Andy Schoonover, CEO of CrowdHealth, details how his platform bypasses insurance intermediaries to negotiate 60% price reductions on medical bills, addressing the $8,000 ear tube denial that sparked his venture. He critiques the Affordable Care Act's profit caps and high deductibles, noting 250,000 bankruptcies last year from medical debt despite coverage. By shifting to a direct-pay model with potential Bitcoin integration, CrowdHealth offers a libertarian alternative to single-payer mandates, proving market mechanisms can outperform regulated systems where administrators often lack cost transparency. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Hidden Medical Cost Traps00:14:51
Fill her up.
You're listening to the Gash Digital Network.
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You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
Here's your host, James Smith.
Hey, what's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
Thank you for joining us.
I'm excited for this show.
We're going to take a little bit of a break from obsessing over the news of the day because that's, well, I mean, there's only so much I can say about what's been going on.
So for today's episode, we're going to do something a little bit different.
We have a very special guest, Andy Schoonover, who is the CEO and founder of CrowdHealth, which is one of the sponsors of this show, a very interesting company.
So we're going to talk a bit about that, a bit about the healthcare system in America and maybe some other stuff too.
How are you, Andy?
Thanks for coming on.
Doing well.
Thanks for having me.
Absolutely.
So healthcare is an issue that not just libertarians care about in this country, but it's really something that the American people care about.
And you know, this is true because even though it's not in the news every day, once it's presidential election season time, it's all anyone wants to talk about.
It's all the candidates are talking about healthcare because that's an issue that the American people actually really care about.
This actually affects people.
And it seems like no matter how many different, you know, big programs there's been in the healthcare market or the health insurance market, there's always still some politician promising he's going to fix this because Americans know the system is so screwed up.
So I guess I want to ask you what, I guess first let me ask you like why you started CrowdHealth and then we can get into more about like what the company is.
Yeah, sure.
So I was running a healthcare company a few years back and most of us get our health insurance to our employer.
So I was doing that.
I sold my company and as such lost health insurance.
And so I thought the only place to go, I was pretty ignorant at the time is to go to healthcare.gov.
So I went over to healthcare.gov where 15 or 20 million Americans get their health insurance.
And I got something for me, my wife and my two girls.
And it was $1,200 a month.
And I, you know, it worked until I had to use it.
My little one, it was one at the time was having a recurring ear infection.
So it went to the doctor.
She's got a perforated eardrum.
You need to get tubes in her ears.
So if you're a parent, this happens to a lot of us.
We go to the local hospital, got tubes and rares.
Literally, Dave, it was a 15-minute procedure and it was $8,000 for 15 minutes.
I was like, are you shitting me?
Like $8,000 for 15 minutes?
Like, wouldn't we all love that hourly rate?
Right.
And, and, uh, and so I was like, all right, well, I have health insurance.
That's the whole point of health insurance, right?
They, they, they pay for the big ones.
Well, my health insurance plan sent me something in the snail mail, interestingly, that says it was medically unnecessary.
We're not going to pay for it.
And so I was like, hold on a second.
My, my daughter has a perforated eardrum.
Basically, it means she has a hole in her eardrum because there's the fluid builds up and pops her eardrum and you won't pay for it because it was medically unnecessary.
So I was like, man, I was pissed, as you can probably imagine, you know, especially when it's our kids.
You know, so I called him.
I was like, all right, if you're not going to pay my bills, I'm not paying your bills.
I quit.
So I quit healthcare.gov.
It was the best thing I've ever done.
I've been uninsured ever since.
And I've been building tools to say, hey, how can we do this outside of insurance?
How can we pay for our health bills outside of insurance?
And so we built some tools to do that, the culmination of which is, was crowd health.
So basically what I'm doing is I'm providing tools to people to allow them to ditch their health insurance plan and to pay for health insurance or their healthcare expenses on their own.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's, you know, it's just reminding me, I'll share a quick story of my own because a very similar thing.
Like I was a guy who I didn't really, you know, I wasn't even.
I think I didn't have health insurance for almost my entire 20s.
I was just a young comic and I didn't have any health problems and I didn't have an employer.
So I was just like, I don't know, I'm just not going to do it.
And whatever, I'll pay the fine or whatever it was when Obamacare first came out.
And that was, so I was, you know, even the health insurance debate was always kind of an abstraction to me.
Like it wasn't something that actually affected my life until I got married, my wife got pregnant.
And then you're like, oh, I have a health event, you know, so I better have some insurance coming up.
So, you know, I same thing went through the exchange.
And I do remember this one time.
It was something similar to that.
I was in New York City.
