Why Health Insurance Makes Care More Expensive

In the 1960s, people paid their doctors in cash. It was simple. It was cheap. Then everything changed.

We were told insurance would protect us. Just pay one price and everything is covered.

But is it?

I’ve seen families pay $30,000 a year before insurance even kicks in. I’ve seen an $8,000 bill for a 15-minute procedure. I’ve seen a $5,000 bag of saline that cost the hospital a few dollars.

And here’s the part no one wants to admit: many doctors are just as frustrated as you are.

So what if we’ve been thinking about health care the wrong way?

What if paying directly could actually cost less… and feel more human?

In this episode, I pull back the curtain on what’s really happening inside the system—and why more people are walking away from traditional insurance.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

- Why higher medical prices often mean worse care
- The hidden reason your insurance bill keeps going up
- How a different model is quietly helping families avoid medical bankruptcy

If you feel stuck… confused… or tired of surprise bills and denied claims—this episode will change how you see health care.

Listen now. Then decide if the system deserves your trust.

Connect with our guest Andy Schoonover: andy@joincrowdhealth.com

Chapters:
00:00 – How Health Insurance Changed Everything
00:59 – Why Costs Exploded
02:22 – An Alternative to Insurance
03:41 – The $8,000 Ear Surgery
06:19 – Paying Cash vs Insurance
11:02 – How Community Funding Works
13:24 – Why Doctors Hate the System
20:11 – The $250 Heart Test
29:08 – Radical Transparency
34:05 – The $5,000 Saline Bag
46:20 – Growth, Diabetes, and the Future
53:39 – The Biggest Challenges

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

In the 1960s, Americans paid for about half their medical expenses out of pocket. They went to the doctor, they got labs, they had x-rays, they just paid cash. Very simple, it's very cheap. Everything went along fine, and then everything changed in 1973 with the passage of the HMO Act. The insurance companies gave us a penalizing proposition. What if we pay one price and we cover all your medical services? It sounded great. Everybody said, yeah, let's do it. But now we're understanding the true problems with that. The first problem is we don't see prices of medical services anymore. We don't know if we got a great deal or a terrible deal. And the second part is we took something that was simple and made it complex. Now you take a doctor's visit and you run it through the insurance process. All of a sudden, you have to get permission to see a doctor. Doctors are in networks, so they're not in networks. That wasn't happening before. And also took something that was inexpensive and made it expensive. And the third thing that happened was costs exploded. Now we're at this tipping point in our health care. The average family is paying about $30,000 in premiums and deductibles before their insurance kicks in. And what happens when it kicks in? No one knows because you don't know if it's going to be covered if I go to the doc. What happens? You have no idea. You don't really know if that doctor in network or that hospital network, there's surprises, and then there's delays, there's denials of care. What are we even getting? People are extremely frustrated with that. And I want to share with the viewers there's a lot of misconception about this. Physicians are as frustrated as the patients. We hate dealing with insurance. We are terrorized by insurance just like you are. A lot of patients sit there and they think, you know, the doctors are wanting us to be sick, and that's how they make the that's absolutely not true. We want you to be well. We are frustrated. About 80% of physicians right now are employed. And I would say to everybody who's employed, if you're a physician, uh, go out on your own. It's not worth it. And I know Andy's written a letter to physicians. He said, drop insurance. Uh throw the shackles off. I love that. So everybody's wondering, what are the options? Now, millions of Americans can't afford insurance, especially with the ACA subsidies expiring. People are like, what am I gonna do? A lot of people are millions are going without insurance. Well, in this episode, we're gonna talk about an alternative to health insurance. You don't have to go without a safety net. We have something here today that's very exciting. I have the pleasure of handing Annie Scoon over here, the CEO of CrowdHealth. He's gonna walk you through his great system. And this podcast is for educational purposes only, not medical advice, not inducement to buy any products, and as always, seek the advice of a physician. Thank you so much for being here this morning. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Now, why did you start Crowd Health?

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Yeah, I uh um this is actually my second healthcare company. Um, never thought I was gonna do another healthcare company after the first one. Um, like you, I'm very frustrated with healthcare, the regulatory overhang, just the difficulty to innovate within healthcare. And so after my first one, um, which I sold, I went and I got what I thought was my only option, which was an Obamacare plan. You know, most of us are employed through our our insured through our employer, um, but I didn't have an employer anymore, so I had to go to the Affordable Care Act. And um, it was, I think it was about 1200 bucks for me, my wife, and my two girls. And I kind of joke it it worked until I had to use it. Um, my little one, who was had uh one at the time was having a recurring ear infection, so we went to the ear, nose and throat doctor told her she had a hole in her eardrum. It's like, no big deal. Um, you know, we'll we we just gotta get tubes in her ears, you know. So we did everything right. We went in network, and um 15 minutes later, she came out and she was almost good as new. You know, her her you know, screaming bloody murder all night long disappeared. She was great. And she's like, perfect. Then I got the bill um from my insurance from uh my hospital first, and it was $8,000 for a 15-minute procedure. I was like, holy cow, this is crazy. Are you kidding me? This is this is crazy. But hey, this is what health insurance is for. And we were at the end of the year, and so we were, you know, had done gotten most of the way through our deductible. And um, so I was like, all right, well, this is what health insurance is for. And then I got a note in the mail from my health insurance company that they said it was medically unnecessary, and so they weren't gonna pay for it. I'm like, hold on a second, my daughter had a hole in her eardrum. How is that not medically necessary? Absolutely. And so we went through two rounds of appeals, and at the end of the day, the the uh health insurance plan was like, nope, we're not paying for it. So I had to stroke an $8,000 check to get this procedure paid for. And it was at that moment, I mean, I was like, you know, something is totally screwed up with our system. Um, and so I quit health insurance and I was like, we've got to find another way, um, another way of doing this. And, you know, I can go kind of into the whole story, but ultimately the the product of that uh analysis of how to do this better was was crowd health, which we started in 2021.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

Well, I'm so glad that you did that. When you had that procedure done, was that at a hospital or ambulatory surgery center?

