Andy Schoonover I CrowdHealth: The Healthcare System Is SCAMMING You | DSH #1769

Summary

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Digital Social Hour Podcast Summary

Episode: Andy Schoonover | CrowdHealth: The Healthcare System Is SCAMMING You
Host: Sean Kelly
Guest: Andy Schoonover, CEO of CrowdHealth
Date: January 19, 2026
Episode Number: DSH #1769

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Overview

In this episode, Sean Kelly welcomes Andy Schoonover, the CEO of CrowdHealth, for a candid, unfiltered discussion on the state of the U.S. healthcare system. The conversation dives deep into why Andy believes the current system is fundamentally broken—labeling it as a “scam”—and how CrowdHealth offers an alternative that leverages community-based healthcare payments rather than traditional insurance models. Together, Sean and Andy explore the unsustainable costs, perverse incentives, administrative overload, and how a shift to direct-pay models and community funding could revolutionize health outcomes and affordability in America. The episode also touches on government policy, the impact of AI on medicine, and some personal anecdotes that highlight the real-world stakes.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Broken Incentives and Escalating Costs in Healthcare

• Inefficiency and Administrative Bloat:
  • Doctors routinely contend with insurance companies for hours each week, leading to increased expenses and stress.
  • “The average doctor spends somewhere between 16 and 18 hours a week fighting with health insurance plans. So imagine spending two days of your week just fighting to get paid.” (Andy, 00:13)
• Rising Premiums and Out-of-Control Pricing:
  • Health insurance premiums are soaring; some families face $5,600 per month ($70,000/year).
  • “50 to 75% for a lot of people next year. I mean, the worst one I've seen: $5,600 a month for a family of five.” (Andy, 01:53)
• Network Complexities and Denied Care:
  • Patients must research acceptable hospitals in emergencies due to insurance restrictions, often delaying critical care.
  • “The last thing you want to do when you're going to the ER is be like, what hospital can I go to?” (Andy, 03:24)

2. Perverse Financial Incentives

• Why Insurance Companies Want Rising Costs:
  • Insurance firms are capped at making 15% profit on premiums, incentivizing them to push premiums higher rather than reduce costs.
  • “They actually want the price to go up. ... if the prices went down 10%, their profit would go down 10%.” (Andy, 06:16)
• Bureaucracy Overload:
  • Administrative roles in healthcare have skyrocketed, driving up costs without improving care quality.
  • “There's a crazy chart...over the last 30 years, the number of doctors stayed flat, while the number of administrators is up 30-fold.” (Andy, 10:44)

3. Direct Pay and Negotiation: The CrowdHealth Alternative

• Negotiation Power Without Insurance:
  • Uninsured patients—and CrowdHealth members—regularly negotiate medical bills down by 50% or more compared to insured rates.
  • “We’re getting prices that are about 50% better than United Health Care.” (Andy, 08:00)
• How to Negotiate Hospital Bills:
  • CrowdHealth employs experts and attorneys to handle negotiations; individuals can also check fair market prices using AI tools.
  • “You can even stick your bill into ChatGPT now and be like, what is a fair price for this bill?” (Andy, 08:45)
• Hospitals Rarely Pursue Aggressive Collections:
  • Nonprofit hospitals seldom sue uninsured patients—it’s a “bad look” and costly for them.
  • “They don’t sue… 99% of the time they’ll take a reasonable rate as long as you give something reasonable.” (Andy, 09:34)

4. International Comparison & Systemic Problems

• U.S. Trade-offs: Price, Quality, Speed:
  • U.S. healthcare prioritizes quality and speed, at the cost of skyrocketing prices, unlike systems that offer “free” care but involve long wait times (e.g., Canada, UK).
  • “In Canada… you have to wait six or nine months to get an MRI in many places.” (Andy, 30:38)
• Administrative Waste:
  • Only around 8% of U.S. healthcare spending goes to doctors; most is funneled to administration and bureaucracy.
  • “Of the healthcare dollar spent, only 8% goes to the doctor.” (Andy, 14:25)

5. Doctor Burnout & Exodus

• Widespread Frustration and Burnout:
  • Many doctors plan to leave medicine; patient visits are rushed, with little time for preventative care.
  • “40% of doctors would exit the system if they could.” (Andy, 15:03)
• Failure of Preventative Focus:
  • The pharma-first approach dominates, pushing medication instead of addressing lifestyle-driven chronic issues.
  • “80% of our chronic conditions are because of lifestyle issues.” (Andy, 15:23)

6. CrowdHealth’s Structure and Successes

• Community-Powered Medical Funding:
  • Members pay each other's bills directly, with support for large claims (like cancer, NICU, accidents).
  • “We’ve had dozens of cancer cases, NICU babies, and all kinds of stuff funded by the community.” (Andy, 20:00)
• Substantial Savings and Zero Bankruptcies for Members:
  • Typical childbirth costs cut by over 30% compared to insured rates.
  • “Labor and delivery is $18,000. ... our entire kind of birth cost is like $11,000.” (Andy, 21:39)
  • “With us, zero have gone bankrupt due to a health event.” (Andy, 23:53)
• Personal Story—Why Andy Left Insurance:
  • After a denied claim for his daughter, Andy founded CrowdHealth to offer a transparent, fair system.
  • "I got a note from my insurance company a few weeks after that saying it was medically unnecessary and so they weren't going to pay for it." (Andy, 18:24)

7. Transparency and AI in Healthcare

• Transparent Pricing Tools:
  • CrowdHealth’s app helps members find the true prices of procedures (example: MRI for $275 instead of the typical $4,000 insurance payout).
  • “Our app will show you, like, all the places that you could get an MRI, and it'll show you what the price is.” (Andy, 25:21)
• AI’s Role in Diagnoses and Medicine:
  • AI’s rise will likely reduce people in administrative and diagnostic roles, potentially lowering future costs.
  • “We're seeing it already start with AI where people are going to ChatGPT and saying, I have X, Y, and Z going on with me. What could it be?” (Andy, 12:10)

8. Preventative Health and Incentives

• Discounts for Healthy Behavior:
  • CrowdHealth gives 20% discounts for members in the best quartile of health markers (insulin, C-reactive protein, visceral fat).
  • “If you take those three tests and you're in the top quartile for two of the three, you get 20% off our service.” (Andy, 35:57)

9. Corruption, Censorship, and Systemic Barriers

• Big Healthcare’s Power & Lobbying:
  • Insurance and pharmaceutical industries suppress disruptive innovations through regulatory complaints and lobbying.
  • “They give more in lobbying…to political campaigns than anybody else out there.” (Andy, 26:26)
• Media and Platform Suppression:
  • Sean notes his own content being censored due to discussing alternative medicine or criticisms of pharma.
  • “I've had clips on every platform…get deleted or marked for medical misinformation.” (Sean, 27:51)

10. The Future and a Call for Revolution

• CrowdHealth as a Movement:
  • Andy is committed to not selling out, determined to drive a grassroots revolution in healthcare.
  • "We need to revolutionize healthcare, because nobody else is doing it. Everybody's bought out… When hell freezes over, I'll sell out to a health insurance plan." (Andy, 28:03, 28:27)
• A Scalable Model:
  • With 17,000+ members and $50 million in member savings, CrowdHealth aims to scale to millions, hoping to force broader systemic change.
  • “If we have millions of people, we could change the system.” (Andy, 43:05)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• The Saline IV Story (Healthcare Price Gouging):
  “I get the bill, and they charged me $5,000 to have this little bottle of water. … I went on Amazon and I was like, how much can I buy this bottle of water for? It was eight bucks.”
  — Andy Schoonover, (04:29–05:04)