So I think the premiums were even a little bit higher.
You know, it was like, I think it was like $1,600 a month that I was paying for my wife and my daughter.
And my wife is, my daughter must have been like in her first two months of life.
So in the middle of that crazy, like sleep depraved time when you're just like kind of floating around all the time because you have a baby that wakes up every hour.
And my wife was cooking and burned her hand, burned her hand pretty bad in the kitchen.
So I had to take her to the emergency room.
And I took her to the emergency room to fix a burn on her hand.
And I remember this aside from the birth, this was like the first time I was like, oh, well, we're using our health insurance.
You know, I guess we have, this is why we have it.
And they charged me just shy, I believe it was $1,900 for go to literally just the doctor put some ointment on her burn, put some bandages on it, and I think gave her a Percocet or something like that.
And was like $1,900.
And I had the exact same experience, like, but I have insurance.
And they go, oh, it would have been like five grand if you didn't have insurance.
So aren't you, aren't you grateful that you have to do it?
That's expensive neosporin probably.
Literally, I mean, it was, it was like nothing.
It was like, you know, we were there for hours, but that was just waiting to see a doctor.
And then finally we saw the doctor.
He literally gave, I mean, it was like nothing, a bandage, some cream and one pill, not even like a prescription.
Just like, here's one pill.
And it's, and you realize like what a racket this, this whole system is.
And it's something that it, it, number one, it's something that really people suffer through.
And then the other thing I would say, just from the libertarian perspective, and this is why I think what you're doing with the company is very valuable, is that if we don't find alternatives to work outside the system as you're doing with crowd health, then it really does open the door for a Bernie Sanders type to come in and just say, well, hey, guess what?
I can tell you no premiums, no deductibles, no nothing if we just embrace a single payer system and have socialized health care.
So and you have to, even as a libertarian, you have to admit, I understand why that message is appealing to people.
I understand.
I understand why there's some guy out there who's like, you're telling me I pay 20 grand a year for health care and I'm still hit with deductibles and co-pays and all of this.
I mean, this is like, this is insane.
So you understand where it's appealing.
All right.
Oh, I get it.
I get it.
And look, in this pandemic, right?
And one of the things of the pandemic, they basically what they've done, that the government has done through the American Carers Act, whatever that big act was, is they expanded Medicaid by 20 or 30 million people by subsidizing healthcare.gov.
They're not saying it's a Medicaid expansion, but it is.
And so, you know, this comes, this is, I guarantee it, mark my words, this is going to come up in October, September, October.
They're going to want to expand that again.
And that's going to be the message there is going to be like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you're taking money away from poor people.
They had free health insurance.
That's 20 million Americans.
Like that's enough to move the needle on these midterms.
So we'll hear about this again in probably September, October is my guess.
Yeah, and that's that's kind of the game that's always played is they expand these programs.
You know, they call it the Affordable Care Act or whatever, but they expand these programs.
And then the next day, if you go, hey, I think we got to roll that back, they go, you're robbing people of their right.
Yeah, it's ridiculous.
Healthcare.
So, I mean, I remember literally in the year like 2011 when Republicans would talk about repealing Obamacare and they'd be like, well, you're robbing them of their right to, you know, healthcare.
And you're like, but this just passed last year.
But as soon as the government gives you something, it's like, oh man, it is very, very hard to roll that back.
Everybody likes free stuff.
And like you said, you can't like blame them for that, right?
Like we have this culture in which we live in is where you're not willing to take the short-term pain for the long-term gain.
And, you know, we need probably some short-term pains, which probably means we have to pay a little bit more now to make something work over the long term.
And so, you know, I think that's the challenge with just the way that our democracy operates.
And so that, you know, what we're trying to do on crowd is really give people a true alternative that's actually less expensive than your healthcare.gov plans, you know, especially if you take a look at the deductibles.
If you go to healthcare.gov, the deductibles are two, three, four thousand dollars.
If you're an individual, it's seven, eight, nine, ten thousand dollars if you're a family.
And so we're really trying to provide people with an alternative because we had 250,000 people last year go bankrupt because of healthcare bills, even though they had insurance.
So these are 250,000 people with health insurance are going bankrupt because of medical debt.
I mean, you don't have health insurance basically if you don't have enough money in the bank to pay for the deductible.
And so people are getting all these plans and they're having a big health event like I had.
And they're like, I mean, I've been fortunate, I can pay an $8,000 bill, but most, what, 95% of Americans can't pay that bill.
So they're masking these rising premiums by just increasing the deductibles.
And, you know, it's a huge problem.
Yeah.
And that number is probably actually doesn't reflect how bad the situation is because it's not counting all of the people who went near bankruptcy.