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Yeah. I if I if I would only known then what I know now, um, you know, it was done at a hospital. It was the only hospital in network that would do it uh with the insurance plan that I had. Um, you know, I've learned now that ambulatory surgery centers are a much better place to be doing these outpatient procedures. Um, Dr. Mary Tully Bowden, who who's been in the news here race recently with her um uh battle with the Texas Medical Board, actually um responded on X. It was Twitter back then, um, when I told them I can't believe, you know, I posted something on X. I said, I can't believe this. This is $8,000 for a 15-minute procedure. And she responded and she's like, Oh yeah, we do these for $2,000 all day long. And I'm like, wait, hold on a second. What? Like, she's like, Yeah, if you pay in cash direct, we'll do them for $2,000. I'm just like, this is crazy to me. You know, that there's a $6,000 difference between paying directly in an ambulatory surgery center versus paying indirectly through health insurance through a hospital. I could have saved myself $6,000 if I would know that information. And so, you know, I've gathered probably a dozen of those little tips, um, things that can help you massively reduce your costs. And we've kind of propagated that out amongst 25,000 people now in our community who are now getting much, much lower rates on their procedures as a result of paying directly, staying out of the hospital to do some of these outpatient procedures. And as a result of that, are saving, you know, a family of four are saving $10,000 a year on their healthcare expenses by just using some of these tips that we've we've gathered over the last five or six years.

SPEAKER_02 7:01

Now, the one thing that's interesting, and I encourage everybody who's listening, please go to the Crowd Health website. And I'm gonna say this is the best website I've ever seen. And I love doing deep dives. And you can do incredible deep dives on this website. You can go through the media and blog section, you can do the transparency reports, you could really get a great sense of this. And when I first heard about this, I was a little skeptical, but physicians always are. But there were two people on X who were big proponents of this. There's people that both of them I really respect a lot. One was Dr. Noah Kaufman, and the second one was Tiffany Ryder, who's a PA. And Noah's a big Bitcoiner. And I was like, you know what, I have to really check this out. So I really compliment you for the website. It really uh lays out the whole plan so well. It's unbelievably. And I love that you really have simplified healthcare. I love when people come from outside healthcare and say, you know what, I'm gonna simplify. There's no reason for it to be complex. And and healthcare delivery can be complex, but healthcare financing, the paying for healthcare should be very easy. I mean, there's no reason for it. But could you explain to us how it starts? Like if I want to sign up to CrowdHealth, how do I sign up? And how much do I pay each month? And go through the system a little bit for us.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Yeah, I mean, first, I mean, Dr. Kaufman and and uh Tiffany are, you know, uh have become friends of mine. Um they started as as members of CrowdHealth. They are they're now friends. And the interesting thing about CrowdHealth is as we um track um kind of the occupations of our members. And the number two occupation are clinicians. Um number one is entrepreneurs, gig workers, freelancers, so kind of an entrepreneurial group. And then number two are clinicians. And I think that we're, you know, that that's a product of clinicians seeing how broken the system is, you know, firsthand. Um, and so we've got tons of of clinicians who who are in involved with with crowd health. And that's pretty cool that we can we can can serve serve them.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

That says a lot right there, Andy. That really does.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And and and um, you know, I yeah, like I said, like you said, you know, clinicians are seeing this, that you know, you can go in and what should be a very simple process is obfuscated uh to use you know the most mild term prop possible, probably, by health insurance plans and and and hospital systems. And and as a result of that, um, through through kind of this opaque nature in which they work and bill, um, you know, they are they are you know taking reaping profits, unfortunately. You know, and so you know, crowd health, it's it's it started with a simple concept, which is what I was seeing is that if you could pay directly, you could get better rates. You know, and after I quit my health insurance, um, you know, I I got I had to pay that $8,000 bill. I called my health insurance company, and I was like, I quit. I'm not doing this anymore. If you're not gonna pay my bills, I'm not gonna pay your bills. And we started paying directly in cash or, you know, credit cards. And um what I found is like they're like, oh, great, you're paying directly, great, we'll give you a discount. And oftentimes we're seeing 20, 30, 40, 50% discounts. Um, you know, I just mentioned my daughter would have been 75% less if I would have just paid directly and gone to the right place. And so I was like, man, you know, let's let's see if we can can scale this. And so ultimately, we what we are is a platform to enable people who are willing to help um connect them to people who need help. Um, and now we're doing that across 25,000 people. So I'll give you a you know a real life, real life example. Um, we had a woman here in Austin who tore her ACL playing pickleball. She went to the emergency room, they're like, Yep, you tore your ACL. You know, let's give you to the hospital systems orthopedic surgeon, and they will do, you know, repair your ACL and it'll be $24,000. And so she calls us and she says, I'm so sorry, guys. Like I just joined Crowd Health and now I have an ACL tear. I feel so bad. It's $24,000. He's like, well, do you mind if we you know look around and see? Um, and we actually knew of another orthopedic surgeon in town um who does a lot of the, I'm in Austin, um, who does a lot of the uh joints for the University of Texas Athletic Department. And so we know he's good. And we call him, he's like, oh yeah, if you pay directly, if you pay me directly before the surgeries, I'll I'll do it for $12,000. That's all in. So it went from $24,000 to $12,000. It went from a hospital to an ambulatory surgery center. It went from them having to bill health insurance kind of price to a direct pay price. Um, and so all of these things are showing how inefficient the current system is. And so what we went and did is we went to um, I think it was 120 people and we asked for $100 from 120 people in our community. They sent $100 to our member. Our member then had that $12,000 to go and pay for that surgery directly at the point of care, and then um, you know, did all our PT after that and all that was funded by the community too. And so, in essence, we have this peer-to-peer funding mechanism that are funding these bills so that you can pay directly, as opposed to the doctor having to go and fight to get paid from a health insurance company. It it doesn't make much sense, at least to me prior to getting into this. I would have thought that United Healthcare, which is the top 10 largest companies in the planet in terms of revenue, would be able to get me really good prices. But in fact, it's the exact opposite. I can get much better prices than United Healthcare can because the doctor now doesn't have to fight United Healthcare company, you know, United Healthcare to get paid. There was a study, I think, nine or twelve months ago that said doctors spend on average of 16 hours a week fighting with health insurance plans to get paid. The administrative bureaucratic process. It's like imagine, like if you're a doctor, so you get this, but imagine for those people listening, if you had to fight your employer two days a week just to get paid. That's not a very productive two days a week. What if I gave you back those two days a week so that you could actually be productive? Well, that's what's happening with doctors, is we're giving them back that time, and therefore they can spend more time with you, they can generate more revenue, and therefore they can you know charge less price because their margin on you is much greater now that they don't have to, you know, fight the insurance company. So that's ultimately the reason why you can get much better pricing with paying directly as opposed to buying through health insurance.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

Well, there's a couple of different things that you you crack the code on. The first thing is there's no correlation in healthcare between the price and the quality. And as everybody assumes, you know, there'd be people, and I talk about this on X all the time. You can get a CAT scan for $350. And people are like, well, this is, you know, a discount CAT scan center. I'm like, no, it's actually an imaging center that's independent from the hospital. It actually looks like a med spa when you go in. They smile at you and treat you well. It's very convenient.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

