#681: The Health Insurance Death Spiral Is Here with Andy Schoonover

Summary

Podcast Summary: TFTC #681 — The Health Insurance Death Spiral Is Here

Host: Marty Bent
Guest: Andy Schoonover, CEO of CrowdHealth
Date: November 10, 2025

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Overview

This episode of TFTC features a candid and in-depth conversation between host Marty Bent and Andy Schoonover, founder and CEO of CrowdHealth, about the spiraling U.S. health insurance crisis. Using the language and ethos familiar to bitcoiners, they dive into what they call the “health insurance death spiral,” the fundamental misalignments in the US healthcare industry, and how alternatives like CrowdHealth—rooted in bitcoin principles—are gaining momentum. The conversation is packed with sharp insights into perverse incentives, administrative bloat, the failures of the ACA, and the innovations possible through community-based, cash-pay healthcare models.

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Key Topics & Discussion Points

1. The Health Insurance “Death Spiral”

• Premiums out of Control: Marty and Andy recount skyrocketing ACA premiums—“The worst one we've seen thus far is $5,600 a month for a family of four. Like, that's the record so far.” [01:26] (Andy)
• Healthy Opt-Outs and Risk Pools: Healthy individuals are exiting traditional insurance, leaving sicker populations and accelerating cost increases.

  “The only way that health insurance works is healthy people subsidizing unhealthy people...The mechanics just don’t work when all the healthy people exit the system.” [04:03] (Andy)

• Subsidy Expiration: The end of government subsidies (especially from the American Rescue Plan) has unmasked true costs.

2. No Government Plan & Calls to Burn It Down

• Political Gridlock: Andy shares a US Representative’s bleak assessment: “The Republicans have no alternative. They have no solution to the problem.” [05:36]
• Systemic Inertia: “I said, ‘burn—we gotta burn the system down and start over again, because there’s no iterative way of getting back to something that’s actually feasible.’” [05:36] (Andy)
• Binary Policy Future: Choice seems to be between the existing broken system or Medicare-for-All.

3. Cost Drivers: The Obesity Epidemic, Ozempic & Incentives

• Government Response: Discussion about government moves to discount drugs like Ozempic, potentially as a cost-control for obesity-linked expenses.

  “I would not be shocked if the Ozempic discounts that the government is sort of forcing on the market is a recognition of...we have to provide health care to people that are willfully unhealthy, obese, have heart disease.” [07:46] (Marty)

• Personal Responsibility: Andy: “...people have to pay out of their pocket for [Ozempic] at some point or they gotta make lifestyle changes.” [08:47]

4. Incentives, Health Accountability, and the CrowdHealth Model

• CrowdHealth’s Incentive Structure:
  • Healthy participants pay less via objective health tests (20% discount for top quartile).
  • “If people are putting in the work to be healthy, then they should be paying less...They should be paying less for health care services than people who are unhealthy.” [10:43] (Andy)
  • Comparison to car insurance’s safe-driver discounts.

5. Administrative Bloat & Fraud

• AI and Bill Negotiation: They discuss billing errors, “upcoding,” and how AI helps CrowdHealth achieve deep discounts.
• Fraudulent Billing Pervasiveness:

  “What percentage of bills have errors like this or fraudulent markups like this?”
  “80. 80 are very, very clear. I would say there’s another 10% that you can make a really good argument...” [19:01] (Andy)

• Personal Anecdote: Andy describes being charged $5,000 for an $8 bag of saline. [18:52]

6. Insurance-Hospital Collusion and Perverse Incentives

• Principal-Agent Problem:

  “The buyer and the seller of healthcare both having an incentive for the price to go up.” [20:37] (Andy)

  • ACA designed to cap profits as a % of premiums, unintentionally incentivized raising those premiums.
• Stock Market Evidence: UnitedHealthcare’s profits soared after ACA’s implementation. [23:19]
• Medicare Gaming: UnitedHealthcare allegedly overdiagnosed for higher reimbursements, now under DOJ investigation.

7. Bitcoiners, Alternatives & Direct Payment Models

• CrowdHealth’s Bitcoin Integration:
  • Ongoing discussions with major healthcare providers to accept bitcoin.
  • Growth of “bitcoin doctors” database and members.
  • Fold integration: unused premium margin is stacked as bitcoin for members. [39:44]
  • “It’s almost like a way to stack sats by also paying your healthcare.” [41:24] (Andy)
• Cash Pay as “Badge of Honor”:

  “We have T-shirts that say uninsured on the front of them, which means I'm not subservient to some health insurance company...” [56:31] (Andy)

• Best Doctors Going Cash-Only: Prediction that top doctors, frustrated with bureaucracy, are opting for cash pay only, which CrowdHealth’s model supports. [62:59]

8. Real World Proof & Member Stories

• CrowdHealth’s Success with Large Claims:
  • The million-dollar trauma case: “...a guy in Montana...the crowd funded that with no problem.” [31:27]
• Advocacy and Personal Touch:
  • Members receive a dedicated care advocate; stories of emotional support and gestures like gifts for members’ children or newborns. [53:34]

9. Breaking Healthcare’s “Golden Handcuffs”

• Employee Opt-Outs: Advice for small business employees to advocate for cash raises instead of employer-sponsored insurance.

  "Let's... keep people in their employment cages by shackling them to the company with their health insurance..." [67:31] (Andy)

• Entrepreneurial Impact: Millions would launch businesses if freed from employer-based health insurance.

10. Threats & Resistance from "Medical Industrial Complex"

• Pushback: Andy shares he received a death threat as CrowdHealth’s disruption threatens entrenched interests. [47:38]

  “You start taking off people's... food off of people's table, right? ...and you piss off a lot of people.” [47:38] (Andy)

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Memorable Quotes

“In a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins...If you’re not paying attention, you probably should be.”
[00:07] — Andy Schoonover

"The only way that health insurance works is healthy people subsidizing unhealthy people."
[04:03] — Andy Schoonover

"No, there's no plan to solve this...Burn—we gotta burn the system down and start over again, because there's no iterative way of getting back to something that's actually feasible."
[05:36] — Andy Schoonover

“I got charged $5,000 for a bag, a thousand milliliter bag of saline solution.”
[18:52] — Andy Schoonover

"Eighty percent [of medical bills have clear errors or inflated charges]."
[19:05] — Andy Schoonover

“You work for whoever pays you. The doctor is getting paid by health insurance. And so the health insurance plans dictate what care they can and cannot provide.”
[60:59] — Andy Schoonover

“If our model was used by everyone, we could take that $5.6 trillion and cut it in half.”
[44:27] — Andy Schoonover

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Notable Moments & Timestamps

• [01:26] — ACA premiums now unaffordable; healthy people increasingly opt out
• [04:03] — ACA’s unhealthy risk pool dynamic explained
• [05:36] — Andy on there being no political will or plan to solve the crisis
• [10:43] — CrowdHealth discounts for healthy lifestyle; incentives discussed
• [18:52] — Insane hospital markups: $5k for an $8 bag of saline
• [19:05] — 80% of bills have errors or inflated charges
• [20:37] — Health insurance and hospital collusion outlined
• [23:19] — ACA makes UnitedHealthcare rich—stock chart shows the profits
• [31:27] — Million-dollar claim: proof CrowdHealth can fund large health events
• [39:44] — CrowdHealth’s increasing use of bitcoin, fold integration for stacking sats
• [47:38] — Death threat against Andy; resistance from the industry
• [53:34] — CrowdHealth’s care advocate personal stories (hiking gear, baby gifts)
• [62:59] — The rise of cash-only doctors as highest-quality practitioners
• [67:31] — How employer-sponsored insurance traps people in jobs

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Conclusion

Marty Bent and Andy Schoonover provide an unvarnished look at America’s health insurance crisis, connecting it to both the hard-money ethos of bitcoin and the incentives at the root of the problem. They explain why traditional insurance is entering a “death spiral,” why government and legacy insurance are unlikely sources of meaningful solutions, and why alternatives—built on aligned incentives, transparency, and community—are scaling rapidly. CrowdHealth’s approach, especially with bitcoin integration, represents a growing movement toward deflationary, direct, and personalized healthcare—and perhaps, the vanguard of a new, more honest system.