• Transparency and Community:
  “Your money comes directly to me. … It's like bringing humanity back to healthcare, which I think these big insurance companies have kind of stolen from us.”
  — Andy Schoonover, (39:10–39:23)

• Health Policy Irony:
  “It's called the Affordable Care Act. There's kind of a joke that whatever the bill is called, it does the exact opposite.”
  — Andy Schoonover, (33:23)

• On Government Involvement:
  “Anything that the government touches is… up into the right. You know, TVs, cell phones, cars... those prices have gone down. Health care, college tuition…where the government is really involved, those have skyrocketed.”
  — Andy Schoonover, (32:00)

• Perverse Incentives:
  “There's no incentive for the system… pharmaceutical company makes less money, insurance company makes less money, hospital systems make less money if you're healthy.”
  — Andy Schoonover, (36:38)

• On Starting CrowdHealth:
  “It was at that point I was like, screw this, man. Like, I'm not doing this anymore… I bet other people would like this too.”
  — Andy Schoonover, (18:24–19:59)

• Capitalism vs. Healthcare:
  “It's actually the side effect of not having capitalism within health care because there's no market forces to push this down.”
  — Andy Schoonover, (29:07)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |------------|-----------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00-03:10 | System inefficiencies, doctor stress, admin overload | | 01:49 | Health insurance cost increases, shocking real numbers | | 05:03 | The $5,000 saline IV story—extreme markup example | | 06:15 | Insurance company profit incentive/perverse economics | | 08:00 | Uninsured patients get better rates than UnitedHealthcare| | 10:25 | Is this only an America problem? Bureaucracy worldwide | | 12:10 | AI and the future of diagnostics in medicine | | 14:25 | Only 8% of health dollar goes to doctors | | 15:18 | Doctor burnout: 8-minute patient appointments | | 18:24 | The personal story—insurance denial sparks CrowdHealth | | 20:00 | Funding high-cost events via community | | 21:39 | Labor and delivery cost savings | | 23:06 | Medical bankruptcies—250,000/yr even with insurance | | 25:21 | MRI example—insurance vs. direct pay pricing | | 26:26 | Healthcare industry lobbying, legal harassment | | 28:03, 28:27 | “Revolution”—vows never to sell out to insurance | | 29:07 | No capitalism in healthcare: no market forces | | 35:57 | Preventative health: CrowdHealth discounts | | 39:10 | Humanity in healthcare/community aspect | | 41:13 | Extreme case example—nearly $1M bill negotiated down | | 43:05 | Scaling CrowdHealth = changing the system |

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Final Thoughts

Andy Schoonover delivers a passionate, reasoned indictment of the U.S. healthcare system and its incentives, illustrated with personal stories, hard data, and deep insider knowledge. The episode offers rare insight into how insurance, big pharma, and government intervention conspire—intentionally or accidentally—to inflate prices, bureaucracy, and patient suffering. CrowdHealth’s model, emphasizing direct payment, negotiation, price transparency, and community solidarity, is presented as both a disruptive alternative and a growing revolution with measurable wins.

This conversation is a must-listen for anyone seeking to understand the root causes of America’s healthcare crisis—and searching for real-world alternatives.

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To join CrowdHealth or learn more:
Visit joincrowdhealth.com

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Notable Quote for the Episode:
“We need to revolutionize healthcare, because nobody else is doing it. Everybody's bought out.”
— Andy Schoonover (28:03)

Transcript

[A]

You got to figure out the lifestyle issues to reduce the chronic condition. It's not going to get reduced by medication. That's the challenge that we have in our system right now.

[B]

I mean, I'd imagine they got to be stressed out of their minds, because when I have a full calendar of calls, I'm freaking out. And they're seeing a patient every eight minutes, five days a week.

[A]

Yeah. And each one of these doctor's offices has four or five people in them doing billing just at an expense for them. The average doctor spends somewhere between 16 and 18 hours a week fighting with health insurance plans. So imagine spending two days of your week just fighting to get paid. I mean, it's a totally inefficient system for us. We enable our members to go and just pay directly. Credit card, boom. The doctor is paid. The doctor will give you a way better rate because they don't have to fight to get paid. They get it right now as opposed to two or three months from now. And it's just a better system if you can pay your doctor directly. Right, Exactly.

[B]

All right, guys, we got Andy Scoon over here today, CEO of Crowd Health. We're going to talk health insurance hot topic right now. Yeah, I'm sure you're busy right now.

[A]

Everybody's talking about it. Government's just shut down over it. It's. It's the right time to be talking about health care.

[B]

Yeah, Open enrollment right now, too, so.

[A]

Exactly. We're busy. We're busy.

[B]

The shutdown, the primary reason was because of this. I didn't know that.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the. The Democrats wanted to. To extend these subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. The Republicans didn't. Ultimately, we're back up and running the government. The subsidies are still a question mark, so we'll see. But it impacts 20 million people, so it's a pretty big deal.

[B]

Jeez. Affordable care Act. So 20 million people are on that.

[A]

20 million people are getting subsidies next year that may not get subsidies next year. So this was something that started, and government said, hey, people are struggling. We need to help them with their health insurance. And so it started, I think, in 21, and then it got extended once, and they're going to try to extend it again. So we'll see if that happens. If that doesn't happen, I do pretty well, given I'm an alternative to the Affordable Care Act. So everybody's thinking about it right now for sure.

[B]

So have the prices gone up because of this?

[A]

Oh, yeah, they're up big time.

[B]

Damn. So I Got to find a new provider right now.

[A]

50 to 75% for a lot of people next year. I mean, the. The worst one I've seen. $5,600 a month for a family of five.

[B]

You said 5,600?

[A]

5,600.

[B]

Holy crap.

[A]

So they're paying almost $70,000 a year just for health care.

[B]

That's actually insane. Is it? Why? Is that like a special plan or something?

[A]

Special area, location that just is really, really expensive to do health care in. That's nuts. The previous one, the biggest one I saw, was 4,000, so. 4,000. Which is awful, too. So, you know, me and my family, I just checked, and it was going to be somewhere between 14 and 1600amonth for.

[B]

I'm paying. Yeah, I was going to say I'm paying close to a thousand right now a month for my wife and I. Yeah. And we're not even on the best plan. Yeah, we're on, like, a. I don't even know. It's hard to gauge what's the best. You know, there's a lot of language you have to learn. Yeah.

[A]

Well, a lot of these terms of Service are like 130 pages long, and so they're like, yeah, read this before you sign up. You're like, what? I'm not reading 130 pages worth of, you know, health insurance, legalese. So, yeah, I mean, we would have paid somewhere around $20,000 a year. Ish. And with my company, we're paying about 6,000.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

So we'll save almost $15,000 over the next year by just doing it.

[B]

And you get the same benefits.

[A]

US at 20k, same stuff.

[B]

No way.

[A]

Yeah. And there's no networks, so you don't have to figure out, like, what hospital you want to go to, what doctor do you want to go to, all that kind of stuff.