It's a much better experience.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

That's a much better experience. That's the part no one, that's what is missing in healthcare. You don't get treated well in the traditional healthcare system. You get treated as an annoyance. No one, you come in the emergency room, you're gonna get a minimum a $5,000 bill. No one's sitting there smiling at you when you come in. And you know, so that's the part that that is messing with that. That human and I love from your system, and I'm not a member because uh I'm I'm too old to be a member. And uh but when I'm reading through it, you can tell that it's set up very humanistic. You want to take care of the person, and that's why every physician goes into medicine. You want to take care of people. And like you said, you don't want to be talking to United Health, you don't want to do a peer-to-peer with somebody from a different special who has no idea what the heck you're talking about, and just trying to stall delay. And really, what we're doing is we're looking at Main Street versus Wall Street. And they have one incentive. Uh you the SEO gets paid by the stock price. Stock price goes up, it gets paid more. And the only way to get the stock price go up is delayed denied care. It's not a profit maximization. Absolutely. When you're sitting there on Main Street, you're like, okay, you know, I'm setting this up. I want to get patients the care they need. So it's all and that's what physicians do. Part of it, even if a physician would make less with cash paying, but you didn't have the hassle to dealing with the current stuff, it's worth it. It's so crushing for physicians. Physicians are retire early, they're getting burnt out. It's crazy. And it's with United Health, thank you optimal where they try to claw back money. You know, and it was a couple of years after treatment's given. You know, you go through these processes. I had to go through this huge ordeal with 40 cases. They accuse you like you're a criminal, you did something wrong. At the end of it, they say, Oh, actually, you didn't do anything wrong. They don't say, We're sorry who we harassed you. And they just said, We're surprised you actually even push back. Most people just pay because there's such an administrative burden to do that. You know, so that that's a part that that so I want patients to know we're on your side. And I love this. When you pay direct, then it's very apparent, you know, that that works out great.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Um, you made a really good point, but which is like, you know, we are conditioned to think that higher price means higher quality. You know, if you go to the Ritz-Carlton and pay $500 a night versus the courtyard, which is $150 a night, you're gonna get a better experience at the Ritz-Carleton, clearly. With healthcare, it almost feels like it's the opposite. Um, the more you're paying, the worse care you're getting. You know, and I and I kind of think about it like this where, you know, this orthopedic surgeon, for example, you know, he does you know two or three knees a day. Um and therefore, if he sees something that's irregular, he's probably have seen seen it dozens and dozens of times. Right. And therefore, the outcomes are gonna be way better. And he can do them faster. Um, and so imagine that versus somebody who does two or three knees a month. The guy who does two or three knees a day is gonna be better at it, more efficient at it, lower cost at it, and that's the person you want to go to. You don't want to go to the high cost person who does two or three a month, you know, and so in our minds, we have to recondition ourselves to think that more expensive does not equal better. And in fact, what you're saying is that oftentimes, let's talk about these labs, imaging centers or these labs. These oftentimes are the exact same place that you'll go for with your insurance, but you're gonna pay two or three times more through insurance than um if you pay you know directly. So that's one of the challenges that we have to get people to understand and recognize is when you pay directly, you're going to get better pricing, even though they may be the exact same place um that you you go to get your health insurance. When I was had had health insurance, my labs every year was something like five, six hundred dollars, seven hundred dollars sometimes. When you know I had you know a lot of labs. I get my labs now for somewhere between $100 and $200, depending upon what I order. And so I cut it by 66% just by paying directly. Um and so there is huge savings to be had if you can rip out that health insurance middleman, re-establish the doctor-patient relationship, and I think you get way better care at a much lower price. If I come to you and say, hey, doc, I have health insurance, you know, ultimately you have to provide me care associated with what the health insurance company, you know, will dictate. You know, it's dictated care from the insurance company, which is why I think doctors are so worn out. They're like, I'm a doctor. Like I should be able to do what I need to do with my patient to get them better. But if I go into you and say, hey, I'm paying you directly, there's no middlemen. It's me and you. I am your customer. Now you can do exactly what's right for me and my health without a government or an insurance company or an employer or anybody else getting in the middle of that. It's between me and you, which is the way that it should ultimately be. And so when I go in and I pick, say I'm cash pay, you see the doctor's faces, they're like, Whoa, really? Like this is great. You know, I remember I was in the cardiologist like a year and a half ago. I had some chest pain. Fortunately, it was a pinched nerve and nothing bad. But I remember going in, I was like, I'm cash pay, and he looked at me weird, like, really? I'm like, yeah. And I was like, great. You need to go do a stress echo test down the hall. I was like, how much is that? And I was like, he's like, it's like 200 bucks or 250 bucks. I'm like, really? He's like, yeah. I put this on X again, Twitter back at the time. Yeah. And I put this on X. I just got my stress echo test for 250 bucks. And a guy responded to me and was like, dude, I just had a stress echo test with my insurance and it was five grand. And I'm like, this is ridiculous.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

It's it's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

And the power of being able to ditch health insurance, exit the system, and pay directly, it's gonna save you a ton of money. Um, and you're gonna get better care, from my perspective.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

No, you know, and Dr. Keith Smith from the Surgery Center Oak, I love Dr.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

Smith.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

Testified in the Senate and they had a hearing, and he talked about this. And he said, the reason why it's more expensive with a poor quality surgeon is part of what you said, you know, they don't have the volume, but they have worse outcomes. So they, you know, if you're responsible, if you have a bundle and if you're responsible for all the cost, you don't really know how to factor in all the complications. Where his center, they have top quality people, they know how to do it, you know, they they know how to price it. And you know, I would say to all the physicians listening here, I think what we have to do is double down on customer service. I mean, certainly quality is always important, but we customer service. And I think we have to offer people bundles of care. Because that's you know, if you're an employer and you say somebody's gonna need a knee surgery, you don't want to get 15 bills. You want one bill and let the surgery center figure it out. You know, you guys in the back of the room, figure it out, cut it out. We don't really care. Just give us one bill. So I think we have to do a better job with that. And I'm a huge physician advocate, but uh that's one area I I think we have to meet the needs of patients and employers and make it simple. Uh and I love that your simple your your system is so simple. Uh and you know you have the two parts, the uh fixed part, I would say administrative, the $60 a month cost. But there's tremendous value. In the $60 that you're charging. And that's really, from my understanding, that's the only profit center for you because the other money is going into the pool for expenses. So you don't touch that other money. So the $60 is all you have. And could you talk about what services do you provide for that $60?