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For more, find the full episode on your favorite podcast platform or at TFTC.io.

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[Use code “TFTC” for a discount with CrowdHealth. See [70:08] and [71:26].

Transcript

[Andy Schoonover]

You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free. If you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitco. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. Probably should be. Probably should be.

[Marty Bent]

And it's that time of year again. We meet again. Open enrollment is here.

[Andy Schoonover]

Everybody's favorite time of year. It's not because of Thanksgiving or Christmas. It's because of open enrollment.

[Marty Bent]

Well, we've been texting pretty frequently over the last couple months because obviously we've worked together closely for the last four years. I've been a crowd health member for the last four years, had two babies on it. And I've been texting you behind the scenes like, I think this is the year for crowd health. If you're looking at the zeitgeist out there, the selfie videos and cars of people complaining about the cost of health insurance, it's getting untenable. And you were saying right before we hit record that you think we're in a health insurance death spiral.

[Andy Schoonover]

Yeah, I was trying to think back of when we first talked. I think it was three years ago, maybe. I think four years ago.

[Marty Bent]

Four.

[Andy Schoonover]

I think when we first talked, we had like 2,000 customers or 2,000 community members, and now we're at 15,000. We'll have somewhere between 20 and 25,000 by the end of the year. And so, yeah, I mean, I think you're right. I mean, this is the year of the health insurance death spiral. And I think what's happening is people are finally realizing that the Affordable Care act actually wasn't affordable. And premiums are going up wickedly fast, and people are just opting out of the system. The bitcoiners are opting out of the fiat system. I think the rest of folks are opting out of the healthcare space. So the worst one we've seen thus far is $5,600 a month for a family of four. Like, that's the record so far.

[Marty Bent]

Yeah. So this is. I was just looking at some tweets before we hopped on. They're not hard to find. If you search ACA Premium, it's insane. It says trucking czar. Only employee of my business. This is not, I repeat, not sustainable. This is my renewal notice for just health insurance per month before Obama. And there's some harsh language in there, but for him and five dependents, looks like he's going to be paying 32, almost $3,300 a month. It's his business, so he's eating that chunk, too. He's going to have to pay $2,600 a month out of pocket from his paycheck just to support this.

[Andy Schoonover]

Geez. Yeah. I mean, that family with us would be like 750amonth. And I didn't know, I didn't see the deductible on that. But ultimately that's that that guy's paying, what, $30,000 a year or something like that, and then he's got to pay the deductible on top of that. So he's probably $40,000 into, you know, his health care before the, the, the insurance company pays a dime.

[Marty Bent]

Yeah, and here's another one, which is. Here's Blue Cross Blue Shield 9 options. Anyway.

[Andy Schoonover]

Is that Illinois, too?

[Marty Bent]

It's health insurance. My code. I don't know where this guy is, but deductible 8,600, 12,000, 3,000. Paying up $3,500 a month. Why is it getting this bad?

[Andy Schoonover]

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think what we're seeing ultimately is that, you know, back almost 15 years ago, these, this Affordable Care act was supposed to be, you know, make things affordable, but in fact, what it did, it just made things way more expensive and it was masked, you know, for the last four years because of the, or the, I think it was American rescue plan that, that basically gave subsidies to, you know, the people who were. I think it was like 400% of the, of the poverty level or something. And, and so it masked all these huge, these huge changes. And so what, what's happening is now these subsidies are going away, and so all the healthy people are going. What the health insurance plans actuaries are doing is they're assuming that all the healthy people are going to exit the system, which means you're only having unhealthy people left in the system, and therefore they're going to have to jack up rates to make up for, you know, the healthy people subsidizing the unhealthy people. I mean, that's the only way that health insurance works is healthy people subsidizing unhealthy people. Right, right. And so the mechanics just don't work when all the healthy people exit the system. So that's ultimately what's going on here. You know, we see. We see above inflationary rates for all the medical services and things like that, but that's not what's going to increase ACA by 18%. I mean, it's a chunk of it, but that's not what it is. It's more just the population of patients within these plans are getting sicker.

[Marty Bent]

Does the government have a plan to solve this?

[Andy Schoonover]

No, there's no, there's no plan to solve this. I mean, even I. I won't say who, but I saw a state rep, or, excuse me, a US Rep at my, Funny Enough, my. My daughter's school's fundraiser. So I went up to him and I was like, what's the. What's the. What's the option? He's like, we have none. We have. The Republicans have no alternative. They have no solution to the, to the problem. And I don't think anything iterative gets there. I mean, I think I said it last time. I got a whole bunch of shit for it because everybody online is like, you know, I said, burn. We got to burn the system down and start over again, because there's no iterative way of getting back to, you know, something that's actually feasible, you know, and then the left basically says, oh, this shows we have to have Medicare for all. And we know what happens when, you know, the government gets involved in this stuff, right? So we're either at what we have or Medicare for all. And the Republicans really haven't put together, you know, a plan for, you know, what there is. But I don't like government involvement in anything we do. But I think that people maybe should have a choice where let us healthy people have access to private plans of healthy people, and we're going to pay way, way less. And maybe there's some government subsidization of the sick or something, you know, like, maybe there's a hybrid system here that works. Again, I know we're all bitcoiners. Like, I don't want the government involved, but, like, at some point, like, you know, for these sick people, unless we want to continue to subsidize them, let's let them. Let's let the healthy people have our plans and the unhealthy people have their plans. And, you know, if that's not enough of an incentive to stay healthy, I don't know what it is. Right? Like, the last thing you want to do is jump on a government, you know, unhealthy person plan. So it would have to be government subsidized, which means it's A taxpayer type of deal. But I think it's actually going to be less than what they're doing were spending on the ACA this year. So I think it's, it's not, you know, massive amounts more money going out the, out the door. But I think there's got to be some kind of significant change to the system to get this thing right sized, because I don't, I don't see any other options, honestly. I wonder everybody can join crowd health. That would solve it.

[Marty Bent]

Yeah. I wonder if Trump's. I'm sure you saw at the announcement earlier this week, I think it was yesterday or the day before, about discounted Ozempic. Like, do you think they're seeing this problem? And to your point, what is driving the cost up is the unhealthy people and was this Ozempic move like, okay, let's make Ozempic cheap for people so that we can try to make them skinnier. And I'm not going to speak to the efficacy of Ozempic. I know there's many people who are for it and many who are against it and many who believe that there hasn't been enough time to really understand how it affects people in the long term. But I think I would not be shocked if the Ozempic discounts that the government is sort of forcing on the market is a recognition of, okay, we've got these massive health care costs are only ballooning, going to continue to balloon. They're predominantly driven due to the fact that we have to provide health care to people that are willfully unhealthy, obese, have heart disease.

[Andy Schoonover]

I mean, look, I think that there's something to be said for people who are significantly overweight, who have diabetes and all these other conditions to take something like this to get them down to a weight that's manageable. Once they get down to that weight, I don't know how you'd structure this, but, like, once they get down to this, that weight, then they're like, okay, now you got to pay it for yourself for it yourself. Like, so it's not a burden on others. Or you've got to keep the weight off, right? Like, you can't go back. Because everything that I've seen is, you know, is epic, is great until you get off it, then you gain all the weight back. So, you know, I don't think we're in a structure where you can pay $1,000 a month or whatever it is. I know that he said he's going to bring it down to what 150 or something like that, you just can't continue to do that without the person making the lifestyle choices having some skin in the game. If that happens, you and I, the taxpayers are going to pay this and for the rest of their life, which is not scalable. We just can't, we just can't do that. Right. So I think, I think people have to pay out of their pocket for it at some point or they gotta make lifestyle changes.

[Marty Bent]

I think the latter would be preferable. That's why, for sure, 100.