[B]

That was my issue with my plan.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I had to go to the ER once, and we were looking up, like, where the insurance gets accepted, and we.

[A]

Couldn'T figure it out, which is the last place. The last thing you want to do when you're going to the ER is be like, what hospital can I go to?

[B]

I could barely move in bed because I had this severe pain. Yeah, we're like, we couldn't figure it out. So we actually didn't go.

[A]

I mean, that's the ridiculousness of our healthcare system. You literally have to figure out what hospital to go to for an emergency.

[B]

Visit, because I knew if I went to one that wasn't covered, I would have paid five figures.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Just for being there.

[A]

Yeah, for sure.

[B]

For sure.

[A]

I saw that you can't go into the hospital without paying five figures. I mean, you walk into it and you're pretty much. Yeah, five figures in.

[B]

Someone I know went for a panic attack. It was over $10,000.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. It's crazy.

[A]

I mean, I. I unfortunately went like, a year and a half ago, and I was having. I was actually on a podcast like this, really. And I started saying something, and I couldn't put a sentence together.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And so my dad had a stroke four years ago, so I thought I was having a stroke. So I went to the ER, and, yeah, it was like 20. Some $22,000. And it ended up being a migraine. And they knew that after about an hour of being there, but they kept me over just because.

[B]

No way.

[A]

And the craziest story is that I got the bill and I show up and they're like, we're gonna put an IV in you. So they put saline in you. I was like, am I dehydrated? They're like, no, you're not dehydrated. We just do it because it's what we do. I was like, all right, fine. I didn't even think about it. You know, it's just like this little bottle of water, basically, you know, and I get the bill, and they charged me $5,000 to have this little bottle of water. It was. It's literally salt water stuck into your arm. And so I went on Amazon and I was like, I wonder how much I can buy this bottle of water for. It was eight bucks.

[B]

No way.

[A]

So what cost me eight bucks of Amazon, they charged me $5,000 for it. That's insane. Which is absolutely ridiculous. And so that's the, you know, atrocity that is. That is United States healthcare.

[B]

Yeah, unfortunately. And I was watching you on another show, these insurance companies can't really negotiate the prices down. Right.

[A]

Nor do they really want to. And that's the craziness about our system. You know, people are like, healthcare is so complex. But I say it's not that complex when you really understand it, because you have the. The sellers of health care, which are these big hospital systems. They want the price to go up. Obviously. They want to make as much money. That's fine. It's capitalistic. I get it.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But the insurance companies. Very few people know this. The insurance companies want the price to go up. And so. So why is that? Well, the government, in their infinite wisdom, said, insurance companies, you can only make 15% profit on our premiums. So let's just say my ease of math, my family is $1,000 a month. Insurance companies can only make $150 of that 1,000. The problem with that is how do they grow their, their profit? How do they grow it by 10%, 150 to 165? Well, they need premiums to go from $1,000 to $1100.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

So they actually want the price to go up. And so that's why when you have the buyer of health care and the seller of health care both wanting the price to go up, the price goes up. You know, you don't need a PhD in economics to figure that one out.

[B]

That makes sense. So they have to, if the prices don't go up, they'll go out of business.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, inflation. Yeah. In essence. Yeah. They need the prices to go up.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, if you look at it the other way, if the prices went down 10%, their profit would go down.

[B]

10%, which they probably couldn't take over.

[A]

Which, which they, which they, they don't want. They want their profits to go up. These are nuts for profit. The biggest ones are for profit companies. So they, they want to make as much profit as possible.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So that's the screwy nature of, of, of health care. And you know, unfortunately, the patient is the one that's kind of left with the, the bag. Right? Yeah. And so that's the challenge that we're facing.

[B]

That's crazy. Yeah. I find it challenging as like someone self employed too. I feel like it's a little harder to navigate. Right.

[A]

Yeah, totally. Because you have to, you don't have many options. You have to go to the Affordable Care Act. And as we're seeing these huge price increases for next year, it's like you're, it's a one stop shop. It's your only, your only other option. Or you can go uninsured.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I'm one of the few people out there that said more people should be uninsured as opposed to less people. If you are uninsured, you're actually paying attention to what the prices are. And so you will actually shop for prices. You'll actually go and look for a good price. And so our entire system is based upon people actually being able to see what the prices are and then making decisions based upon that. Whereas normally you're just laying down your insurance card and the insurance plan deals with it. And as a result of that, prices are inflated.

[B]

Yeah. I'd be very curious. The average person that's Uninsured compared to someone insured. What the difference is there?

[A]

Yeah, the prices are significantly different. We've got 17,000 people in our community. All of us are uninsured, and we're getting prices that are about 50% better than United Health Care. What, the same service, 50% better? Yeah. You think UnitedHealthcare, which is the seventh largest company on the planet by revenue, would use that might of. Of that bulk, you know, that size to be able to negotiate prices down? But they don't. And so that's, that's why we as uninsured patients actually have more power than United Healthcare to negotiate prices. Wow.

[B]

So you could get a bill and you can actually negotiate at the hospital.

[A]

Yeah. Little did I know that you could negotiate.

[B]

What's the process for that?

[A]

Well, with us, we actually have a team of people who will negotiate it. We have, you know, actually some attorneys on our team and things that go and negotiate it for you so you don't have to go and do it. And so. But typically, if you're, if you're not a part of us, you just call and be like, I'm not paying that. You know, you can really say like, I'm not paying that bill. That's absurd. Yeah. And you can even, like, stick your bill into chat GPT now and be like, what should, what is a fair price for this bill? And ChatGPT or Claude or whatever will. Will tell you, you know, what the, what the. A fair price is. Wow. And you can be like, nope, I'm not doing it. I'm not paying it. And so they could then decide to sue you, but the hospitals don't do it. They don't sue. They don't. Not normally.

[B]

It's a bad look for them.

[A]

It's a bad look. You know, a lot of these hospitals are nonprofit hospitals, so it's a bad look for a nonprofit hospital to be going and suing an uninsured patient.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So they just don't do it. And so they, you know, they. And even to do it, it's really expensive for them. And so they're like, okay, there's a $20,000 bill. It's going to cost me $20,000 to fight it. So why don't we just take a reasonable rate for this? And 99% of the time they will. They'll take a reasonable rate as long as you give something, something reasonable.

[B]

Because even at a reasonable rate, they're still making money.

[A]

They're still making money.

[B]

So why would they care, you know?

[A]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

It's not like you're ripping them off.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, we're not asking for zero or asking for is just a reasonable rate.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And there's a number of ways to do that, but the hospitals have to survive for the system to survive. So it's not like you should underpay the hospitals, but you should pay a fair rate for what the hospital is providing you. I'll tell you what a fair rate for a bag of saline solution is. Not $5,000. Right.

[B]

Maybe 50.

[A]

Maybe. Maybe 50. You know, and so that's. That's ultimately what we're trying to do is, Is get these. These. These hospitals to pay or to. To charge a fair rate for sure.

[B]

Is this an America problem, or do you see this happening in other countries?

[A]

It's mostly an America problem.