SPEAKER_01 22:20

Yeah. So as you said, there's two components of what we do. One is the $60, which that comes directly to Crowd Health. And for $60, you get a care advocate. And so you get a personal care advocate. You talk to the same person every time. One of the things I hated about health insurance when I was dealing with it, when I would call in, I'd have to wait on the line for 20 minutes. I would talk to somebody in some foreign country. I would tell them my whole story. And they'd be like, oh, I'm sorry, I'm the wrong person. And then they would pump me to somebody else and I'd wait for another 20 minutes. I mean, it was like one of the most, if I had hair, I would have pulled my hair out. Um so I was like, you know what? I really want just somebody I can talk to. Like, let me schedule a call with somebody so I can talk to somebody that knows me, knows my story. And so you got a personal care advocate internally. So that's a part of that 16. You also have a team of people who will negotiate bills for you. Um, and so if you go into the hospital, if you are, if you do tear your ACL, we've got a team of people who will actually go and find great doctors for you. Um, or if you you know have a bill that you need negotiated, can negotiate that bill for you. So I guess those are two different pieces. We have a negotiation team who will negotiate bills for you. And we have another team who can find a great doctor for you based upon all of our other members who are in your area who've also gone to doctors. So we we provide, you know, the cool part about this is we've got 25,000 people, they're all going to doctors, they're like, this doctor's great, or this doctor's not great. And we put that in a database and then we share it back to our community so they know who the great doctors are in their area if we can give them a really you know a fair price. Um so that's a part of that $65 as well. Um, and then that we also enable you to crowdfund your medical bills. Um, and so the second component is one um payment from to somebody else in the community once a month. So we will ask you once a month to help somebody else out in the community. Um, and that's up to $140 if you're a single person or up to $420 if you're a family of four or more. And that money will go directly to somebody else to help them with their medical event. And so you'll just be asked once a month to help somebody with their medical event. It's kind of cool because now I know exactly where my money is going. It's a peer-to-peer transaction. We don't get in the middle of it. Um, I'm I'm helping Sally and Des Moines, you know, with her pregnancy. And it's a really kind of neat thing where I'm not sending it to United Healthcare and paying for the CEO's massive salary. I'm paying paying it directly to somebody else. And so this transparency is really, really important to us, and I think really differentiates us, not only versus health insurance, but also health shares and some of the other alternatives out there.

SPEAKER_02 25:07

Now I also want to add a couple of things that you have, because I'm really impressed with this $60 value. I'll be honest with you. You have unlimited telehealth with the physician, which is phenomenal because a lot of people, you know, you have a cough, cold, you know, maybe I need you know, sore throat. That's extremely helpful. And then sometimes just in deciding, you know, I need to go to an urgent care or I need to go to the emergency room. You know, they can help you sort through some of that. And then the other part I think nowadays is you have that unlimited talking the um talk therapy. Talk therapy. Thank you. I think that's phenomenal because so many people have anxiety. And I I know you realize this as well. So many people just get put on SSRIs, get put on antidepressants really quick because it's quick. If you're a physician, you have 15 minutes, you have to spend about eight of that time with the Epic system, this terrible software that we get stuck with. You don't have much time to delve into it. Why are you anxious? What's going on with you know, with your family, your life, the whole thing. So it's just easier to put people on it. But if you can do talk therapy, I think that's a great place to start. You know, and it it's gonna be great for postpartum depression and you know, which comes up a lot. There's lots of changes. You know, moms need a lot of support afterwards. So I love that you have those two things. I mean, that's worth a lot. So it uh I I would I can't stress how helpful that is for people to have both of those. I think those are great services. And then you have the discounted prescription drugs, which works well.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

Discount card, discount card, prescription card, yeah, which works, which works super well. Uh, you know, again, you know, you go in and and we've seen a lot of these on X as of late where people go in to their, you know, uh get medications and they say, um, you know, how much is it? And they're like, oh, it's $7. And he's like, and but then they're like, well, I have insurance. Or like, oh, I'm sorry, it's not $7, it's $94. Yeah. And people are like, wait, what? What's going on? So you you get access to a discount prescription uh card as well.

SPEAKER_02 27:14

What people don't realize with the prescriptions is that's one of the essential benefits under Obamacare, which means that you have to have prescription drug coverage. Now they don't break it out and they don't tell you, and it's probably about 20% of your premiums. And I was looking at talking to a young woman the other day, and she's probably paying $3,000 a year for a prescription drug benefit. Then she has co-pays. So she's probably paying $3,100 a year for two medications, and the cash price for those for the year is $48. So that's a price, all this stuff is hidden. Because if anybody could see all this, we'd everybody be up in arms. They'd be calling their congressman like, why am I paying $3,100 for $48? So that's what people and 90% of drugs are generic. And there's great generics. And if you have insurance, a lot of times the middlemen, the pharmacy benefit managers, will take generics off the formularies and put a more expensive brand name on there. So they're not only are they not getting you the best price, they're actively getting you the worst price. That's the other part of it, which people don't realize with insurance. We think that the CEO of United Health is sitting there and saying, I have to get Marge Smith the best price in Des Moines, Iowa for her medication today. That's my goal. And of course that's not, but but no, I I love the transparency. The other thing, I was looking at your transparency files. And that's phenomenal. Could you talk about what's in those?

SPEAKER_01 28:42

Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, ultimately what we're trying to do is build trust with our community. And I think that you can build trust through transparency. And so what we do is every month we actually release a transparency file, which is basically all of the bills that we get into to CrowdHealth, and then the status of those bills. So you can see, you know, it came in, it got funded, or it didn't get funded, and the reason why it didn't get funded. Um it tells you where all the money went that that month, how much money went that month. We even put uh all the way down at the bottom underneath is the uh the the excuse me, all underneath the bills, we have our um what do we call it? We call it the uh complaints log. We so we actually show people all the times that our members complained this month too, and how we satisfied that complaint. So we want to have like maximal transparency. And so you can go and and take a look at that. It's it's on our website, jointcrowdhealth.com. Um, I think it's under more and then transparency files. Um and so that's a pretty neat part of what we do is we're not we're not trying to hide anything.