[Andy Schoonover]

Yeah, but I think that, you know, incentives are everything. So if, if you're stuck with this situation, which you have to make a lifestyle change or you have to come out of pocket for 200 bucks a month or what, you know, whatever it ends up being to the consumer, then I think incentives might change some, some, some lifestyle changes. I don't know if 200 bucks a month or 150 or whatever it is, is, is enough, but I know it's got to hit their pocket.

[Marty Bent]

Yeah, well, this is something you focus on pretty heavily at crowd health, is making sure that community members are doing their best to remain healthy as well for the benefit of the.

[Andy Schoonover]

Yeah, I mean, I ultimately think that the healthy people should be paying less than the unhealthy people. You know, and I think in many, in many parts of society, people are like, oh, that's, that's, that's awful for you to say. But look, you know, if people are putting in the work to be healthy, then they should be paying less. They should be paying less for, for health care services than the people who are, who are unhealthy. Right. And so, you know, we've got a, we got a program at crowd health where we got three different tests that you can take. And if you are in the top quartile for those tests, I mean, you know, top quartile, healthiest, then you get a 20% disc on, on your crowd health. So in essence, those who are taking better care of themselves are paying less. And ultimately I think that's, that's the case. I think we talked before on your other pod on previous podcasts where you know, you do that for, for, for car insurance. You know, you, these car insurance. Yeah, you like, you know, stick something in your, in your car or you have an app or something that shows how good of a driver you are. And if you're a good driver, you pay less. If you're not a good driver, you pay more. I mean, that seems like a reasonable, a reasonable thing, but for healthcare. For some reason, it's, you know, appalling to a lot of people that I would ever even recommend that. But I think ultimately that's where we have to go. So people feel it in their pocketbooks, or else they're just. They're. They're going to the grocery store with somebody else's credit card. Yeah, right.

[Marty Bent]

No, and to my point of the opening sort of statement, like, I feel like this year particularly, I don't know if you're seeing it and observing it yourself, but it feels like with these premium increases, it's gotten to the point where it's forcing many people to seriously reconsider whether or not they want to engage in health insurance because it's beginning to materially hit their pocketbooks.

[Andy Schoonover]

Yeah, I think that's right. And that's what I think is kind of why people are forecasting the death spiral of health insurance. What are the incentives? For me, right, if I'm going to pay $2,000 a month, so $24,000 a year, plus a $10,000 deductible, 34,000. If I'm a healthy person, I look at that and say, what's the probability that I'm going to have $34,000 worth of healthcare expenses this year? And for most of us, it's incredibly low. Half a percent, a percent, something like that. And so people just do the math. And bitcoiners are great at this and work on probabilities. And most people are being like, it's just not worth it. I'm just going, and if God forbid, something happens, I'll try to negotiate the shit out of it. And ultimately, that's what we do at crowd health. And we probably should have just a negotiating product. Like, hey, if you're uninsured and you just want us to help you negotiate, we should have a negotiation product. But I think that's the mindset that people are taking right now. And so I think a lot of people are just going to dump health insurance and start paying on their own, which ultimately I think is a good thing, because I think people need to feel the consequences of the healthcare decisions that they're making.

[Marty Bent]

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[Andy Schoonover]

I mean, I would call it fraud, yeah.

[Marty Bent]

Fraud on top of it by the hospital systems to try to gouge you for even more.

[Andy Schoonover]

Yeah, I mean, we also have our internal AI platform. We don't use Claude. We use a different kind of platform built on another LLM that's all HIPAA compliant and stuff. So I'm not giving away data that does the same thing, but we pair it with what we know that hospital has done in the past. So it basically looks for shenanigans that they've done in the past, plus what have they been willing to negotiate to in the past. So if you combine just kind of fraudulent billing activities with what they've tried to do in the past, with what they've been willing to take in terms of payment in the past, that I think is the magic trio where you can get the absolute best prices. And that's ultimately what, what we're, what we're good at is getting that, that best price. Because you can, you can, you know, take a $50,000 bill and say you made one mistake and it goes down to $42,000, which is awesome. But how do you get it down to something actually manageable? Because the 42,000 is still probably 400 or 500%, you know, higher than Medicare, which you should be at kind of 125 to 150% of Medicare. I mean, that's a fair price. And so if you don't know that, then, you know, how are you going to really negotiate that bill? Because that's why I think errors is one component of a kind of a broader negotiation picture that we really use on our side to ensure that our members are getting the best price. So, and I think this, you know, I think it is fraudulent. You know, you. I was in Bitcoin Commons just a year and a half ago, and I had my issue where I had, you know, I thought I was having a stroke. And thank God Parker was right outside the, the office. I was like, Parker called 911. I think Will actually called 911. Or, you know, one of the two of them did. And, you know, I went to the hospital and they put me in on an IV even though I wasn't dehydrated. So as an IV, I was on an IV for 12 hours. It was 1,000 milliliters. I can buy that off of Amazon for $8. The hospital can buy for $2. I got charged $5,000 for a bag, a thousand milliliter bag of saline solution.

[Marty Bent]

That's insane.

[Andy Schoonover]

Salt water. It's salt water. People like that. That's what, that's what this is. And that's the egregiousness of these hospitals when they try to do this crap.

[Marty Bent]

What percentage of bills have errors like this or fraudulent markups like this?

[Andy Schoonover]

80. Yeah, 80. 80 are very, very clear. I would say there's another 10% that you can make a really good argument because a lot of times they use these billing codes and, and they, they try to, to jack the system so they can upcode you. So, you know, for example, if you go to the ER, there's five codes that they can use and it goes from 1 to 5, not to bore you, but like 1 to 5 and like 80%, 80. Some odd percent of our bills are 9 or the, the fours or the fives, which, meaning there's like critical, life threatening. Like those are the two. I mean, I've seen somebody go into the ER with, you know, a broken finger and get critical or life threatening, coded yet, yet they, they say, you know, they, they do all these tests and things on you to say, oh well, we thought, you know, there might be too much loss of blood or something and so that gets it to that critical area. But they're all, is get as much money out of the insurance companies as possible. So we see that stuff all the time. All the time.

[Marty Bent]

And we've talked about this in the past, but for the benefit of anybody who's coming to our large and growing show, who has not listened to an episode with Andy yet, can you describe the dynamic between the health insurance company and the health provider and what their incentives are, the level of collusion or sort of cooperation there is between the two.

[Andy Schoonover]

Yeah. So, you know, back in 2009, the Affordable Care act went into place and you know what they did is they said they told the hospitals like the federal government told the hospitals, you can ask me, the insurance companies, you can only make 15% of revenue as profit. So you know, if it's $1,000 of premium for this month for my family, they can only profit $150. And the thought process behind that. Right. All these smart lawyers in D.C. thought, oh well, we can't have health insurance plans gouge, you know, their members and make a ton of money off of their, their health care. So I'm going to limit the amount that you can profit. Well, the problem with this is, is that most of these health insurance plans are for profit organizations, right? So they want to get their 150, they want to grow at 10% to 165. What does that mean? That means your premium has to go from $1000 to 1100 dollars. So your insurance plan, the buyer of health care, wants the price to go up. The sellers are these big hospital systems. They clearly want the price to go up. So, you know, you don't have, you don't have to be. I kind of say you don't have to be, you know, safety PhD in economics to understand if the buyer and the seller of a product want the price to go up, guess what? The prices go up. And so, you know, that's ultimately what's happening is there's this, there's this wink, wink, between the hospitals and the health insurance plans that, you know, the hospitals won't raise prices too fast. So there's no regulatory intervention that health insurance companies won't push back. When you, you know, increase prices 5 or 6% every year, which on a compounded rate, as we all understand, is like massive. And then you'll see these entanglements once in a while where the hospital, you know, tries for 7 or 8 or 9% increases in the health insur plan, you know, pushes back. And I think it's more theatrics than anything. But yeah, yeah, you have the buyer and the seller of healthcare both having an incentive for the price to go up. You know, and so in, in essence, we have a principal agent problem. Right? They're supposed to be our agent. The health insurance plans are supposed to be our agent trying to get us the best price. Where what happens is they're actually benefiting, benefiting for the prices going up over time. So those are the perverse incentives within, within healthcare. And so what I tell people is, Marty, Andy, I've got more negotiating power against these, these hospitals than United Healthcare, which is the seventh or eighth largest company on the planet. And you know, so I can get way better prices. Our members are getting prices that are about 50% better than United Healthcare as individuals. Yeah, that's how, that's how screwed up our system is.