[B]

Okay. Yeah. I'm always interested with how other healthcare is doing in other countries.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, it's. It's. You kind of have to, you know, choose your. Your negative. Like, you can do price, quality or speed. You know, pick two of the three. Yeah. And the United States has chosen kind of quality and speed, and the price is really, really high as a result of that. I would still argue that the United States has the best, you know, healthcare on the planet. And, you know, there's a reason why the Saudi royals have entire, you know, wings of hospitals, you know, rented out is because they come to the United States to get all their healthcare. And so, you know, we. Unfortunately, the price is the part that gets us, but it's because of bureaucracy. A lot of that time, it's the bureaucracy. There's a crazy chart that you'll see on X once in a while where over the last 30 years, the number of doctors have actually stayed flat, where the number of administrators are up, like, 30 fold. Wow. And so it's. It's a. It's a crazy chart to look at, but it just shows all the bureaucracy and administration in health care, and 30 to 40% of health care is just administrative BS that could totally be getting rid of. But it's. It's, you know, somewhat mandated by the government to do some of this stuff, so.

[B]

Yeah. Do you think AI is gonna impact that job market?

[A]

I mean, ultimately, I think, you know, I think Elon just came out with something last week that like. Yeah, all your surgeons are gonna be, you know, robots.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they're gonna be way better than your surgeon. These are way more precise. And so I think over the next couple of decades, we're definitely gonna see a huge transition from, you know, humans doing some of this stuff to robots doing this stuff. I think we're seeing it already. Start with AI where people are going to ChatGPT and saying, I have X, Y and Z going on with me. What could it be?

[B]

I just put my blood work in yesterday.

[A]

Yeah, you can, you can, yeah. Literally take your blood work. And instead of going to the doctor, that's what I do. I go and get my labs, I shoot it into CHAT GPT and they're like, well, this, this and this are great. This one's a little bit on the edge, you know, look out for this. And I don't even need a doctor to do that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I think that's going to erode kind of the number of people in medicine is going to erode over the next decade. And, and hopefully it ends up being, you know, beneficial to us through lower prices. Although I'm sure the government will figure out a way to keep prices, you know, going up.

[B]

Yeah, it's a big business for, for the whole country. Right. I think it's a, it might be the biggest revenue.

[A]

$5.6 trillion is what we spend on, on healthcare.

[B]

Holy crap. Yeah, it's the biggest revenue from our country.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. I mean it's the biggest industry on the planet, basically is. Is United States healthcare. If US Healthcare was an actual country, it would be the fourth largest gdp.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

So it's like United States, China, Japan and then it would be US Healthcare.

[B]

That's so nuts.

[A]

That's how much we spend on health care in this country.

[B]

I believe it though.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

When your average order value is tens of thousands of dollars per person, that adds up.

[A]

Yeah. I think there was like four or five years ago, Prince William and Kate were. Had their baby at like the number one hospital in downtown London. It was like the Ritz Carlton of hospitals. And apparently it was like $9,000 for them to do it at the best place in the country to do it. And the average for the United States to have a baby is 18,000 and so it's twice as much. And so you gotta see something is going on here where if you can do this in downtown London for half the price of what the average is in the United States, something is wrong. So it's the bureaucracy of the system, unfortunately, that's sucking up all of our health care dollars.

[B]

I'd love to see the breakdown of that 18K.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like where it's going to, you know what I mean?

[A]

It's almost none of it's going to the doctor that's terrible. Yeah. Of the, of the medic, the health care dollar spent, only 8% goes to, to the doctor.

[B]

What? Because they're on a salary.

[A]

They're on a salary.

[B]

I guess they get a bonus, but.

[A]

Yeah, it's, it's all to other stuff. Yeah, it's to big buildings and it's to administration and billing and all those kinds of things.

[B]

So doctors must be frustrated about that then, right?

[A]

Oh, yeah, they're. And they're leaving in droves.

[B]

You've talked to a lot.

[A]

Yeah, I've talked to hundreds of doctors over the last five years, and they're, they're super frustrated and they all want to get out. I saw another stat that 40% of doctors would exit the system if they could.

[B]

No way.

[A]

So. And then a lot of doctors are exiting the system already because of just retirement. So they're taking early retirement. They're like, I'm done with this.

[B]

That's crazy.

[A]

So.

[B]

Yeah, because I saw, I think you said this on another show. Doctor sees a patient every 10 minutes on average.

[A]

Yeah, I think it's eight minutes.

[B]

Eight minutes. So they're not building relationships anymore with their clients.

[A]

Exactly. And there's no way you can get into how are you sleeping, how are you working out, what are you eating? You know, the things that actually are impacting your health, they're like, what's wrong? Okay, well, let's figure out how to get rid of those symptoms by medication. And so it's a pharma first solution which, you know, just delays the issues. It doesn't resolve the issues. So, you know, 80, 80% of our chronic conditions are because of lifestyle issues. And so, you know, you got to figure out the lifestyle issues to reduce the chronic conditions. It's not going to get reduced by medications 100%. So that's the challenge that we have in our system right now.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I'd imagine they got to be stressed out of their minds because when I have a full calendar of calls, I'm freaking out. And they're seeing a patient every eight minutes, five days a week.

[A]

Yeah. And each one of these doctor's offices has four or five people in them doing billing. So it's, it's, it's, it's just an addict at an expense for them.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

The average doctor spends somewhere between 16 and 18 hours a week fighting with health insurance plans.

[B]

That's crazy.

[A]

So imagine spending two days of your week just fighting to get paid.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I mean, it's a totally inefficient system. So, you know, for us, we enable our members to go and just pay direct credit card. Boom, the doctor is paid. The doctor will give you a way better rate because they don't have to fight to get paid. They get it right now as opposed to two or three months from now. And it's just a better system if you could pay your doctor directly. Right, exactly.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so that's what we're trying to do.

[B]

Yeah. So you see a shift towards that model right now.

[A]

Yeah. And actually, I think the best doctors in the world are going to be cash pay doctors over the next five to 10 years, because they can, they were like, you know what? If you want to come see me, you got to pay in cash. I'm not, I'm not fighting health insurance companies. And we're already seeing it through things like concierge medicine and direct primary care, where these, these primary care doctors, like, I just don't want to be a part of this system anymore. And so you're gonna have to pay me in cash to come and see me. And so the best doctors are going that way, which leaves the system with the worst doctors. And so, you know, I see a kind of a healthcare death spiral happening right now.

[B]

The healthcare is rough in Nevada, man.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Every time I've got my blood drawn, I bruise terribly.

[A]

Yeah, you know, it's, it's not good when you get down there toward the, towards the rough out here.

[B]

Yeah, I've heard some really horrible stories in hospitals out here, dude.

[A]

Yeah. Well, and Vegas is known for having less than stellar hospital systems. No offense to Vegas, but what states.

[B]

Are the best right now that you've seen?

[A]

You know, Texas does really well. You know, New York does pretty well. You know, those are kind of the two that are known to be a little bit better than.

[B]

So they're way better than others.

[A]

You know, California is fine, depending upon what, where you go. Vegas is known. Or, you know, Nevada is known for, for being not good. Washington state is actually known for really good, really good docs, but it's really expensive. And so it's, it's one of those things where there are some states that are really low cost, but you kind.

[B]

Of get what you pay for. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All right, what was I going to ask next? Oh, insurance claims. So one in five are being denied.