SPEAKER_02 29:49

No, it's it's great.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

We're trying to give you as much information as as possible. And I think this is you know a pretty interesting um, you know, differentiator versus health insurance, who are trying to hide as much as possible so that people don't really understand. I mean, I if funny, I went to Stanford and and my roommate was the number two in our class, and he's like, there's really only one thing I don't understand in this world, like I don't, I can't grasp, this wicked smart guy. He's like, it's the explanation of benefits I get from my health insurance company. Like, I'm pretty good at math, and this math doesn't math. Like, it just there's no way for me to get from this number to this number. And so there's like such like craziness that goes on these explanation benefits. Just real quick, I got a funny story where I talked to some woman who was doing uh worked at a consulting company, very well-known consulting company, everybody would know what know what it is. And basically, what their task was is to take CPT codes and DRG codes and then re-um translate them for somebody like me who doesn't understand healthcare. You know, because CPT codes, the the actual translation is oftentimes like gobbledygook, like you have no idea what it means. And so they're like, okay, so they took all CPT codes, all the DRG codes, and they like translated them. And so this big health insurance plan, I won't say which one it is, but it was like, great, we're gonna do this. And so they did it, and so people started getting explanation of benefits with like a real description of what services they got. And they said the the phones lit up at the insurance company because people were like, I didn't get this service. Like, what are you talking about? Like, we are there, she said there was people with baby girls coming home with circumcisions on their explanation of benefits, and people were like, I didn't get a circumcision, I have a baby girl. Um, and so the insurance company actually stopped doing it because they were getting so inundated with feedback, and so they went back to being totally, you know, opaque. Again, I'm trying to use the kindest terms possible. Um and and so that's like a real-world example of these insurance companies actually want you to be confused so that you don't ask questions.

SPEAKER_02 32:06

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 32:07

And so that's that's I mean, one of the huge challenges in in healthcare.

SPEAKER_02 32:11

No, you're right. And nothing is more confusing than when you go to the hospital. You walk in the emergency room, and and I've written about this on X. You look at the price of a hospital bed. You know, you could stay at the four seasons in a suite for the price of a hospital bed. And that's just a hospital bed. That doesn't include IVs, medications, anything else. It's like, why is it so high? And why is the highest one is the nonprofit hospitals? They're almost $1,000 higher than the for-profit hospitals. They're higher than state and federal government hospitals. They're the highest, and they're not paying any taxes. Why would they be higher? They should be lower. I mean, none of this makes absolutely any sense.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Nonprofits are the most egregious billers on the planet. Yes, you know, in hospital planet, you know, and so I think you you you uh made a comment on one of our posts. We we had this really fun kind of AI generated video about the health insurance base. And one of the examples we gave was a $5,000 um bag of saline solutions. Yes. And so um, you know, I unfortunately about two years ago, I was on a podcast like this, and I could not put two words together. Like I couldn't put a sentence together. Um, and about a year and a half before that, my dad had a stroke, so I thought I was having a stroke. So I went to the hospital and um, you know, I was in overnight and I had this uh saline drip going into me. Um, and I asked, I was like, what is the saline drip for? They're like, oh, we just do this with every patient. And I was like, am I you know dehydrated? They're like, no, no, no, you're not dehydrated, you're fine, you know. Um like, okay, whatever. And so I get the bill and I kid you not, that saline bag, a thousand milliliters of saline, was five thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_02 33:58

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 33:59

Wow. Five thousand dollars. I have the bill. Um that isn't insane. The hospital bought that saline bag for about two bucks. Wow. Three bucks, two to three bucks, depending upon volumes. That is great. And I'm like, wow, and I it wasn't even needed. It wasn't even needed. I wasn't even dehydrated. They're just doing it to do it. And I'm like, wow, this doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_02 34:21

No, it doesn't. And there's such good deals out there. My wife and I had unfortunately had gotten sick over my last birthday. We're staying at a hotel and we're just throwing up, you know, we just had the stomach flu. And I was like, I'm not going to the ER. And then I found a nurse practitioner who would come to you, to the hotel room, put an IV in. I got two liters of IV, you know, a Zofran, some other medications there. And the bill was $350. I mean, this is you know, it's such great and nice lady. And then she, you know, first my wife got sick first. Then I was like, you're probably gonna be seeing this again. I got sick the next day, and then my daughter got sick the day after. Took care of all of us. But I mean, there's so much good value if you just throw the insurance out the window. And, you know, I think the other thing, it's really hard because everybody got used to this idea like my insurance, I paid for it, they should cover everything. It's like, that's the wrong way to think. And most people never meet their deductible. So they're paying cash anyway, they just don't realize it. Right. So you have to find out.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

Or your car insurance doesn't pay everything.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

Exactly. So why are we insuring $6 prescriptions? And it doesn't make any sense. But the other thing I learned from one kind of joke, real quick.

SPEAKER_01 35:33

I was like, if if our car insurance paid for an oil change, our oil change would be six or seven hundred dollars.

SPEAKER_02 35:38

Absolutely. And you have to get it pre-authorized.

SPEAKER_01 35:41

And so, you know, the uh one one example, as I saw, was um whether you agree with this or not, but like birth control was um before Obamacare was you you pay directly for it. It wasn't uh reimbursed by your healthcare. But Obamacare then made it a part of minimal minimum essential coverage. And so they had to pay for it. Yes. And so birth control, and this is something that the Fed released, actually, the price was going down over time. As soon as Obamacare started paying for it, guess what? Whoop! And now it's I think it's two or three times what it was the year before Obamacare went into existence. And so once you start having a third party pay for something and you not pay for it, the cost is gonna go up. Um, in essence, you're going to the grocery store with somebody else's credit card. Yes. And so you're you don't care what the price is, you don't care what the quantity is, you're just going to acquire because you have no incentive to do otherwise. Um and so I would I'm I'm a huge you know um proponent of you know people should be paying more out of pocket, and the insurance company should be paying less. The more consumerism in healthcare, the better. The prices will come down, the oil changes will stay at $29.99 and not go up to $600. Um, you know, that's that's ultimately what's happening in healthcare right now. Lack of consumerism.