[Marty Bent]

And going back to your point about United Healthcare and the fact that ACA was really trying to make it so these health insurance companies weren't gouging their customers at the end of the day, and you had this principal agent problem that has existed. That's one thing I didn't realize until somebody tweeted out earlier today. But if you go back and you open up UnitedHealthcare's stock chart going, going to max. We have ACA implemented here, around here. It was trading at below a hundred dollars. It's up almost 300. Obviously it's down bad this year, but it's obvious that their profits have gone up significantly since the ACA was instituted.

[Andy Schoonover]

Yeah, if you look at all the health insurance plans, you'll, you'll see that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, these were, these were behind the scenes. You know, these health insurance plans love this because in essence they're getting paid directly by the government for stuff that they hadn't been paid for, you know, in the past. And so this ACA marketplace was a whole new marketplace for them that they, you know, gorged upon. You know, the other thing that's going on there too, is there a privatization of Medicare, which typically we really love privatization. You know, we think that, I think in the Bitcoin community is all about taking it away from the federal government. But in essence, essence, what this is, is this is just a federal program being administered by for profit entity. And so you actually have the worst of both worlds, which is, you know, a government funding with a private entity trying to maximize profit. Which means there's some gaming between that that happens. And the reason why it's down this year, UnitedHealthcare is down this year is, you know, they have been found to be gaming the system. And you know, there's a, there's a chart, I don't know, it was maybe six months ago, maybe nine months ago, something like that, where they showed the percentage of people within United Healthcare who have diabetes was something like five or six times the national average. And it's because they figured out a way to code all of these people as diabetics. So they get paid more from the government. So it's a total gaming of the system. The government pays them based upon how sick they are. And so United went and basically said all these people are way sicker, you know, than they actually were by all this, you know, in creative coding. So they get paid more by the government for these folks. So they kind of, they are being investigated by the DOJ now for, you know, basically fraudulent Medicare billing. So let me add allegedly, allegedly. So UnitedHealthcare doesn't come and sue me. Allegedly. That's what they're doing.

[Marty Bent]

But again, going back to the principal agent problem, like you said, you would like these programs to be private, but since there's A tight partnership between UnitedHealthcare and the government. It's not really that private. And then UnitedHealthcare. UnitedHealth, excuse me, has all the incentive to create that moat, that regulatory moat. It's like, no, the partnership is us and the government, nobody else. And, yeah, we're going to bleed the taxpayer dry, allegedly.

[Andy Schoonover]

Yeah, that's exactly what's. What's. What's going on. You know, then we had Luigi, you know, at the end of last year, I think it was December of last year maybe, which I think did. And I'm wholly against it. It did. It did shine some light on some of the things that, you know, these big health insurance plans were doing. And so I think they've gotten a new level of scrutiny from others. That combined with the ACA subsidies running out, combined with this government shutdown, I think there's a lot of scrutiny on these health insurance plans right now. And that's why we're overwhelmed with the number of people calling us, looking for a real alternative, because we've built something based upon as much as we could, Bitcoin principles, which is like, the incentives have all got to be aligned for the system to work. And so, you know, typically, health insurance plans, they bring in premiums, they have claims and everything in between this profit. So what do they want? They want the premiums to go up and they want the claims to go down. Right. So to maximize their profit. And so, you know, we set up, and I thought a lot about this when I started the company is like, how do you, how do you incentivize the system? You know, have incentives aligned? And so we're just a subscription fee. You know, it's like, let's just. You subscribe, be part of the membership. And therefore, we have the incentive to keep prices down so that more people, you know, come and join us. We also have an incentive to get your. Your bills paid because it doesn't directly impact our yearly profits. But if we don't get a bill, if I don't get Marty's, you know, pregnancy paid, and Marty goes on Twitter and says, crowd health sucks. They didn't pay my bill like that. That's the worst thing ever that could happen for me, you know, startup. So I have all the incentive in the world to. To get these bills paid. So just to be clear, my wife was. Oh, sorry, yeah, they know what I meant.

[Marty Bent]

I know, but we've.

[Andy Schoonover]

It's 2025, Marty. You never know.

[Marty Bent]

We've successfully had two children and paid for their births via. Via Crowd health, it's been an incredible experience. And you just said like for us we're a family of five now. I think we're paying 750amonth. We supplement that with direct primary care. All in. It's like 909 50amonth for a family of five. Which we're going above and beyond with the direct primary care as well. We don't necessarily need that, we just like to have that.

[Andy Schoonover]

I think you guys are 6.95amonth, but same thing. And, and direct primary care too, which basically is a subscription fee to a doctor that you can call anytime. You know, if you're a member of crowd health. I don't know if you're doing this Marty, but like you can submit 300 bucks of that to the crowd and it's fully, fully eligible for funding. Yeah. So you know, we like these subscription based businesses because they don't have any incentive to see you sick. No, I mean that's, that's the bottom line. And everybody else is getting paid out there to see you sick because they're a fee for service type of situation. Like the, the doctor that you go to, if they see, the more times he sees you, you become a recurring revenue stream. Whereas, you know, Marty's DPC doctor just paying every, every month. And he's got an incentive to see you healthy because if you're not healthy, he's, you're calling him a lot, which means it's, you're more expensive to him. So he's trying to, he or she is trying to keep you healthy. The incentives are aligned there. So we're, we're huge advocates of, of DPC direct primary care.

[Marty Bent]

Yeah. I mean, and it's one of those things too where there is such a mental barrier for people. And I know I was, I wasn't apprehensive, but I was like, okay, this is new. When I first joined crowd health four years ago and then when I originally joined, we had DPC in Austin when we were living there as well. And it's a bit foreign and it seems like you're taking a risk, but once you get onboarded and you live the experience for three months, six months, it's like, oh, this is a much better experience. I don't know how this wasn't the way I was doing it before. I'm never going back. And I imagine that is the biggest hurdle for crowd health as a company is really getting people over that mental barrier of believing that there is a better way. Health insurance isn't the Only way to do things.

[Andy Schoonover]

Yeah, I mean, the, the biggest barrier is people like, what, what happens if the, when we have the big one, like, yeah, the big health event. And I think ultimately what's changed for us over the last year is we've had enough big health events where people are finally comfortable that we can help them get big health events paid. I mean, I don't know if I talked about it on the last one, but the, the guy who. Did I talk about the guy who shot himself in the last one that we talked about?

[Marty Bent]

I don't recall. I feel like I would recall that too. So I don't think he did.

[Andy Schoonover]

Yeah, well, we had a, we had a guy in Montana over the summer who, who is, who is fishing in Montana, and he had a.44 in his revolver in his holster and he caught a fish. He leaned down and the.44 fell out of his holster, hit a rock perfectly and it, the gun went off and the 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 the back. Totally destroyed his gallbladder, destroyed his intestines. You know, he said he looked down on his chest and, and green stuff, I think it was bile was basically coming out of his chest. So we, you know, his wife was with him, thank God, you know, she took off her shirt. He thought he hit the femoral artery. So she tied a shirt around his thigh, ran up to the top of the hill, called 91 1. A helicopter came in and pulled him out of the stream basically to get him to the hospital. He went into a coma at the hospital and, you know, I think he was in the coma for two or three weeks, something like that. And then he had to drive home from Montana to California because they wouldn't let him on an airplane. He got sepsis on the way home. And so, you know, that was almost a million dollar bill. And the crowd funded that with no problem. And so I think that, you know, most people have to just get over the hurdle of like, what if something really catastrophic happens? You know, we got a person at MD Anderson right now who's got stage four melanoma or something, something like that. I think it's melanoma. And so we've, we've taken care of dozens of cancer patients and you know, these other big events. And so it's like, man, we can do this. Like, the community can do this. We've got 15,000 people. We'll probably have somewhere between 20 and 25,000 people by the end of the year. That's a big group of people to be able to get these bills funded. So we've shown over 25,000 bills that we can get these things. Get these things funded. Right? That's the. That's the biggest hurdle for people to get over, I think, is, is can you get the big bills funded.