[A]

Yeah, one in five. I actually, you know, I started the company called Crowd Health because I unfortunately was one of the five. My, my daughter, who is one at the time, was having recurring ear infections. And so we went to the ear Nose and throat doc. He was like, she's got a hole in her eardrum. And I was like, okay, so what do we do? He's like, no big deal. It's a 10 minute procedure, 15 minute procedure. And so, you know, let's go in network. I had to go in network cause I had Obamacare plan go in network. We got it done. We got the bill know it was $8,000 for 15 minutes. I was just like, holy crap. You know, $8,000 for 15 minutes dot and then I got a note from my insurance company a few weeks after that saying it was medically unnecessary and so they weren't going to pay for it. Wow. And I was like, hold on a second. My daughter has a hole in her eardrum. Like, how is this not medically necessary? And so I fought with them for, you know, two rounds of appeals. And at the end of the day, they're like, nope, we're not paying for it. And so I had to stroke an $8,000 check to get this, this procedure paid for. It was at that point I was like, screw this, man. Like, I'm not doing this anymore. So I called my health insurance company. I was like, I quit. Like, you guys aren't going to pay my bills. I'm not paying your bills. And so I looked at my wife and I was like, we're uninsured. And she looked at me was like, are you nuts? And so it was over, like the next six months to a year. I figured out like that if I could pay these doctors directly, I could get way better rates. Because of what we talked about, you don't have to deal with all the health insurance, you know, bs. And ultimately I was like, I bet other people would like this too. And so that's why I started the company is if we can pay our doctors directly without a government or the insurance plan or your employer in between you and your doctor, they'll give you way better rates.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And so that's the secret sauce of what we do is just enabling people to pay directly for big bills or small bills. And we've had dozens of cancer cases and NICU babies and automobile accidents and heart surgeries and comas and all kinds of stuff that we've been able to get funded for these people, they can go and pay directly.

[B]

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[A]

They don't have to the insurance or the, the doctor and the hospital doesn't have to deal with the insurance company. So they're getting, you know, way, way better rates than, you know, like I said, even United Healthcare.

[B]

That's incredible. So childbirth, for example, were you able to get that cost down?

[A]

Yeah, big time. You know, the average is 18. I think we're probably at like 11, something like that. 7,000.

[B]

That's a lot.

[A]

So it's a lot. You know, and so. And that includes, you know, prenatal, labor and delivery and postnatal. So it's not even an apples, apples compare, apples to apples comparison. It's. So we're actually doing a lot better than that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Just in terms of labor and delivery, because labor and delivery is 18,000. I don't know what ours is, but our entire kind of birth cost is like 11, so. But we also have a lot of people doing it at home and birthing centers and things like that too. So. Yeah, it's significant. The discounts are significant.

[B]

There's a birth issue right now in this country.

[A]

Nobody's having babies.

[B]

Yeah, Elon's talking about this a lot.

[A]

He's, he's, he's picking up the pace.

[B]

He's at like 11 now.

[A]

Yeah, he's something like that. I don't know what the number is up to. I can't keep track.

[B]

Yeah, I think a big reason, though, is the cost.

[A]

Yeah, I think so too.

[B]

I mean, there's obviously a lot of health issues, but I think even myself, I'm planning out the cost.

[A]

Yeah. And a lot of people are sitting here being like, look, I can't even afford to put groceries on the table. Like, how can I afford to? All Right. You know, the home. Home ownership is down significantly amongst, you know, the people in their 30s and their 40s. And so if I can't buy a home, if I can't buy groceries, then why am I gonna have kids? And so that's one of the problems that I think we're. We're facing.

[B]

Yeah, Yeah. A lot of people go bankrupt for medical issues every year, Right?

[A]

Yeah. Well, that's one thing I found is I was like, man, I had $8,000 because I've been super fortunate to pay that. But the vast majority of the United states doesn't have $8,000 to sit in a way to pay for something that was, you know, pretty benign.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so what I found is that 250,000 families every year go bankrupt due to a health event. And even though they have health insurance. So these are people with health insurance that are going bankrupt. And it's because of these denials, 20% are denied, almost 20% is 19% last year, or these huge deductibles, you know, for your ACA plan that you're going and looking at, you're probably gonna have. For you, I know you're married now, so it might be more, but it's gonna probably be 5 to $8,000 of deductible.

[B]

That sounds about right.

[A]

And so people don't have the five or eight thousand dollars of a deductible. So I tell people, like, look, if you don't have enough cash in the bank to. To pay for your deductible, you're paying for something you actually can't use. You know, you're paying for health insurance, which you can't really use because you don't have enough to pay the deductible. That's a problem. And so that's the challenge that we have right now. So, you know, for us, it's like you pay the first 500 bucks of any health event. So you get cancer, it's 500 bucks. You go to the ER, it's 500 bucks. And so we were like, how can we keep people from going bankrupt due to a health event? And so 250,000 people in the last year have gone bankrupt due to a health event. With us, with crowd health, zero have gone bankrupt due to a health event. And so that's one of the big things that we're trying to alleviate is these bankruptcies doing due to a health event. I mean, the last thing that you want to do when you have a big health event you go to the ER is like, oh, crap. I got to figure out how to come up with 6, 7, 8, 9, $10,000 to pay for this thing. In addition to being there and worrying about your own health, the stress of that alone, the stress of those two things together magnify your health event Y. And so that's what we're trying to alleviate.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, I just got an mri, and you could visibly see the stress on my body.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

An mri.

[A]

Yeah, for sure.

[B]

It's a killer.

[A]

Yeah, for sure. And, you know, MRI are a great example where I don't know what you paid for your MRI.

[B]

Actually, a lot.

[A]

A lot. Right?

[B]

4,000.

[A]

$4,000. An MRI should cost about 300 bucks.

[B]

No way.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Holy crap.

[A]

So we actually have an app where you can go and be like, where's an MRI near me? And it'll. It'll show you, like, all the places that you could get an mri, and it'll show you what the price is of that MRI. And I just looked at it the other day. MRI with brain, MRI with contrast was, like, 275 bucks.

[B]

No way.

[A]

And you paid $4,000 for it because you went through health insurance.

[B]

Yeah. That's crazy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So they're marking it up 10x 10x? Dude, that's nuts. They're probably doing that for everything.

[A]

Yeah, everything. I haven't found anything in which they're not marking up significantly.

[B]

Yeah, even blood work. I bet to. They're marking up.

[A]

Oh, yeah, blood work. Before I. When I had insurance, my blood work. My annual blood work was something like 600 bucks. I can get it now for, like, 125 bucks.

[B]

You just walk into Quest and get it.

[A]

Walk into Quest or LabCorp or one of those places and get it. And if you're paying, you know, in cash directly, you're getting way better rates.

[B]

Wow, this is nuts, man. I can't believe more people aren't talking about this. Honestly.

[A]

I know.

[B]

Suppressing you, I'd imagine.

[A]

Well, you know, I. One of your producers was talking to me beforehand. They're like, how is the health insurance companies not smashed you?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so, you know, they give more in lobbying, they give more to political campaigns than anybody else out there. You know, I call it the medical industrial complex. It's, you know, pharma health insurance companies and hospitals. And so they've got a lot of power, a lot of sway. And so what they do is they report me to the state regulatory agencies. And so every time I deal with one of those, then, you know, it's $100,000 I have to pay to get those things. Get those things satisfied. And so far, you know, we've had a bunch of them. We're batting a thousand. So, you know, they try to suppress us by saying, oh, well, you guys are doing something illegal, which is totally not true. And now I have proof by a lot of agencies who came and did a full, you know, audit of what we do. And they're like, yeah, you're right. You're not. Not breaking any of our laws. So we're. We're. We've been pretty successful so far.