SPEAKER_02 37:02

No, you're 100% right. I mean, it's funny, there was a study, I think it was the American Enterprise Institute put out, and they compared cosmetic surgery rate of increase, the their CPI for that. And it was over, I think, 98 to 2020, and it went up at 38%. And then overall CPI went up at 66%. So all these people getting cosmetic surgery are much better shoppers. That's the other lie that they say in healthcare. Oh, it's too complicated. People can't shop for care. I'm like, really? They're on Amazon all day shopping for they shop for cars with, you know, 30,000 different features in cars, and they could do that, but you said you can't figure out how to get a CAT scan? That's baloney. But all the people again cosmetic care were able to shop and they got a better deal. And then medical CPI were at the same time, it went up 138%, and hospital CPI went up 240. So the problem is there's no shopping. And we exactly what you said, we need to shop for it. The other thing was fascinating on the transparency files is to see where the money went. And about 40%, it looked like each month, about 40% went to maternity and wellness. So I would say it has nothing to do with the disease because maternity is not a disease, obviously. And then 40% went to accidents because you have a kind of an active membership. And it was really a small amount went to illnesses. So that was fascinating just to kind of see where the money is going. And there's I know there's exclusions in your system because you you can't be 65 or over. And then you have weight exclusion. I think it's 220 for women, 240 for guys. And then for chronic illnesses, you're not covered the first two years, and the third year, I think it's 25,000 limitation on that. So the thing I'm gonna say is that this is not a plan that would work for everybody. And one of the things that I post a lot on X, and people always say, Well, your ideas aren't gonna work for everybody. There's no idea in healthcare is gonna work for everybody. However, if you have a plan that can work for millions of people, that's wonderful. The second thing I would say, Andy, is your principles can work. Those principles can be taken and applied to other like self-funded insurance. Why not make it simple? Why not have I love the idea of the care coordinator? You have an individual person. And I also went, I'm a huge nerd. Okay, so I want to like look at the people who work for us. And that was the funniest description of these people. But you can tell they're just quirky, funny people. They're nice people. And you know, but why can't self-funded plans do that? Why can't they lower the price, do shopping, make look, treat you as an individual, somebody that's priced. If you have an accident, I could tell when they call up the care coordinator, they don't do the United Health game and say, well, why are you calling us? And let's try to delay the care. You're just like, how could we help you? That you know, it's a whole different attitude. So we need to take your principles, the Andy principles, I'm gonna call them, and apply them to other types of insurance.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

Yeah, well, I appreciate that. I mean, I think we have very much a love your neighbor type of approach. Um and um, you know, my my my faith is important to me. And so I I'm I kind of slip that into places uh that that people don't see, but I think love your neighbor is ultimately one of the greatest rules out there, the greatest laws out there. And so we try to do that well, you know, and I think that um, you know, I'm I actually task my care advocates every month to spend a certain amount of money on our members that's outside of what they normally would expect. And so, you know, all of our moms are expecting moms going to the hospital get a little care package um with a robe and good socks and lip balm. And I asked my wife, I was like, hey, when we were going, you were going in and having our kids, like, what would you have liked? And she's like, Those robes at the hospital, they are terrible. The socks are terrible. And I'm always like chapped lips in there. I don't know what they do in those hospitals. And sort of like, all right, let's give these moms this. And then we have a little baby package too for the little babies. You know, one one cool real quick story is that we had a little guy in uh in in Colorado who was hiking with his dad. He fell, hit his head on a rock, and slid open his cheek. I believe it was his cheek. Well, he got that funded by the community and it was totally fine. And so we called the mom and was like, Say, how's he doing? You know, is he doing okay? He's like, Man, uh physically he's doing fine, but emotionally he's struggling with a little, you know, PTSD from falling while hiking. And so he's not hiking with his dad anymore. And so our care advocate um bought him a little climbing kit that he could put in his living room. And so the little guy started climbing on his climbing kit, and the mom called us back and was like, You won't believe this. You know, because of your little climbing kit, he's comfortable going back out with his dad hiking again. And so it was like a $60 little climbing kit or something like that. But it was one little way that we could say, hey, like we want to legit love our members well and have them feel it. And I think that, you know, ultimately within healthcare, um, it's not really healthcare, is it? I mean, because it doesn't feel like there's a lot of care there ultimately, at least from your insurance plan. It feels like it's an enemy as opposed to an ally. True. And so ultimately we're trying to be your ally and helping you, you know, kind of traverse this complex healthcare system and love you well, you know, along the way. And I think ultimately, you know, if United Healthcare did that and Cigna and Aetna and these others would do that, I think they would see a significant increase in their in their business because I think that they are coming across now as enemies and not allies. Um, and that's that's really a tragedy in our system.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

No, and I agree with that. And most of my practice, I was in private practice, which I love because I could do whatever I wanted for my patients. And and you're right, a lot of it's small things, you know, like a mom would come in for a postpartum visit. You know, I always say, you know, please bring your baby in. I want to, you know, see your baby and talk to him. And then I'd always say, you know what, if you're breastfeeding, why don't you stay in the room, breastfeed the baby before you go? They love that. Now my staff hated it because they're like, you just tied up an exam room. We're gonna be behind. I'm like, it doesn't matter. You know, they're gonna remember that. It looks small, or a lot of times the moms would show up on the wrong day. It's you know, your first child, it is such a game changer. It takes you an hour to get ready to go anywhere. And they'd come in, they're crying, you're like, it's the wrong day. I go, No, it's not. Let's just see. I'd say we're always see that it doesn't matter. I don't care what day they come in, you know. But all those things are all those little touches are huge. You can't really do that when you're employed because you have to see so many people. And at the end of my career, I was employed for a little bit, and it was during COVID, and I kept thinking, I'm like the worst employee because I just did whatever I wanted, and I would just break the rules. And the staff would come up and go, You can't do that. I'm like, Yeah, I don't really care. Like, dude, watch me. Like, do it. Dad wanted to come in. He wanted to hear the heartbeat. And they're like, We're not letting anybody back. So I went out and talked to him. I'm like, Are you feeling okay? He's like, Yeah, I'm doing great. I'm like, all right, let's bring him back. And you know, one of the front desk people said, Well, if you bring him back, everybody's gonna want to come back. I go, that's good. Let them all come back. You know, we're not gonna stop the epidemic by this one man who's wearing a mask and felt good, who was like 30 years old, healthy guy, not hearing you know, the baby's heartbeat. And I'm like, that's what he's there for. I'm not doing that. So it uh, but I think if it wasn't during COVID, I probably would have been fired, but they just needed docs that are like, we'll put up with this guy. So it uh I think that was you make a really good point.

SPEAKER_01 44:33

And it's like, man, if if you're gonna want to walk away with one thing from this from this chat, it's try to find an independent doc. Um because I think they're better. Um, I truly do. Um, if you think about independent docs have to provide you really good service because they want you to tell your friends that they they they really like you, and that's the way that they have to get business. Right. You know, if you're a big part of a hospital system, you know, a lot of times your customers, your patients are coming down through the hospital system. They're referred to you through that hospital system. And so you have to be good if you're independent. Um, you have to provide great customer service. And so we really try to get our our people to these independent docs. Um, and the independent docs love our patients because they like being paid in cash. They don't like being, you know, beholden to United Healthcare or Cigna or Etna or whoever it may be. Um and so we're we're really trying to, you know, see that we'd love to see that that community of independent docs thrive and flourish.

SPEAKER_02 45:30

Well, thank you. That's great. Thank you so much. And where do you see this going in terms of membership? You know, I mean, you're really doing well. You added a lot of members last year. Your database is huge because you're just going to get better and better at managing cost and getting the system down. And you where would you like to see the growth and membership go in the next, say, three to four years?