[Marty Bent]

Sup freaks? Have you noticed that governments have become more despotic? They want to surveil more, they want to take more of your data, they want to follow you around the Internet as much as possible so they can control your speech, control what you do. It's imperative in times like this to make sure that you're running a VPN as you're surfing the web, as we used to say back in the 90s. And it's more imperative that you use the right VPN, a VPN that cannot log because of the way that it's designed. And that's why we have partnered with Obscura. That is our official VPN here at tftc, built by a bitcoiner, Carl Dung, for bitcoiners, focused on privacy. You can pay in bitcoin over the lightning. So not only are you private while you're perusing the web with obscura, but when you actually set up an account, you can acquire that account privately by paying in bitcoin over the lightning network. Do not be complacent when it comes to protecting your privacy on the Internet. Go to obscura.net, set up an Obscura account. Use the code TFTC for 25% off. When I say account, you just get a token. It's a string of token. It's not connected to your identity at all. Token sign up, pay with bitcoin. Completely private. Turn on obscura, Surf the web privately. Obscura.net use the code TFTC for 25% off. Sup, freaks? Been seeing a lot of YouTube comments. Marty. Your skin looks so good. You're looking fit these days. How are you doing it? Well, number one, I'm going to the gym more. Trying to get my swell on. Trying to be a good example for my young sons. A fit, healthy dad. But part of that is having a good regimen, particularly staying hydrated, making sure I have the right electrolytes and salts in my body. That is why I use salt of the earths. I drink probably three of these a day with one packet of salt of the earth. I'm liking the pink lemonade right now. It's my flavor of choice. This is Their creatine. I've added this to my regiment. They have it in these packets as well. Makes it extremely convenient if you're traveling. You want to work out while you're traveling, but you don't want to be carrying a white bag of powder going through tsa. It's very, very nerve wracking at times. You have to explain, hey, it's, it's not what you think it is. It's creatine. I'm trying to get my swell on. Make sure you're staying hydrated. I have become addicted to these. It's made my life a lot better. I can supplement this for coffee in the morning and be energized right away. I can supplement, I can bring the creatine wherever I need to. Just put a couple packets in here before I head to the gym. Bring this to the gym. Drinking out of a glass bottle. Make sure I'm not injecting any microplastics into my body. Go to drinksote.com use the code TFTC and you'll get 15 off anything in the store. That's drinksoute.com code TFTC. Well, and you've been really beating the drum on next in your outward marketing is that like healthcare should be deflationary and you alluded to it earlier, but that's the goal and as the community scales it should be able at least your monthly payment to come down significantly. And obviously you guys are negotiating bills on top of that. So the sticker price is heavily discounted in many cases. I think that's one of the best things you guys do on on X is highlight all the discounts that you're able to get here.

[Andy Schoonover]

Or yeah, our prices are 6 to 8% lower depending upon the month this year than they were last year. So something, something is wrong with the system when you're seeing 18 premium increases but we're seeing prices drop by 6 to 8%. So you know, come join us, help us, help us change, you know, continue to change this. The more people we have on the boat, the better it's going to be. The far the or the prices are going to drop from my perspective. So yeah.

[Marty Bent]

Do you think this is the year that many people wake up to this?

[Andy Schoonover]

If there's, if, if our phone calls are any indicator, Yes. I mean I was on the phone for two hours today doing sales calls. You know, I'm the, I'm the CEO, I'm doing sales calls. And funny enough, the last guy that I talked to found out us from your podcast he's like, how do you find out about us? He's like, oh, yeah, tftc. I was like, yeah, I'm talking to him already this afternoon. He's like, well, tell him I said hello. So Jeremy, I think is his name, said hello. He's a listener of yours. He probably will listen to this. We're getting people from all over the place. We're still about 20 or 25% of our customers are bitcoiners, which is awesome. And, man, if we can get more bitcoiners, then we can do some phenomenal things on the bitcoin side that I think could change not only health care, but the bitcoin system or the financial system. Excuse me, I'm dying for more bitcoiners because they're the best customers, too. They're not entitled. They're awesome. They understand how the system works. So it's cool to have bitcoiners as a part of the community. I think this is the year. I think this is the year that it happens. So we got more customers in the last four days of October than we did in any other month in 2025.

[Marty Bent]

That's insane.

[Andy Schoonover]

Is that in four days?

[Marty Bent]

Is that purely because of open enrollment or just.

[Andy Schoonover]

Only of. We signed up 1500 customers in October, So we almost signed up as many customers in October as I had total when I was with you. And I think we had been two years into it, something like that. Only 90 of them were open enrollment people. Only 90 of them had 1:1 start dates, which tells me that the vast majority of those people, you know, learning about the company and jumping on as opposed to doing it just for open enrollment, I think that's an indicator of something good happening this year.

[Marty Bent]

Yeah, I mean, we've talked about it in years past about how bitcoin can help this model, but how has that thinking around bitcoin being used in this model evolved over the last year, specifically?

[Andy Schoonover]

Yeah, I mean, this year I've started to have conversations with hospital systems about accepting bitcoin. And I've got some very large hospital systems, ones that you would probably recognize the names of, who are at least interested in accepting bitcoin, which I think is an incredible step. And ultimately, what we want to do is we want to get enough bitcoiners within the community who are willing to receive and then pay in bitcoin, and then enough of these hospital systems who are willing to receive in bitcoin to create some bitcoin circularity within healthcare. The number just came out for total Healthcare spend this year and it's 5.6 trillion. And so, man, if we can just make a little dent in that 5.6 trillion of paying in bitcoin, that would be pretty special. In our database of bitcoin doctors, doctors who want to accept bitcoin is growing and the more people we have as a part of crowd health, the easier it is to get those doctors orange pilled. Because now we have the supply and the demand. Right? So it's a little bit of a chicken and an egg. But that's why I'm so passionate about getting more bitcoiners involved, because I need people who want to pay in bitcoin to be able to get people who want to receive in bitcoin. And so that's ultimately what we're working towards. So I think in the next 12 to 24 months, we're going to see a significant change in the way that we operate in terms of integrating bitcoin into what we do. Right now we're working with fold, you know, the fold guys, well, where you can not to get into too many, too much of the mechanics. But ultimately, you know, we don't ask you for the full amount every single month of, because if the community is doing really, really well, then we allow you to keep that money. You know, with the insurance system, if the company, if the community is doing really, really well, the insurance company makes the money. In our case, you make the money. But there's a kind of a margin between our maximum ask and what we actually ask. So for, for an individual, we ask 140 total max. But we only asked for 85 last month. So that remaining, what is that, 55 is automatically stacked in your fold account. So sent to your fold account, converted to bitcoin and stacked. And so it's almost like a way to, you know, stack sats by also playing your, your health care. You know, unfortunately we started in 2021 and so it was a great time to be stacking bitcoin in the latter half of 2021 when it kind of took that big dip. And so we've been stacking the entire way. So I think people have made probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars by stacking sats with crowd health as a result of just this little cool component of bitcoin. But we're trying to integrate bitcoin more into everything that we do. It's an important part of my life. 80% of my liquid assets are in bitcoin. So it's important to me to See it succeed. We do have a little bit of a bitcoin treasury. It's not massive. I'm trying to talk my board into growing that. But we're all in on the bitcoin side and in fact, all of our bitcoin members, you actually get a care advocate internally at crowd health who is also a bitcoiner and so you can chat bitcoin and health at the same time. But he knows how bitcoin operates and he was at the bitcoin conference in Vegas last year and he'll, he'll be, he'll be there again in April.

[Marty Bent]

The, the fold integration has been incredible because I have it turned on.

[Andy Schoonover]

Oh, you do?