[B]

Wow, thanks for taking on this fight, man. You're impacting a lot of people.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, we're going to get you signed up before the end of this hour.

[B]

I think I'm sold. We'll talk after this. Yeah, I've only had two Strikes on my YouTube channel. They've both been for medical reasons.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah. I had a debate with, like, a holistic doctor and a big pharma guy. That one got a strike, and then a holistic guy got me another strike.

[A]

So it's amazing that even YouTube will. Will. What would strike you.

[B]

Yeah, we'll look at who funds theirs.

[A]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

Their advertisement.

[A]

Well, the pharmaceutical companies are the big funders of, you know, tv, of the media.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so they're the ones that are pulling the strings.

[B]

Yeah, they got a lot. I've had clips on every platform, Tik Tok, Instagram, Twitter, get deleted or marked for medical misinformation. Yeah, it was bad during the pandemic. Really bad.

[A]

I believe it. I believe it.

[B]

Yeah, it was terrible.

[A]

So. And I'm sure as we get bigger, we're at 17,000 people are using crowd health right now. You know, as we get bigger, we'll have more of those hurdles. But I always say, like, again, your producers, like, man, you're starting a revolution. And I was like, yeah, we need to revolutionize healthcare because nobody else is doing it. Everybody's bought out.

[B]

And so they're gonna offer to buy you out once you get to a certain.

[A]

Yeah, and when hell freezes over, I'll, you know, sell out to a health insurance plan. You know, there's no. No way I'm doing that.

[B]

Yeah, it's ironic, right?

[A]

Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I mean, look in. Throughout history, we've seen small groups of people have revolutions. Right. It always starts from a small group of people. And so it's like we're. We're trying to gather a small group of people, relatively small, to revolutionize the health care space. And we're doing a damn good job so far.

[B]

Is it the worst it's ever been, you think throughout history right now, it's.

[A]

The worst it's ever been. Wow. It's the worst it's ever been.

[B]

And that's because of just money.

[A]

You think money for the love of money is the root of all evil capitalism?

[B]

I guess, yeah.

[A]

Well, it's actually the side effect of not having capitalism within health care because there's no market forces to push this down. You know, you went and got your mri. I'm pretty sure you didn't shop for it. You didn't go and figure out, like, where's the best place to get an mri? An MRI is pretty much a commodity. Like every MRI machine is the exact same. So why should one person pay 4,000 and another pay pay 300? Like that doesn't make any sense. I can tell you exactly where to go, but you don't care because the insurance company is paying for it. And so when you're shopping with somebody else's credit card, you don't really care what the prices are. You don't care what you get.

[B]

And they don't tell you till after, too.

[A]

They don't tell you until after. So there's no transparency. And so what we're trying to do is like, no, no, let's increase transparency so people actually know what it costs, know where to go, what the best place is, you know, for relatively the same quality. What is the best place for the best price. And as a result of that, you know, our, our members are paying, you know, a half to a third of what they would pay with a health insurance company. So that's. And so it takes one more step.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So people who are willing to take that one more step are, are saving a crapload of money. Like I said, we're going to save somewhere between 10 and $15,000 next year as a result of this. So it's saving. We just hit $50 million saved from our members have saved in health care costs. So that's 50 million out of the pockets of healthcare companies and into the pockets of patients. And that's the way it should be.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So we're working hard at it.

[B]

I like your system because there's people online saying they want free health care, but I don't think that works.

[A]

No. Free health care kind of goes back to my, you know, my kind of three things that you have to worry about. Right. If you want low price, you either get low quality or low speed. And we see in Canada which is, you know, our neighbor to the north who has, you know, quote, unquote, free health care. They pay for it in taxes. But you have to wait six or nine months to get an MRI in many places.

[B]

Geez, that's a long time.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, there's one on. On X the other day where this woman thought she had potentially had a brain tumor and she had to wait. I think it was nine months.

[B]

By then you could be dead.

[A]

By then you could be dead. There was another story. I think it was during COVID so maybe it was a little bit different. But a guy broke in his leg and the bone, by the time he was able to go and get an X ray, the bone had. Had already refused in the wrong, wrong way. So because he didn't have a cast, and so they had to break his leg again because they, they, they waited so long. And so you hear these stories and you're like, I mean, I understand the emotion behind that. Just have the government pay for it. So it's a way lower price. You're going to pay for it in one way or the other.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, you know, I think our way is the best.

[B]

I've noticed a pattern. Whenever you rely on the government to pay for anything, it doesn't seem to work out.

[A]

It always goes up. There's another chart out there that shows over the last 20 years, the inflation by different types of services and anything that the government touches is like, you know, up into the right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, TVs, cell phones, cars, all those things where the government doesn't get involved or not too involved. At least those prices have gone down. Health care, college tuition, you know, those types of things where the government is really involved, those have gone and skyrocketed over the last, you know, two or two to three decades.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it's like, let's keep the government out of it. That's just my approach. I'm a libertarian. So it's like, keep the government out. Let us make our own decisions. And I think ultimately that. That produces much, much lower prices.

[B]

Yeah, I think it's very needed, what you're doing also for doctors, too, because they're in so much debt now, they can make their money back a little quicker, Right?

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So they. Because they don't have the. All the administrative stuff of billing, you can get billed or, you know, get paid right away.

[B]

Yeah, I think the, the average doctor debt right now is insane. I got a couple friends in medical school right now stressed out of their minds.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because they're in $300,000 of debt.

[A]

Yeah. And everybody thinks that doctors are paid too much and all these kinds of things. It's like, guys, it's 8% of our spend.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, you can cut doctors pay in half and it would now be 4%. I mean, it was like, what are you doing? You know, and we want the best doctors here.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We want to pay them enough. They do go through oftentimes you know, a decade or more of training to get be doctors. They should get paid for that.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

So lots of challenges going on there.

[B]

Yeah. You mentioned Obamacare earlier. So do you think that was a failure? Obamacare?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I think we're seeing it now. It's called the Affordable Care Act. There's kind of a joke that whatever the bill is called, it does the exact opposite. Right. And so I think that ultimately what we're seeing, and even the Democrats are saying this now where they're saying, yeah, this is unaffordable for people. So I think we're all agreeing that the Affordable Care act is not affordable. And so, yeah, it's been a total, total disaster from my perspective.

[B]

Is it still shut down or now the government?

[A]

No, we just started back up, I think, this week.

[B]

So did SNAP go away? I know that was a big deal.

[A]

I think it went away for a week or two.

[B]

Got it.

[A]

So it's. It's back. It's back.

[B]

They're only subsidizing cheap groceries. It's not like.

[A]

It's like Diet Coke and Fritos.

[B]

Yeah. So that's making your health worse, which.

[A]

Is making our health worse.

[B]

Crazy.