SPEAKER_01 45:54

Yeah, I mean, our goal is 50,000 this year. We have 25,000 now, so 50,000 by the end of the year, um, you know, 100,000 next year, 200,000 the following year. We're basically want to double the next three years, um, which I think is very, very reasonable um to do. We we almost tripled last year. So um, you know, I think this is very doable. I think we will probably open it up to more um people. Um, we're gonna go have a uh a diabetes program um that we're gonna roll out here in in 2026 um for type 2 diabetes. You know, 25% of every dollar of our healthcare spend goes to people with diabetes. And we believe, truly believe that type 2 diabetes can be can be reversed. Um and so we're gonna kind of embark upon a program to help folks with type 2 diabetes kind of eradicate themselves from from you know the the clutches of of diabetes, um, which I think is a great thing for the system and a great thing for those those folks. So we're excited about that. Um yeah, and this this this cash paid database is is growing. And so we've got, I think, I don't know, 2.5 or 2.7 million cash prices throughout the country right now. As we get more members, we get more data, as we get more data, we can get with that data to our members. Um, and so that's really cool too that we're able to provide that to our our members. Um and so we're yeah, we're really super excited about where we're headed in in the growth. Um, you know, February, typically we're here in the middle of February. I don't know when you're gonna release this, but it's usually our slowest month, and we are just rocking and rolling so far. Um, we're only halfway through the month and we've already beat our budget for the month. So that's great. It's been a crazy, crazy run. But all because I really think that if you can provide an awesome service where people feel cared for at a reasonable price, um, I think that's just a winning combination. So that's what we're trying to do.

SPEAKER_02 47:41

And I love your longevity discount. Is that new?

SPEAKER_01 47:46

We we introduced a longevity discount mid-last year. Okay. Um and ultimate ultimately what this is is, you know, as we kind of talked before, like with car insurance, if you're a good driver, you get better rates. If you're a bad driver, you get worse rates. You know, you can't do that with health insurance. Um, but since we're at not health insurance, we can get creative. And so what we do is we we we truly believe that metabolic health is kind of the key to thriving in your 70s, 80s, and 90s. And so we're really trying to get people to understand what metabolic health is and the metrics that you need to look for to evaluate your metabolic health. And so um people our members can get uh fasting insulin, um, their C-reactive protein, and uh a DEXA scan, they get visceral fat, which we think are are three you know pretty good um components of evaluating your metabolic health. And if you are, you know, in kind of elite tiers in each one of those or two of the three of those, then you get a 20% discount to to crowd health. So we're actually in trying to both incentivize people who are healthy to come and join us, but also incentivize people internally who are not metabolically healthy to understand how to become metabolically healthy. And so I think that incentive system is is really important. Let's let's reward people for being metabolically healthy and incentivize people to go after that. So, you know, like I said, like what we're doing in our 30s, 40s, and 50s are the primary um kind of drivers of how we're gonna live in our 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. And so the fact that people who are who hit Medicare, I think have what, two comorbidities or two chronic conditions, something like that. Um, maybe it's even higher than that. Like, I think that's a tragedy. I mean, I think more people should be going into Medicare without chronic conditions. I mean, no, I can't tell people like I want to I want to live hard and die fast. Um, I don't want to die slowly. That sounds terrible. Um, and so let's let's get people metabolically healthy into their Medicare age. And um, you know, that's that's ultimately what we're trying to do.

SPEAKER_02 49:47

No, I think that's a great idea. And then I know for listeners of the podcast, we have a special deal, uh promotion code. If you put down Real Doc speaks, then you get $99 a month for the first three months, which is that's right, yeah, great savings.

SPEAKER_01 50:03

99 bucks, it's like come and try it out for 99 bucks. You know, and and that's why we do that is we just want people to come and try it out. We know it's way different from health insurance, and and people may not be comfortable with that, but I think once you see how this works, take a look at the transparency files. We are way better at getting these bills funded than health insurance plans. You know, we're getting 99.9% of these bills funded. Health insurance plans get, you know, 80%, which means you have a one in five chance of getting your bill declined. Um, I unfortunately was one of the five and it cost me $8,000. And so we're we're doing much better at getting these bills funded at a much lower price. And so I think people should really give it a look.

SPEAKER_02 50:40

So health insurance guarantees bill funding, but they don't. That that's really kind of the the story there. And United Health, according to the the Kaiser Family Foundation, is about 30% denial rates on the affordable care, which is crazy because they're getting billions of dollars of subsidies so they can deny a third.

SPEAKER_01 51:00

One out of every three. One out of every three. Isn't that absolutely an outstanding?

SPEAKER_02 51:05

It's totally outstanding. So I love that you're getting people to think in a different way, because that's what we need to do. This system is totally non-functional. It's working for, and I won't say it's broken because it was designed this way. And when you look at every time there's legislation like the Affordable Care Act, any of these big acts like that, there's two groups that are not in the room. And that's physicians and patients. And if you look, those are the two groups that always get harmed. It's not a mystery. Everybody else is in there. In the Affordable Care Act, you have the hospitals, you have the pharmaceutical companies, you had, you know, the insurance company, everybody else is in there and they all got cover.

SPEAKER_01 51:45

And look at their stock prices.

SPEAKER_02 51:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 51:47

Go back and look at everybody's stock prices since 2010. Yes. What happened? Exploded. United Healthcare. I mean, the United Healthcare has had a tough run over the last six months, but zoom out over the last 15 years and it is up and to the right. I mean, it is way beyond what the SP have done over the last you know 15 years. So you're right. Rich people investing in United Health, or a lot of people who are invested in United Health are now rich on the backs of the patients. Yes. Unfortunately, we're the ones that are getting, you know, getting screwed in all of this from my perspective. And ultimately, why we're we built what we built, which is like, man, I'm tired of people getting something like 200,000 people, excuse me, 200,000 families every year go bankrupt due to a medical event, even though they have health insurance. So these are people that have health insurance, and they're still going bankrupt as a result of medical bills. And I'm proud to say, over five years, we'll have our five-year birthday in April. Zero people in crowd health have gone bankrupt due to a medical event over the last five years. That's phenomenal. And so, you know, that's ultimately what we're trying to do is you know, have people to viably pay for big and small, you know, medical events um without going into financial distress.

SPEAKER_02 53:03

What has been your biggest challenge and what has been a challenge that surprised you? Like I didn't even see this challenge coming when you started this.