[Marty Bent]

My crowd health account and like I'll open fold because I use the debit card just to check the, the rewards balance. I'll notice my other bitcoin balance is higher than it was before. I'm like, oh yeah, crowd health is just passing passively.

[Andy Schoonover]

Set it and forget it. Like you're just stacking bitcoin and you don't even think about it. It's a pretty cool, Pretty cool thing.

[Marty Bent]

Yeah. Do you think, I mean, we talked about it earlier. Like the government have any plans to change this?

[Andy Schoonover]

No.

[Marty Bent]

It seems like health insurance, the industry, as you said, could be in a death spiral. If all these healthy people are leaving the plans, what are these health insurance companies going to do? What are these hospital systems going to do? Is this going to be. I mean, I know people gave you flack for saying it last year when you were on, but I agree with you. I think we need to burn the system down and re architect it from the ground up. Do you think this spiral is a forcing function for more distributed health care that actually makes sense and is affordable?

[Andy Schoonover]

I mean, I think, I think we step back, right? Like why, why does the government not have any really good solutions? It's because the health care spends more on lobbying than any other industry. Between insurance, pharma, hospitals, they have a massive amount of lobbying in D.C. and so they, they, they want to continue the status quo because they're all making a crapload of money with the status quo. So I don't think things change there. You know, I, I really do believe that there's probably something here in, in terms of, you know, who owns, you know, Congress and, and the presidency in the next cycle. Because I would say that probably, you know, if, if this thing swings left, it's probably on a path to, you know, Medicare for all, you know, so we'll all have, you know, Government, you know, insurance, and, and that's a pretty scary thought from my perspective. So I sure as hell don't want, you know, the government to be in between me and my, my doctor. Like, that just doesn't sound fun. I don't want the government having access to all my medical records. That, that is kind of totally contrary to what, you know, bitcoiners believe and what I believe. But I think unless we come up with a really good solution, I think that that's going to be the only other option. I mean, look, I'm naive in some ways probably, but I'm hoping over the next couple of years we can really grow into something that says, hey, if we can build systems to enable people to pay their doctor directly for small or big bills, why don't we do it this way? Right? Like, I don't, I don't think big insurance has to be the way. So I'm, we're, we're pouring, you know, a crapload of money into getting our word in, the word out there so that we can build big enough. Because I think back in, you know, 2010 or whatever, when, you know, Tesla was making its, its run, I don't think anybody would have been able to say, oh, well, you know, the majority of cars being sold are, are, are going to be EVs. And now here we are, right? Like, not where it's not majority, but it's, it's getting there, you know. And so I think that a lot of these innovations come out of things that people come up with that they're like, there's no way in hell this is going to happen. I think our model is significantly better. And if our model was used by everyone, we could take that 5.6 trillion and cut it in half. I mean, it's, you know, probably a couple trillion dollars a year cut out of the system. And that would take a lot of food off the table for, for people. But I mean, it would also enable us to balance our budget and lower taxes and all those types of things too. So I truly believe our model can work, you know, at scale for just about anybody if given the opportunity. I don't know, I don't know what other options the government. I mean, I don't, I haven't heard any options out of the government that make as much sense as this.

[Marty Bent]

Well, you mentioned it would take food off the table of people, but that's in my mind, I imagine it would be the unproductive administrative layer that's been injected into health. Exactly. That really deserve the money at the end of the day.

[Andy Schoonover]

Well, dude, I, I, I don't, I haven't said this publicly, but I had my first death threat about a month ago. You know, we had this guy who was, you know, parking outside of my house.

[Marty Bent]

Holy shit.

[Andy Schoonover]

And yeah, and ultimately I got a note that says, I'm going to effing kill you all. And so, you know, ultimately the police got him, thank God. But you know, and, and he, all the, all the police would say is he has an ideological difference with the company. I don't know what that means. Like, they wouldn't give me any more information than that. But I mean, I think you start taking off people's, the food off of people's table, right? Or their inability to put food on the table and you piss off a lot of people and that's just gonna happen. So I think there's this great quote in Moneyball and I don't know if. Have you ever seen Moneyball?

[Marty Bent]

Yeah, I've read it too.

[Andy Schoonover]

Yeah, it's like the first guy through the door is always, or through the wall is always bloodied. You know, it's like everybody who's got their hand on the steering wheel, you know, the hand on the stick, you know, driving the is, is pissed when you upset the way that they do business, you know, the way you play the game, you know, and it's, people are upset, you know, I think, and more and more if we not only have 15,000, but what if we have 150,000? You know, I think more and more people are going to be upset about it. And so, you know, not to play the victim or whatever, but we had to like increase security in our house and, and all these kinds of things, you know, load the guns and you.

[Marty Bent]

Know, I'm sorry to hear that. It's terrifying.

[Andy Schoonover]

Take some protection. And, and look, I, I can't say with 100 certainty is around, you know, the health, the medical industrial complex being pissed. But there's a, there's enough evidence there that they're really ticked at what we're doing. And so we just got, got to deal with that. So what? My kids were freaked out. As you can imagine, my 7 and 9 year old, when the cops, you know, are all over your house, like that's a pretty traumatic, you know, experience. So it was, it was, it was quite a couple of days in the Schoonover household.

[Marty Bent]

Well, it is. Well, it's fascinating because it is. I mean, you mentioned Luigi Maggione. Obviously we don't condone that. Obviously we don't condone death threats against you either, but it looks like both sides are sort of fighting for control over, over this system or the options to access healthcare. And I witness this first firsthand. Not a death threat, but like people who, in the health care industry that like to chirp at you guys. When we collaborated on LinkedIn to post the AI video that we made and I saw, obviously I was getting tagged in the comments and there was a bunch of healthcare industry people trying to throw shade at crowd health. You can tell you guys are certainly threatening them.

[Andy Schoonover]

Yeah, like, tell me you're a part of the medical industrial complex without telling me you're a part of the medical industrial complex. Like, it's very, very clear that the people who are getting paid by the system think that crowd health is crap and a scam and all these types of things. And anybody who is impacted by the system, the me's and you's of the world are like, dude, this is awesome. And there is a very clear line between the two. You can tell, you know, and so, yeah, and I think the medical industrial complex elites and the academics and all these people are throwing shade and all the people who've been a member of crowd health have been like, this is amazing. Like, we have, you know, 500 reviews on Trustpilot and 492 of them are really, really good. And if you go and look at UnitedHealthcare, it's like the exact opposite. Right. So we must be doing, doing something well and keeping not only like loving people, our members well. And I hope that you and your, your wife and your little one felt, you know, love through your process, but doing it at a much, much lower cost than these, these health insurance plans. Yeah, Much, much lower cost.

[Marty Bent]

Much lower. You get a personal health advocate. By the way, the latest app update is incredible. The ux. Who's your advocate?

[Andy Schoonover]

Do you know who your advocate is?

[Marty Bent]

Name is escaping me off the top of my head, but I will check right now. It is Alexis.

[Andy Schoonover]

Oh, yeah.

[Marty Bent]

Oh, wait, no, that's for.

[Andy Schoonover]

No, no, no. You're a bitcoiner. You're a bitcoiner. So you have Naram, probably.

[Marty Bent]

Naram, yes. That's what it is.

[Andy Schoonover]

Yeah. Naram's awesome. He's freaking awesome, dude. Let me tell you a quick story about. So this little kid was in, in Colorado and he was hiking with his dad and he fell and he hit a rock and it sliced his cheek open. So he went to the er, he got it stitched up and you know, we called him, he's like, how's the little guy doing? You know, Naram did. And his mom was like, well, physically he's great, but emotionally, he is pretty. Like, he almost has, like, ptsd. He won't go and hike with his dad anymore because he's afraid he's going to get hurt. And so Naram sent him this little, like, hiking thing that you could put into your living room. So he, like, hikes around it and he climbs up it. And, you know, his mom called us back, like, in tears, being like, you wouldn't believe it. He's back hiking with his dad, you know, because Nara was able to. Was willing to buy him a $50 thing. And we actually have, you know, internally, we like, for care advocates to spend a certain amount of money every month on our members, like, doing special things like that. And so, you know, it's really kind of cool to see, you know, these fun stories come out of these, you know, just little, little things of. Of tokens of love, you know, from. From the care advocates. So all of our. All of our new moms now are getting, like, plush robes and, you know, socks and, you know, like, really good, like, chapstick, you know, because you get in these hospitals and they're so like.