[A]

And in fact, our, our United States, when you compare it to other, what they call OECD countries, which is kind of all, you know, the, the first world countries, we're twice as obese as other OECD countries.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And so that. And if you're obese, Your costs are about 5x what your cost would be if you are of normal weight. And so we've got an obesity epidemic in the United States which is, you know, impacting health care costs. I mean, if you think about it just like a very tangible example, if you have a knee replaced and you're £400, that's very different than if you get a knee replaced and you're £180. It's just way more weight and way more stress on your knee. And so the fail rate of those are much, much higher, not to mention diabetes and chronic conditions and things like that that come with obesity. So we've got not only a price problem in the United States, we have a health problem in the United States.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So with crowd health, we actually give people discounts if they get. If they're. If they're healthy.

[B]

Oh, really? So how do you measure?

[A]

You can take three different tests. So two are blood tests, so you can get them at the same time, which is a fasting insulin test, which basically is like, how well is your body processing the carbohydrates and the sugars? The second one is. It's called C reactive protein, which is just a measure of how inflamed your insides are. And the third one is visceral fat. So this is not the fat that hangs out around your waist. It's the fat that hangs out in between your organs. And that's the one that has a pretty significant impact on chronic conditions. And so if you take those three tests and you're in the top quartile for two of the three, you get 20% off of our service. I love thinking, you know, if you think about. We're not insurance, but if you think about car insurance. Right. If you're a good driver, you pay less. If you're a bad driver, you pay more.

[B]

Accountability, Right.

[A]

Yeah. You can't do that in health care. It's actually illegal for health insurance plans to discriminate. That's based upon your health status.

[B]

It should be more accountable, I think.

[A]

Exactly. And incentivize people to be healthy. If people feel it in their pockets, you know, in their bank accounts, then I think people. More people will be, you know, interested. More interested in getting healthy.

[B]

Well, they don't want to do that because they'd lose money, right?

[A]

Well, that's true.

[B]

A ton of money.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. Because they don't want to be preventative.

[A]

There's. There's no incentive for the system. You know, the pharmaceutical. If you're healthy as opposed to sick, the pharmaceutical company makes less money, the insurance company makes less money. The hospital systems make less money.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so the medical industrial complex makes less money if you're. If you're healthy.

[B]

Mm.

[A]

So it's all these perverse incentives within healthcare that I think is driving these. These. These huge, you know, price increases.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. They want you sick, they want you on meds. The average elderly is on, what, eight plus medications?

[A]

It's something crazy like that.

[B]

Yeah. They're putting my friends in their 30s on statins.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's nuts.

[A]

We don't want to get dinged on YouTube.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Talk about statins.

[B]

Might have to blur that one out.

[A]

It's a pet peeve of mine. I got wickedly high cholesterol. All. I'm a meat eater, and I don't take statins because I refuse.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I refuse to.

[B]

But if they. If they saw your results, they would recommend it.

[A]

Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny enough, when you stick mine in a chat GPT, they're like, get on statins. I was like, I gotta. My. Nobody in my family ever has had a heart attack, you know, for the last two or three generations. Like, I'm not gonna have a heart attack because of. Of, you know, high cholesterol. So that's a whole nother. Yeah, a whole nother conversation. Yeah.

[B]

When I import my results on ChatGPT, I say, how can I treat this naturally?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know.

[A]

Yeah, it's a great, great tip.

[B]

Medication.

[A]

Great tip.

[B]

I don't want to be on 20 pills when I'm 68.

[A]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

You know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It doesn't seem fun. All right, so that's. Where can people sign up for all this?

[A]

Yeah, it's joincrowdhealth.com and in essence, what we've done is we put together now 17,000 people who are funding each other's healthcare expenses, as opposed to an insurance company funding your expenses. And so if I have a huge expense, like, you know, cancer treatment or something like that, we actually go out to the community and say, hey, you know, this guy in Texas has cancer. You know, will you help him? And so we ask them once a month to help somebody else in the community, which is pretty cool, because now I can give my money. Sean can give his money directly to me, as opposed to an insurance company where you have no idea where that money is going.

[B]

Respect.

[A]

Your money comes directly to. To. To me. And that's pretty cool. So we have people being like, man, it's cool that I can, Like, I know I'm helping with a pregnancy. I know I'm helping with a cancer case. As opposed to sending your check to UnitedHeal. You have no idea. In fact, we have people, man, who. It's crazy to me when you change that system. We have a lot of pregnancies in our community, but with that, we have a lot of miscarriages. And so we'll send out a request to the community to help this person who just had a miscarriage, because there's costs associated with that. And inevitably, we have people come back, women typically, who are like, man, I've been through that. I know what that's Like, I know the pain that they're going through, you know, and so instead of sending them 100 bucks this month, can I send them 200 bucks this month?

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And it's like, you'd never call UnitedHealthcare and be like, can I send you more this month? Right. And so it's like bringing humanity back to healthcare, which I think, you know, these big insurance companies have kind of stolen from us.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

And it was. This is how it was back in the day. If you think about, like the agrarian communities of the United States. Like, you have these communities who gather around each other and help each other out in the time of need, but it's gotten disintermediated, if you will, or I guess intermediated by having an insurance company in between. So we lose track of, like, our people in our community. So we're trying to bring that community component back to healthcare. Like I said, we've done this 28,000 times over the last four and a half years. And 99.9% of them have gotten fully funded, as opposed to 20% of them got denied by health insurance companies or doing way better than health insurance companies and getting these bills paid. Totally different system. Wow.

[B]

I was going to ask. At first, it must have been difficult because you didn't have the numbers, right?

[A]

Yeah. Fortunately, thank God, we were able to get those, those bills paid early on too, so. And now that we have 17,000 people, when I see a cancer case, I'm like, all right, let's go.

[B]

Yeah. You know, how much is that typically for cancer?

[A]

I mean, it's hundreds of thousands. Holy shit. I mean, here's the craziest story is we had a guy in Montana last summer. He was fishing and he was in bear country. So he had a.44 in his holster, and he leaned down, the gun fell out of his hol, hit a rock, went off. Bullet went into his calf, out the back of his calf, into his thigh, out the top of his thigh, into his chest and out. And so he was in the middle of nowhere, Montana. You know, thank God his, his wife was with him. So she runs up to the top of the hill because she didn't have self reception calls 91 1. A helicopter comes in and plucks this guy out of the stream in the middle of Montana. He goes into the hospital, he goes into a coma. He has to drive back home to California because they won't let him on an airplane with his condition. He gets sepsis on the way there.

[B]

Oh my God.

[A]

And so this was Almost a million dollar bill. And so we got that bill and we have, like I said, a team of negotiation people who will negotiate it, including attorneys. And we negotiated that down to like 225. Wow. And so the community got that funded easily without a problem.

[B]

Damn.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's a powerful community.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, this can work for even the very, very large, large bills. So, yeah, like I said, we've had dozens of cancer cases, stage four, you know, bad stuff. So it's, it's working.

[B]

Dude, this is incredible. I'm. I'm deeply moved by this, honestly, hearing this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I really love what you're doing.

[A]

I appreciate it.

[B]

Yeah. Because health care is such, like, people don't like talking about it, you know.

[A]

No.

[B]

Other than you.

[A]

It's not, it's not, it's not a sexy thing, but it's got it. I mean, it's. It's the number one expense line item on a lot of people's, you know, budgets, you know, their family budgets. And so somebody's got to do something about it. And so I'm just trying to grab a. Gather group of people who are like, man, I'm tired of this. Like, I'm tired of this insurance game. You know, let's. Let's do something different. And, and so far we have 17,000 people that have raised their hand and said yes. We'll probably, we're sitting here in November. We'll probably have somewhere between 22 and 25,000 people by the end of the year. So it's growing rapidly. And more and more people are like, okay, I'll give it a shot. It's a little bit scary to not have health insurance, but we've been so.

