkansas. He and Fran settled in Conway, which at the time was only about a third of its present size. It made for a daily 30-minute commute to Little Rock, but then Bailey was often on the road anyway serving clients and trying to sign up more. Bailey was among a number of hard-charging salesmen for Blue Cross during a period of rapid growth, and maybe the most successful of them all. Phillips uses words like “dogged” and “aggressive” to describe him and allows that Bailey might even have “rubbed people the wrong way” on occasion.

“Do you put a muzzle on him and try to calm him down or do you let him run and bark and get all the contracts he can get?” Phillip said. “I think that’s what Blue Cross and Blue Shield decided to let him do.”

WINNING WALMART

Bailey says he is limited in what he can discuss about his work with specific clients, but former colleagues say he was instrumental in landing such past and present accounts as Walmart, Tyson Foods, J.B. Hunt, Potlatch, Georgia-Pacific and the University of Arkansas System.

“We tried for years to establish a contract or relationship with Walmart, the largest retailer in the world,” Phillips said. “We finally just felt like we were beating our heads against the wall and it couldn’t be done. Jim … sold the entire Walmart company. That’s nationwide, worldwide. It was a challenge for him. His dogged determination wasn’t going to let him stop until he actually did it.”

At one point in his career, Phillips said, Bailey was the company’s answer to entire teams at other insurers who were assigned to pursue larger contracts.

Bailey “had a phenomenal way of approaching things. He’d say (to clients), ‘You tell me what you want and I’ll tell you want it costs.’ It was never ‘We can’t do that.’ He would find a way to get it done.”

Hooten said attracting large clients was only the beginning of the job.

“Every time any of these major employer groups comes up for a bid, that’s a crisis. The challenge is getting them to continue the relationship.” Competitors in the insurance industry “don’t send their B team” to try to get a piece of the action. “You’re dealing with the cream of the crop for competition.”

Bailey doesn’t disagree with the “aggressive” label. “But I’m also very passionate. I think I tend to be very thorough in analyzing the business case, thinking through all the intricacies that are going to be involved.”

Bailey said it can take years to build the relationships needed to close some deals.

“I think it’s very important when you’re out there, (knowing) what does that client manufacture? What’s driving their business? I’ve always believed in the adage ‘People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.’ I think that’s served me well.”

Tom Emerick, a consultant and former vice president of global benefits for Walmart, said working with Bailey was “like having a team of consultants.” The Bentonville-based company is self-insured but contracts with Blue Cross to administer its plan. In the beginning, though, Walmart processed its own claims and mainly wanted to use Blue Cross’ network of health care providers.

“The insurance companies don’t like to lease out their networks for somebody else to use. But I was able to get that accomplished thanks to the good work of Jim Bailey and others.”

Walmart now contracts with Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield to process claims for about 60 percent of its 1.2 million employees, wherever they work. “It would have been very easy for a lot of errors to occur,” Emerick said. “Jim guided those things very carefully to make sure they happened smoothly.”

Arkansans as a whole enjoy low insurance premiums, Emerick said, and Blue Cross and its executives such as Bailey have played a role in that by negotiating fair agreements with various players in the health care system (although the state’s relatively low wages play a role, too). Hooten said Bailey’s experience and contacts have helped Blue Cross innovate in areas such as managed care.

Bailey said many challenges remain in the industry, of which “affordability is No. 1. Health care in this country has become almost unaffordable for many Americans. That was the impetus behind the Affordable Care Act. I think the other sea change is the mass of consolidation that’s occurring within the industry, as relates to payers and providers. Then you have large medical systems that are consolidating.”

Blue Cross employs about 2,500 people in Arkansas, many of whom are “very much involved in our communities,” Bailey said. “I think people would say we’re really trying to make a difference in people’s lives to the extent we can.”

BASEBALL AND GOLF

The stories about Bailey’s ugly early golf game and determination to make it to his son’s baseball games are actually connected. “He would not take up golf until our son went away to college,” Fran Bailey said. “He said ‘If I don’t have the time to play it well, I’m not going to devote the time to it.’”

The Baileys have three children: Sarah Beth, 39, a former employee of the George W. Bush administration who lives in Little Rock; Ryan, 38, a geologist in Texas; and Katie, 35, a former Miss Arkansas who lives in Conway and works in medical sales.

When their kids were young, the demands of family and business left little time for community involvement. In addition to working at Blue Cross, Bailey serves on the boards of several related entities, including Consortium Health Plans, which helps Blue Cross companies across the nation with sales and marketing; New Directions Behavioral Health, which manages behavioral health services for Blue Cross companies; and HMO Partners Inc., a health maintenance organization that covers Arkansas state and public school employees.

Thirteen years ago, Jim House, then a colleague at Blue Cross, recruited Bailey onto the board of Junior Achievement. Bailey has enlisted volunteers from within Blue Cross to present programs to students in elementary school through high school, made presentations himself and took a lead in fundraising as chair. “He’s just a positive person,” House said. “We’re glad we got him.”

More recently, Bill Phillips recruited him onto the board of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, located in Verizon Arena. That was an easy sell for Bailey, considering the major role sports played in his life.

As he nears retirement, Bailey is looking forward to having more time for his wife, their eight grandchildren and the history books he loves. And he says he and Fran will stay active in the community.

“We feel like we’ve been very blessed, so we want to help people if we can.”