[Marty Bent]

We'Ve had coffee delivered to the house from you guys.

[Andy Schoonover]

Yeah, we give you coffee. Like, what? Health insurance. United Health doesn't send you coffee. It's satoshi coffee, too. So shout out to Satoshi coffee. You know, who's a. It's a bitcoiner. So that's. That's a pretty cool, cool thing about our system. Yeah, you get your own care advocate. So every time you talk to. And the reason I did that is because when I was dealing with my issue, you know, six or seven years ago with my little one, I would call the insurance plan. I would sit on the. The phone for 20 minutes waiting to talk to somebody who was in India. And, you know, they wouldn't be able to help me. And so they would pump me to somebody else, and I would wait on the phone for 20 minutes there. Internally, you have the same care advocate. You get to talk to the same person every single time. So they get to know you. You get to know them. You schedule a call with them. That's how I want to do it. Schedule a call as opposed to sitting on the line with a, you know, a call center. It just works way, way better. And I think the customer service is a lot better, too, because I can hold them accountable. Like, I know that Marty and his Wife was having a baby and Naram is the care advocate. I can hold Naram accountable to treating you really, really well and loving you guys during that process. And so, you know, it's great to have that accountability. I think way better service as a result of that.

[Marty Bent]

Yeah, no, I can't. I mean, I can't rave about it enough. Naram. I mean, because that's the thing too, for pregnancies especially. Like you create a health event in the beginning and through the OBG appointments up until the birth. You guys are checking in like, how's everything going? Make sure you're uploading your bills. And it's just made it incredibly easy. And that's like the one thing too. It's hilarious. And I've told people this who are thinking about moving to crowd health. Asked me like, is there anything bad about it? I'm like, it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's hilarious. When you go into a hospital or a doctor's office or you have to eardos and throat doctor for the kids and you tell them you're paying in cash, they immediately think that you are poor and begin talking quietly and taking your debit card or whatever and treat you completely differently. Not only that, the price gets cut by at least 50% almost immediately half the time.

[Andy Schoonover]

Yeah, I mean that's, that's one of the things. I just don't think bitcoiners really give a about that. You know, it's like, it's kind of funny and it's almost like a badge of honor. Like I'm uninsured, you know, like I'm a cash pay patient. You know, it's like, I'm a bitcoiner, I want to pay in bitcoin. And people are looking like, what the hell are you talking about? What? You know. So I think, I think we have it as a badge of honor. And in fact, we have T shirts that say uninsured on the front of them, which means I'm not subservient to some health insurance company who's going to dictate what care I can and cannot get. Like, that's what I meant, the message. But I walked through DFW airport once with that shirt on and people looked at me like I was a total crazy person. And it probably wasn't too different like five or six years ago when you had a bitcoin T shirt on. And now it's so mainstream or somewhat mainstream that people may not flinch anymore. But back in the day when you had a bitcoin on, they thought you were not like a total crazy person. So I think we're on that same trajectory.

[Marty Bent]

No, I can't tell you the number.

[Andy Schoonover]

Of.

[Marty Bent]

Individuals working the front desk of either a doctor's office, ear, nose and throat hospital. And when we say they're like, their whole demeanor completely changes. When you say, can I get your insurance card? You're like, oh, we're not insured. It's like a funny social, like, signals that, like, we've been pushed into this system. It's like fish and water. They are not used to hearing that. And I think there's.

[Andy Schoonover]

Yeah.

[Marty Bent]

I mean, similar to bitcoin, it's like we're using Fiat and they're like, oh, I use bitcoin. That's what I save. And they're like, you're crazy. It's like, no. Well, actually, my life is much better for having saved in bitcoin. And similarly, being uninsured, my life hasn't the quality of my health care coverage or not coverage, but health care experience has increased significantly.

[Andy Schoonover]

We're fiat poor or bitcoin rich.

[Marty Bent]

That's why it's like buying a house now, too. It's trying to explain to mortgage brokers that don't worry, just because I don't have a lot of a lot of money in the bank account doesn't mean I don't have money at all. And trying to explain bitcoin to.

[Andy Schoonover]

No joke.

[Marty Bent]

Joke. No, it's a joke. It's funny, though.

[Andy Schoonover]

So bust out of the health insurance system. You guys have already busted out of the bitcoin system. Like, bust out of the health insurance system and give it a shot, man. That's my plea to bitcoiners is give it a shot. You can use TFTC. You get it for 99 bucks a month for the first three months. If you like it, awesome. If you don't, then go buy fiat health insurance. Like, go for it. That would be my plea. But I guarantee you that you're going to have a much better experience with us than you've had with health insurance. Just like bitcoin is a much better experience than it is than Fiat.

[Marty Bent]

Well, I tweeted it out, I think, a month or two ago. With the premiums going up as much as they are within the Affordable Care act, the opportunity cost is incredibly diminished. Like, what is the risk of switching to crowd health considering how expensive traditional healthcare is becoming? Health insurance is becoming. Like, you can go spend, if you got a family of five, 30 grand a year, 25 to 30 grand a year just to get coverage. And then an additional, yeah, 8 to 15, depending on what your deductible is. So anywhere from 25 to 35 grand a year, or you can pay $700 a month by 7 grand, if that, a little bit more than that.

[Andy Schoonover]

And.

[Marty Bent]

I know most people think like, oh, I'm not going to get the same quality of care as I would on health insurance. So it's like, no, you actually get better because you have the health advocate. You guys are actively looking for the best specialist. If you have a special event that, that dictates you need somebody who's focused on knees or whatever it may be or does a procedure very well, you're going to go find the best, you're going to get the best price. And I think the point being this year, specifically, the cost, the opportunity cost of switching is lower than it's ever been since I've been on crowd health.

[Andy Schoonover]

Well, I think, I think more importantly is you're taking, you know, between a doctor and the patient right now in health insurance, you have probably your employer, you have the government, you have the insurance company, all in between you and your doctor. So the doctor, I always kind of say, like you, you work for whoever pays you. The doctor is getting paid by health insurance. And so the health insurance plans dictate what they can and cannot do, what care they can and cannot provide. Right? If you take those middlemen out now, it's directly between you and your doctor. You have a direct relation to the doctor. Patient relationship is reestablished. And so now you and your doctor can decide what's best for your health. Right? And that, that's where I think we're getting the most upside in terms of better healthcare. You don't have all these intermediaries telling the doctor what you can do. It's like, now the doctor is a customer of mine, or I'm the, I'm the customer of the doctor, right? I'm paying him. So he now has to abide by what I need and take care of me as opposed to taking care of an insurance company. And we hear it all the time like, wow, my doctor actually changed his tune when he knew that, you know, I was paying him directly. He knew who the customer was now. And so that's, that's a pretty significant change.

[Marty Bent]

And you're beginning to see a number of doctors begin to realize this, too, and drop out. Like I had Mary Tally Bowden on earlier this year, and she just went dpc. Obviously, her story is pretty unique considering what the Houston hospital system did to her during COVID But her and many other DPC doctors I've spoken to basically said I've, I just didn't like the time I spent dealing with the insurers was taking away from my ability to treat patients. So I'm going DPC and cutting them out of the equation completely. And so that, that works in your favor too, because I think that's a trend that's going to continue to grow. You're gonna have a bunch of doctors opting out of it on the other side.