[B]

Programmed to want to have something.

[A]

Yeah. For sure. Since we're little. Like, you got to have health insurance.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, you tell your mom and dad, you're like, I don't have health insurance. They, like, freak out.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

And so it's like, if we can convince people through, you know, trust and all those things that, that we can get these, help them get these bills paid, then I think we've got something here that could be, you know, millions of people ultimately. And that's what we're trying to do.

[B]

Let's do it.

[A]

If we have millions of people, we could change the system. We could change the system.

[B]

Yeah. So I think I'm in, man. So let's do it. I'll sign it. We'll put a link in the video as well. Guys, anything else you want to close off with here. I got some fun questions for you if you.

[A]

Oh, you got some, some fun, some.

[B]

Non health related questions.

[A]

Fun ones to end.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All right, let's do it.

[B]

Is it, Is it true 80% of your net worth is in Bitcoin?

[A]

80% of my liquid assets are in bitcoin. Wow.

[B]

How long have you been doing that for?

[A]

2021. So I got in, you know, in 2021. It kind of went one up a lot and then kind of came back down a lot. I think it bottomed out at like 17,000, 17,600, something like that. And so fortunately I was, I got in near the, near the bottom. I think my cost basis is in the mid-20s.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And so I just, you know, we're in a situation now, a lot of it because, because of health care, where the government continues to print money. And people don't realize that when the government prints money, your goods and services go up through inflation.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And so there's only one. And it's clear. Elon has I think shown like you can't go in there and change the government from within. They're just not wanting to cut costs.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because everybody wants their piece of the pie. And so once you start taking away those pieces of the pie, people get really upset. And so you can't reduce the deficit. And I think we're in kind of a free fall on our currency. And you know, bitcoin is, I think is the, is the answer to it. You can't produce more bitcoin. It is, it is maxed out 21 million. You can't produce more. And so I think that this type of asset is going to be the future. And every currency in the, in human history has failed at some point. And it's usually around 200 to 250 years after it was, it was started. And guess What? We're at 250 years after it started. So I think the dollar is doomed ultimately. And so I put the vast majority of my, my liquid assets and in bitcoin. I mean I still have my house, I have my company and things like that. I can't put that in bitcoin. But yeah, all my, yet, but all my liquid assets are, most of my liquid assets are in bitcoin.

[B]

There's some people selling their houses for bitcoin.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Though.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, they're selling their houses, they're buying bitcoin and they're going and renting because they think that Grant Cardone. Yeah, it's awesome. I think it's the right. And look, we're sitting at 90,000 or a little under 90,000 today. It was at 1:15 or 117 or something like that. 120, maybe even the high. I don't even really look at it. It doesn't faze me at this point. It doesn't. I look at it maybe once a week, and my wife is like, what happens? I was like, ben, this is not for next year or the following year. Like, over the next five to 10 years, this is going to be worth a crapload of money because of just the direction our country is going.

[B]

Yeah, I agree. I definitely agree with that. I love crypto. Shout out to Bitcoin. Changed my life. I got in pretty early, too.

[A]

Awesome.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, amazing.

[B]

Is it true Mark Zuckerberg rented your house?

[A]

That he did.

[B]

That's crazy. What year was that?

[A]

So have you seen the movie the Social Network?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so there's a subplot in the movie where Eduardo goes to his dad and asked for $16,000 to pay for this house that. To move his buddies from Zuckerberg and his buddies from Boston to Silicon Valley. While I was at business school, between my first year and second year, we were looking for somebody to rent the house, and Mark Zuckerberg literally shows up at our house, hands us a check. And so our house is that house in Social Network.

[B]

No way.

[A]

Yeah, that was our house. So, you know, there was no zip lines from the chimneys or anything like that. But, you know, it was funny because I came back from my summer internship and there was a receipt for Mark Zuckerberg for the Ritz Carlton in New York. And one of my buddies worked for the company that was the first funders of Facebook. And so I take this receipt, and I think I'm super smart. And I go into him, and I was like, man, can you believe Mark Zuckerberg is spending his money on the Ritz Carlton in New York? And he kind of looked at me, he's like, it's gonna be okay. Like, he knew, but this was back in the day where it was like, you had to have a Edu email address. They were only in six schools. And so six or eight or something like that. And so, you know, I had no idea that Facebook would be worth, you know, trillions of dollars. But he knew. So it was a pretty funny. Pretty funny story. I saw him a couple months ago and I told. You know, we talked about that story. He's like, yeah, I knew. I knew it was gonna be huge. So I wasn't worried about the $500, you know, receipt from the Ritz Carlton.

[B]

That's not. So you went to the same school.

[A]

As him or as my buddy?

[B]

As Mark.

[A]

No, Mark went to Harvard, I went to Stanford. But he, you know, when he was out there in Boston, he realized that Silicon Valley is where he needed to be for Facebook to thrive. So he moved his entire company to Silicon Valley. And so we were the first stop for him in our house for that summer.

[B]

Did you talk to him at all or.

[A]

No, I met him once. Yeah, I met him once. My buddy who was there actually took the check from him. So it's pretty cool.

[B]

You got to meet. That's crazy. Who would have known?

[A]

And then a bunch of my classmates went and worked for Facebook and made a gazillion dollars because, you know, 2005, 2006 is when Facebook really take. Took off.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, yeah, pretty, pretty funny story.

[B]

That tech bubble is not. What do you think with this supposed AI bubble? Do you think it's actually a bubble?

[A]

I think it's too early to tell. I mean, I'm. I'm a little bit older than you. I'm 46. Yeah. So I saw, you know, what happened in the Internet, you know, late 90s, early 2000s. It feels a lot like that. And so I think it's. We're in a bubble. I think it's gonna be one of those things where you're gonna have, you know, a couple dozen companies who do really, really well, and then the rest of them are gonna fade away is my guess. But I think they're just betting on having those top 10 or 20 companies, because if you do, you're gonna make a crapload of money. And so that's how VC works, right? You bet on a lot of them and a few of them are going to work out, and that's where you make all your money. So I think that's what they're doing right now.

[B]

Yeah, because none of them are profitable yet, which is.

[A]

None of them are profitable.

[B]

Like I've always been, like, I've run my stuff pretty lean. Like I try to profit asap, you know, my companies.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, well. And the build out for this is tremendous. I think that OpenAI just said they're going to spend like a trillion dollars or something like that over the next decade to build out their infrastructure. And so there's a lot of infrastructure costs that go along with this. And so it's going to. It's tbd. Tbd.

[B]

We'll see how it plays out. Well, Andy, thanks for your time today, man.

[A]

Yeah, thanks for having me. Fun to be here.

[B]

Take this thing.

[A]

Can't wait for you to join us at Crowd Health.

[B]

Yeah, I will join. I'll see you at south by this or next year. Let's do it, man. Check them out, guys. Check out the link if you're interested in joining. I'll see you guys next time. Peace. Nice. I hope you guys are enjoying the show. Please don't forget to like and subscribe. It helps the show a lot with the algorithm. Thank you.