Why Stem Cell Therapy Isn’t Covered by Insurance — And Why That’s Actually Good News

In this concise and eye-opening episode of Your Infinite Health Podcast, Trip Goolsby, MD, and LeNae Goolsby, JD, pull back the curtain on one of the most common questions they get:

 “Why isn’t stem cell therapy covered by insurance?”

The answer might surprise you — and could change how you think about your health entirely.

You’ll discover:

• Why insurance companies exclude regenerative and stem cell therapies from coverage.
• The difference between cost coverage and true value in health care.
• How patients who step outside the limitations of traditional insurance often experience faster, more complete recoveries.
• Real-world examples from Infinite Health’s regenerative medicine patients who regained mobility and freedom after years of chronic pain.

If you’ve ever wondered whether stem cell therapy is worth it — or if you’re tired of insurance dictating your wellness options — this episode will give you the clarity (and confidence) you need.

🎧 Tune in now and discover how Infinite Health is redefining what health care — and healing — can be.

👉 Learn more or schedule your free discovery call at YourInfiniteHealth.com

Transcript

What's up, Tripp? Hey, Lene. How's that coffee? Cold. I'll drink faster. I have a joke. ⁓ awesome. I'm having to cheat because my memory is, I don't know. What's a shark's favorite saying? A shark's favorite saying. ⁓

Okay, you're taking too long. Man overboard.

⁓ What are the two words or three words that a shark loves to hear most? A man overboard. Well that would be two words not three words. Man overboard. think overboard is one word. You're turning red. well today I wanted to talk about ⁓

Insurance and its role in stem cell procedures. Man overboard! Or the lack of the role thereof. I get a lot of questions about does insurance cover that?

It's really getting on my nerves. Insurance doesn't cover anything that will keep you alive. Okay? Like, well, I mean, I say that, but that's not true. I mean, if you break, if you break, if you need an emergency situation, insurance is like a stop gap, right? It's like car insurance. Your medical insurance should be like your car insurance. You don't use your car insurance for maintenance. You don't use it for gas. You don't use it to change tires. You don't use it to get your car cleaned. Like, and that's kind of the

same with your body. Insurance is not designed to optimize your health. It's designed, I guess maybe I said it wrong, it's designed to intervene when something is wrong. In a catastrophic situation. Well, yeah, kind of. But I think more importantly, this begs the question of the current medical paradigm and how it develops.

which is really ⁓ the history of medicine really. Medicine developed from way back when, I guess first there was a trauma and to resolve the trauma, human beings intervene to try and stop the bleeding at first, I guess. That's the most simple thing. are you gonna go back that far? No, no.

But I guess I did. But yeah, okay. No, okay. Redirect redirect. Okay. I'm redirecting. I'm redirecting. We're talking about insurance. Okay, so let's let's go back to the 18th century the late 18th century early 19th They didn't have stem cells back then. No, but I'm getting there. I'm getting there. Oh my god. So, so iodine, right? Iodine. Thyroid.

Hypothyroidism, hypoliadinism causes goiters and hypothyroidism. And then they found that, ooh, getting iodine resolved the goiters, resolved the hypothyroidism. And then they said, let's create a program called So that was like the... So they...

That will pay for the Diadote that will not really pay. Yeah, not really pay. Let's charge people Yeah, if they if they happen to charge the premium to the person and we'll tell them we're gonna cover them because we care and then when they need to use it we will impose a 20 40 30 percent deductible

Yeah, as medicine developed, it was a reactive process. So as medical science developed and anatomy and the things that the cause of diseases became more and more apparent, we could react to them by certain interventions. so medicine has been reactive until more recently when the further development of the well of

DNA, human genome project, all of those things, actually now know the sections of our genomes that may be damaged or impaired that will eventually lead to a medical problem if it's stimulated or exposed to an environment that causes those problems. ⁓ if you manage to inherit a certain combination of genes from your parents that predispose

expose you to developing diabetes, let's say for example, and you continue to expose it to high levels of sugar, you become obese, you become inflamed and all these things, then ultimately you're going to develop those problems. Okay, so now we're actually in possession of a knowledge base that allows us to intervene or not really even intervene, live in a fashion that doesn't stimulate and create the environment in our body.

disposed to those disease processes. Insurance doesn't do that. doesn't care about that. It only cares about when you get to that point where you actually have ⁓ something that can be acted upon. So ⁓ we have metformin. We've developed metformin, which helped decrease blood sugar levels. And oops, ⁓ so that becomes something that insurance can cover without

the issues that they've developed to.

the actuaries know how often that's going to happen. And basically, they establish parameters whereby they can remain profitable and not lose money in the offing, so to speak. Right. And? And what? We're talking about stem cells and insurance. well, yeah. So now in science, we have stem cells and... ⁓

stem cells. We know stem cells exist and that's been known for quite some time. And we know that basically they serve after an appropriate reaction in the body to activate repair mechanisms that work better.

more or less depending on the environment that they exist in too. So in the application and in the repair process, the science is developed so that we can actually stimulate repair by virtue of those cells and the particles that exist inside them. The micro vesicles that contain the proteins and micro

and anti-inflammatories and things that guide the response of the body to repair itself as well as it can. in a fashion, the real challenge there is that the pharmaceutical industry that is developing cures and ⁓ treatments for things can't patent the things that occur naturally in our bodies. So as we

as we establish those pathways and the molecular biology and those things that actually allow us to use those mechanisms, use our body's mechanisms and stimulate them, the pharmaceutical industry can't patent those things and they can't make money off of them. So there's no money.

to actually study and create data so that those things can become standard of care, so to speak, because there's very little data or there are only very small clinical trials that ever are performed.

So insurance not having that information as a means of saying, this is investigational or experimental and we don't need to pay for that.

So, does insurance cover, I always hear that, gosh. Have I deviated again? No, you did good. I'm about to deviate. That character on TV, Urkel, every time somebody asks me, does insurance cover that, I always hear it in an Urkel voice. Does insurance cover that? Like, did I do that? I don't know, anyway.

I hear it so often and it's so frustrating because people are allowing their insurance to dictate their choices when it comes to optimizing their health and doing things that are ideal for them. so much money on the fear of something that needs a reaction, right? So they're spending a lot of money on that already.

they in fact would be better served as time goes on, more people will realize this, I believe, that they need to focus on actually creating their health and deriving their thought process to say, okay, this is what I have as my infrastructure, my genomic infrastructure. I need to address my life so that if that's a desire of theirs or even within their realm of

consciousness

is to focus on how they want to create that health and how they want to focus on living their lives going forward. they can and we know that, you know, even even now we know that the lifestyle that we live helps create that environment in our body to to predispose us to longevity and health span health span being that that existence and allows us to live a vibrant

lives until boom the day where you you know the clock cuts off and go and take the dirt nap. The dirt nap.

I am not familiar with this terminology. And I'm not ascribing to any dirt. you're talking about like being buried in the ground. That is so morbid, Troy. It's not morbid, it's a physical thing. We're dealing with a physical thing. It's a visual and pleasant. The spiritual thing keeps going, right? Right. Because everything is energy and energy never dies. Right. All right.

Cool. Well, thank you. That was very helpful. I hope it was helpful for y'all and ⁓ informational, educational, somewhat entertaining. until next time.

Dirt nap.