[Andy Schoonover]

And who do you think are those doctors? Better than normal or worse than normal? Probably better than normal. Right. Like if you can start building a practice where you only take cash, that means you have the demand. You don't rely upon the hospital to send you demand. You're not a part of that system. Those are the best doctors. The best doctors now are transitioning out of hospital systems, transitioning out of the insurance systems and are now doing cash only type of systems. So I think we will see over the next few years the best doctors in the world only accepting cash. I truly believe that because they're so fed up with the insurance system. And so our system is perfect for that. Right. If you want to go to see the best orthopedic surgeon in Austin and we send a lot of our people to the best orthopedic surgeon in Austin, which is where I'm at. You know, he, you know, and he only, he transitions to cash only. You're not going to, if you have a health insurance, you're not going to be able to go to him. You know, you're going to have to pay cash. But our members pay cash at the point of care because you, you, you have an issue. We fund it for you. You now have the money to then go and pay that doctor in cash. So we open up everybody to, to our, our members. And I think some of the best doctors in the world are going to be cash only doctors. And they're starting to see that, you know, Dr. Bowden is in itself probably one of the best ents in Houston. Only cash now. So I think those types of things are important.

[Marty Bent]

It really is. And it's funny, I know I think they'd be comfortable with me sharing this because I think they've talked about it publicly. But the doctors and dentists are some of the earliest movers in terms of small businesses adopting bitcoin for payment. I know this from Zaprite, Zaprite, Parker and John and Will are always Telling me, I'm like, who's your biggest sort of cohort, user archetype, what's that look like? And it's like doctors, they get it, they want hard money, particularly primary care doctors. I was paying my primary care doctor in Austin in bitcoin when I was there. So you have this culmination of sort of factors getting pushed out of the healthcare system, finding bitcoin, finding like minded bitcoiners who are using crowdhealth to pay. And you can begin to see the.

[Andy Schoonover]

Momentum building and we're starting to build a database of these folks. So if you want a bitcoin doctor, if you want a doctor who's great with a lot of red meat intake, okay, with a little bit higher cholesterol, my cholesterol's through the roof, but I don't really care. But most doctors are going to try to put you on statins and things like that. And so, I mean, which route would you prefer? A route in which you pay directly in cash, where the doctor patient relationship is what it is and you have unlimited options in terms of who you can go to. Because everybody taking insurance will take cash and all the people who take cash will only take cash. But if you go to the insurance, you're stuck within this very limited network of doctors that you can go to. And so if you want to go to someone doctor outside of the insurance network, you have to pay cash for it because they won't accept your insurance. And so I think that this cash pay, direct pay method of kind of healthcare financing or bitcoin pay is going to be the future. And so I think it's inevitable that that's going to take place. So as we were talking about earlier, even if everything does transition to a government based model, I still think there's going to be a place for crowd health because I think all these doctors are going to transition to being. Yeah, being cash pay only and are not going to accept that.

[Marty Bent]

One last thing I wanted to touch on before we wrap up here. It's a Friday afternoon, we should get back to our families. But a lot of people will say, well my, my job, they were putting up a portion of my health. Health insurance costs on a monthly basis. That is harder with crowd health. Are you guys working always to sort of teach people like, hey, maybe you go to your employer and you say instead of putting up a third of my health insurance cost per month, maybe we just cut health insurance and maybe increase my pay by that? Or like what? How are businesses that want or employees of Businesses that want to use the employee wants to use crowd health. Their employer has a health insurance plan, but they want to sort of reap benefits from their employer.

[Andy Schoonover]

Yeah, if you work for a small employer, you can go to them because typically the small employer is paying $25,000 for a, to have health insurance. A family with crowd health is about 7. So you can go back to them and be like, listen, instead of paying 25000 for my family, why don't you give, why don't you raise my salary by 10 or 12,000? You know, you save money. I'm gonna go get crowd health. I save money. We've had a bunch of members go and do that and it, and it works for small employers, it doesn't work for big employers. But I ultimately, I think that the government needs to bifurcate the, the employer health insurance, you know, kind of connection. And you know, as your video pointed out so beautifully that you put out about crowd health that TFTC produced, you know, let's like we keep people in their employment cages by shackling them to the company with their health insurance because a lot of people are like, oh, I can't leave my company because I can't lose my health insurance. Like that's just a way to trap you into that company. It's a sad state of affairs. Something like 3 or 4 million people would go something entrepreneurial if it wasn't for health insurance. Their, their employer based health insurance, which is just un American to me.

[Marty Bent]

Yeah, well, I think if you were to poll people that were thinking about leaving their job but didn't, that would be the number one or at least a top three sort of reason they didn't leave is I need the health insurance.

[Andy Schoonover]

Absolutely. So go ask your employer. Like there, there's a differential there. Go ask your employer if they can just pay you more and, and you can opt out of the of health insurance. A lot of people are doing it right now. So this is a conversation to be had. Worse is no. You know, and if they say no, that's fine, but they might say yes because it's, it's beneficial for both parties.

[Marty Bent]

Yeah, it really is. No, I, I remember right before I joined crowd health as a member, it was when I left Great American Mining, which is paying my health insurance. Really focus on TFTC in 1031 and was in that lull period when I was on Cobra, I was paying like $1,800 a month. I was like, this is. We wanted to keep the health insurance. We did it for like two months. I was like, all right, we're going crowd health. That was the thing that pushed me over the edge. But that was the scariest thing about going out and doing, focusing on this. As a solo entrepreneur at the time, it's like we have no health insurance, had just had a one year old child at the time, and it was, didn't make us think like twice and three times about, all right, do we really want to do this? Went to stomach the cost of COBRA and it was just like, okay, there's a better option. What's. What, what do we have to learn?

[Andy Schoonover]

We appreciate you joining, man. It's. You've been incredibly, we were incredibly grateful for, for all that you've, you've done for us. And you know, look, if, if anybody wants to join, use TFTC, the code. You get 99 bucks for the first three, three months and it's worth a try. And then, you know, anybody out there who's a crowd health member, thank you. Thank you for being members. You know, tell your friends about crowd health and if you, they use your code, we'll, we'll pay you 250 bucks as a, as a referral fee. And we'll pay it in Bitcoin too. We'll pay you in bitcoin. I would way prefer to be paying our members to help us grow the company than Google and Facebook and all these other companies. Right. Like, that's my, that's kind of my rationale behind doing that. And we have dozens of members who actually get more from us per month in referral fees than they actually pay for their healthcare. So they're actually making money off of crowd health, which is, which is kind of awesome. Like, you have healthcare and you're making money off it. It's a pretty cool thing. So thank you all seriously for the support. And we're fired up about 2026. It's gonna be an awesome year.

[Marty Bent]

You cut out there for a little bit. But I think, I think I would concur. It's a beautiful thing. The feeling is mutual. You know, me and we're working out the same office together for three, almost four years here at tftc, we do not. We're very stingy with our advertising partners and we like to make sure that we actually use the products. And I can say I'm more than happy to be partners with you in the professional sense on the sponsorship level, because I am a happy customer. And I not only feel safe recommending crowdhealth to the audience that is listening to this, but I feel compelled to push it because like you said, if you get Bitcoin, you understand that the money's broken and the traditional system, the way it's controlling money, is corrupt. You begin to see that in other things. And I think with health insurance and the healthcare system, it has become abundantly clear to me. And this is the Bitcoin equivalent of healthcare and the health healthcare system in my mind. So it's been a great partnership.

[Andy Schoonover]

Appreciate it.

[Marty Bent]

It's been a great conversation. And I'll be back down in Austin at some point in the next couple months. We'll have to catch up.

[Andy Schoonover]

I would love that. Thanks for having me, brother.

[Marty Bent]

All right, Peace of love, freaks. Thank you for listening to this episode of tftc. If you've made it this far, I imagine you got some value out of the episode. If so, please share it far and wide with your friends and family. We're looking to get the word out there. Also, wherever you're listening, whether that's YouTube, Apple, Spotify, make sure you like and subscribe to the show. And if you can, leave a rating on the podcasting platforms, that goes a long way. Last but not least, if you want to get these episodes a day early and ad free, make sure you download the Fountain podcasting app. You can go to Fountain FM to find that $5 a month get you every episode a day early ad free helps. The show gives you incredible value, so please consider subscribing via Fountain as well. Thank you for your time and until next time.