SPEAKER_01 53:11

Oh man, I think the biggest challenge, I think there's kind of two challenges, big challenges. One is um one I knew, and one I probably was a little bit naive too. The one I knew was that, you know, people have been, I think, psyoped into thinking that health insurance is like that's the only way. Health insurance is the only way I can pay for these medical bills. And if I don't, then I'm totally, you know, uh, you know, financially malfeasant. I mean, it's one of those things where, you know, like, and so I have to get people over that hurdle of being like, hey, if actually not having insurance, being uninsured is okay. And it's actually better, you're gonna get better prices. And now that you have crowd health, you're much more likely to get those bills paid. That's a really hard thing for people to grasp because they always think like, what about the big one? You know, what about the NICU baby or the cancer case or the automobile accident? And so now that we've had hundreds of those events and we've shown that we can viably get these things funded, we've are starting to get through that hurdle. Um and that's so that's the one I saw. I kind of knew that was gonna be the case. And so we've we've we've done all these things to build trust with our community, um, which has been super helpful. The one that I was a bit naive to, I knew it was out there, I just didn't know to what extent was regulatory. Um, these health insurance plans don't really like what we do, um, funny enough. And they are oftentimes the ones who will rat us out to regulatory agencies. And um then it we have to spend a bunch of money, you know, addressing a bunch of regulatory concerns. You know, unfortunately, we're batting a thousand. I mean, we're we've had you know a half a dozen um you know regulatory interventions, and each time the state has come out and said, Yep, you're right, you're not you're not health insurance, you're doing everything you know legal and and we're doing it right. And so we've spent a lot of money on regulatory attorneys, make sure what we're doing is is right and buy the book, and you know, we we abide by all the laws and all these kinds of things. And so um that's one that I didn't know is gonna be quite as expensive as it as it has been. Um, but we're we're thankful that we've we're still in all 50 states um and and providing service in all 50 states, um, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, you know, all kinds of places. And we actually have people in, I think, 22 different countries now um that that use crowd health. So we're we're we're growing and it's it's been a lot of fun despite some of the regulatory hurdles.

SPEAKER_02 55:38

Now is it regulatory hurdles? Is that the state level or federal?

SPEAKER_01 55:41

State level. State level, okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:43

The insurance commissioners kind of insurance commissioners, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:46

Okay. Um if we go direct to consumer, that's on the state level. If you go to corporations, um that's on the federal level, we are all direct to consumer, so we don't do any corporations. Okay. And so that would be a state level um type of deal. Um so you know, we're we're we're through, you know, a half a dozen of the 50. Um, but you know, given what we have seen, especially given the states that have inquired, they're some of the more the bigger states with bigger insurance organizations, um you who did, you know, six to nine month deep dives that cost me somewhere between fifty and a hundred thousand dollars a piece to to fight. Um, they've done pretty deep audits of what we do and have come out with the other end being like, yep, you're you're doing everything by the book. So um we think that's a pretty good indicator of how the next 44 will go.

SPEAKER_02 56:35

Well, that that's good. And one of the other secrets of health insurance is that most states have one or two major health insurance companies that control the state. It's almost as if they decided to split it up at a poker game someday. But most states, it's the same thing. You know, it's like uh if I'm in Florida and Blue Cross Blue Shield really runs a commercial market. That's who controls it. There's not very and people don't get that. You look at, oh, it's not, it's a monopoly both for the health insurance and same thing with uh hospital systems. You have a couple, usually in most towns you have two, maybe three big healthcare systems.

SPEAKER_01 57:13

Yeah, yeah, that's true. I mean, it's it's it's you know, oligopoly against oligopoly oftentimes, you know, it's or it's monopoly against oligopoly. So it's you know, one of those things where you've got these big, big, huge companies who are dictating what the price of our care is going to be. And and both of them, both sides of the equation actually want the price to go up over time. And so, you know, again, it's the patient who's the one who gets stuck with the bill of that, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_02 57:39

Absolutely. And I'm glad you put in that saying that was a great video, by the way. I love that AI video. That that was hysterical and right on the money. I was laughing. And it uh and it's crazy with the the and it was funny that we had this shortage of salt water in a bag. We can put men on the moon, but we can't put salt water in a bag.

SPEAKER_00 57:58

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or we can, it just costs $5,000.

SPEAKER_02 58:01

Yeah. But the regulatory capture is huge in healthcare. And I'm glad you brought that up because that affects everything. And when you get these big systems, they're really good at managing the regulations. And it, you know, in the large companies, the super large companies, really seem to get a pass on all these rules. And smaller don't. I mean, there's selective enforcement of all these. So I'm glad you're surviving that. That's all.

SPEAKER_01 58:30

It's pretty sad that you know you get you get attorneyed out of innovation. Um, but you know, so far we've we've we've done pretty well with it.

SPEAKER_02 58:38

That's right. And I'm saving my big question to the end that I have to ask Andy. So this very serious question, could you please tell us what happened with the house that you were renting in Northern California?

SPEAKER_01 58:51

Yeah, this is a funny story. So I was out at Stanford for business school, and um, if you've seen the movie The Social Network, um, Mark Zuckerberg moves his buddies from Boston to Silicon Valley. Um, and there's kind of a subplot of the movie where Eduardo, his co-founder, has to go get, I think it's $16,000 or $18,000 from his uh his dad to pay for the house that they're gonna stay in in Silicon Valley. Well, that house was my house. Um, we went between our first year and second year of business school, we went out and did our internships and we rented our house to Mark Zuckerberg and his buddies um back in this was 2005. Um, so kind of a funny, you know, small world. So our house was in that that movie, The Social Network. There was there was no zip line from the uh from the chimney, but you know, a lot of the other shenanigans that went on in that movie, I think actually did happen in that house.

SPEAKER_02 59:45

You know what? I've not seen that movie, but now I'm gonna see it because now I want to see what it is. Go take a look.

SPEAKER_01 59:48

It's pretty funny. It's it's very entertaining, it's a good entertaining movie.

SPEAKER_02 59:51

That's awesome. So and that's stuff I learned from your website. So you've got the best website going in healthcare. And it uh and you know what? You have to have fun in healthcare, you have to enjoy each moment. And I love that you're doing that. Obviously, you're caring for your community, and that comes across. You can't hide that. I appreciate that. Absolutely. And thank you so much for being here. I I love what you're doing, really respect everything that you're doing, and I love that you're working hard to give Americans cost-effective alternatives.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:21

Well, thank you for having me on, and thank you for your your battle for healthcare freedom, you know, online and offline.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:28

I'm I'm having a good time with it. And it the good thing is, you know, when you're an independent person, you can do whatever you want, you could say whatever you want, you know, and it just uh and I figure if people aren't getting upset with you, you probably aren't pushing hard enough. So that that's that's great. But thank you so much. And I want to thank all the listeners. And please let me know in the comments if you have any other questions and please like and follow for more. And we will see you next time. Thank you so much.