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Foreign. It's my pleasure to welcome you here to the Clark Howard Show. You know, our mission is to serve you with advice and information that empowers you so you make better financial decisions in your life. Okay, who doesn't know health care costs are out of control? I can't solve the country's health care problem. I've got some ideas what I would do if I were your emperor, but I'm not your emperor. So we got to deal with what we've got. And that is what you can do about your own health care spending. That's really important. And later, I got a homework assignment for you because a lot of stores are closing their doors and there's some things I want you thinking about. So health care. One in every six dollars spent in our economy going to health care. This is so much more than any other country. I mean, it's just off the charts. And our spending on health care has gone up. Okay, listen to this stat. It's gone up over 1300% over two generations now. That's three times faster than inflation. We've been through a couple of really bad cycles of inflation. And try to picture this number. Two years ago, we spent almost $5 trillion collectively on health care. Bonkers, bonkers, bonkers. You know, this past year was higher. It'll be higher again this year. So that's collectively, how's it affecting you? Well, if you are paying for your own insurance, the premiums for that insurance don't go up by some magic genie amount because a greedy insurance company wants to rip you off. Even though there are issues with insurance companies, it's all about the cost pressures with health insurance. That's why so many people have dropped health insurance here in 26, because at the end of a lot of the subsidies that were available for individuals and families buying health coverage, they can't afford the premiums. But the good news is most of us do have health coverage, either through an employer or we have it from the government. About half of all health care in the country is paid for by government, by the way, of all different levels. But even with that insurance coverage of whatever kind, there's a lot of out of pocket and the out of pocket and the deductibles and all that have gotten so much higher. So this is where you come into the picture, because the economic theory of you and me having much higher deductibles and much bigger co pays for health coverage is it would make it consumer driven health care. But the health care industry is fighting you and me. Tooth and nail on having to disclose prices. And so it's a black box that when it opens up is often going to be pretty ugly. Because health care is the only thing we do in our daily lives where we find out after the service has been rendered what it's going to cost. So this is where the rubber meets the road. This is your and my part. When you're going to have to have a doctor says, well I think you should have a test for this thing or you should have this other thing or whatever. That's the point at which you ask, I'm sorry, I don't have a lot of resources, I probably can't afford it. What's it gonna cost? That's where the exploration and negotiation comes, not after the fact, although you can from a weak position negotiate bills after the fact. It's upfront. I mean, think about the examples of when a doctor wants you to have imaging done that you'll pay from 8 to 20 times the cost at a hospital owned imaging facility than if you go free market for it. Isn't it weird? Think about this. Most people with insurance pay less paying cash for outside imaging, like an MRI or something like that. And an independent where you pay cash, then what your share is with insurance at a hospital owned facility. Just process that for a second. That a hospital may charge $5,000 with your copay being who knows what. When you go free market it might be 200. Yeah, and so much of medicine is like that. You know, I've talked your ears off about all the money you save on prescription drugs by buying them the right ways. Same thing is involved with medical. And having that conversation up front where you say, I don't know, I can afford this. Medicine needs to adapt. If we're going to be in free market where so much of it comes out of your in my pocket, it needs to adapt to where we know up front what something's going to be. Now obviously if you're riding in an ambulance and you're not conscious, that's not when you're going to be able to negotiate the price of something. But very seldom, even when something is urgent, it's not an emergency. And that's where you use the time to find out where you can get the best deal or what the price is going to be or negotiate that price first for something that you're going to get. And if you ever want me to fix health care, I'm willing to fail like everybody else who's tried to fix health care. No, but I've Got some very, very strong recipes that would involve overcoming all the dirty money that flows to politicians that keeps the rotten system we have in place right now with all the lobbying money flying around everywhere. That would be the first thing you'd have to fix if you were emperor.