You know what I mean?
How many of those people like maybe weren't wouldn't technically fall into that number, but threw it on the credit card and are now paying like a crazy high interest rate on that debt.
Probably 40 or 50% of Americans have medical debt on their credit cards.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm like, holy crap.
Right.
And of course, that's, that's a pretty nice little racket there for the credit card companies as well, right?
Like they get, I mean, they're just collecting interest off of these huge debts.
And again, there's like these things that they kind of, you know, spiral out from there.
And, you know, like how many of those people now can't start the business they wanted to start?
How many of those people now can't because they have this debt hanging over them?
I mean, yeah, it's truly horrible.
So people have perhaps heard, because of course, CrowdHealth is an advertiser on the show.
So they may have heard me kind of describe what it is in one or two minutes.
But since we have a little bit more time here, why don't you like explain what is crowdhealth?
Yeah.
So, you know, typically, really quick, what is insurance, right?
Typically, the way that insurance works is, right, you're giving money to an insurance company.
They're sticking it in this risk pool that, and then they may or may not pay for your healthcare bill.
If you go on a healthcare.gov, one out of six healthcare bills are denied.
I'm the one out of the six and it was $8,000.
If you're in Tennessee, it's one out of three.
If you're in Texas, where I am, it's one out of five.
So, you know, they may or might not pay your bills.
And so what we do is say, hey, instead of giving your money to an insurance company, why don't you put your money into a bank account?
It's an account.
It's owned by you.
You put money into that every single month.
It's about $175 a month if you're between the ages of six and 54.
So the majority of your audience, 175 bucks a month.
We take 25 bucks as an admin fee.
150 bucks goes into your account and you can use that to pay for medical bills or medical bills of the community.
So if the my family has an $8,000 ear tube bill, what we'll do is we'll actually go and negotiate that with the hospital.
And we'll get that down to about $3,000, $3,000 or $4,000.
That's how much fluff is in the system or inefficiency is in the system because these health plans are not getting you good rates.
They say they're, oh, we're big and we've got volume and we're getting you good rates.
We can talk about why that's not the case, but we can negotiate down.
We're averaging about 60% negotiations with healthcare providers.
So we're going to, sorry, I don't mean to break up your momentum there, but that's a really important point.
I just very quickly, I just want to tell one other story and then I want to let you let you finish talking about crowd health.
But so what I remember this is literally just came to my mind, but I remember when my wife first got pregnant, she left her job that she was at.
And so she lost that health insurance.
And that's when we went and got a plan through the marketplace.
And I remember there was one doctor's appointment where there was a lapse and they did blood work and they did blood work for her.
And so, you know, like we owed like whatever, a couple hundred bucks for the doctor's visit, but then we owed like a couple thousand bucks for the blood work.
And I remember my wife called and just said, told them, just called and told them she didn't have insurance and they knocked 70% of the bill off, which was this very weird moment where like, at first, you're kind of like happy and then you're pissed off.
You know what I mean?
Like you're first like, oh, great, 70% off.
And then after that, you're like, wait, are you fucking kidding me?
You're telling me you can just do that with them.
However, if you have insurance and you get some crazy huge bill because your insurance doesn't cover it, then they won't knock it off, which is like the weirdest part of the freaking system.
So just that alone exploiting that kind of opening there, a lot of times, you know, just a regular person can negotiate with them, let alone if you have like specialists and this is what they do.
You can really do that and reduce the costs drastically, which is really something that I think most people are completely unaware of.
Well, you know, the average cost of a colonoscopy across the country is five grand.
We're getting them at crowd health for about 1200 bucks, right?
I mean, because, and here's the reason why.
So if you think about if you're a doctor, right?
We're paying you on the day of the procedure as opposed to 60 or 90 days.
You don't have to negotiate with the insurance company, which, you know, 30% of the doctor's time is spent negotiating with insurance companies.
And so, and they hate that, right?
Like they just want to take care of people.
It's like we take care of, we rip all that stuff out.
And we say, no, no, we're going to pay you in cash.
And they're like, oh, praise God.
Are you going to pay us in cash?
Like, we love that.
Market Forces in Healthcare00:07:38
Right.
And by the way, the software these doctors use takes 8% cut off the top for their fee, right?
Versus a Visa or a MasterCard takes 2%, right?
Or something like that.
So, you know, there's just so much inefficiency in that market that we're able to strip out 50 or 60% of it by just negotiating.
Right.
And then once you negotiate, you have a group of people.
So I think, Dave, you know, about, I think 250, 300 people of your listeners are actually in crowd health.
And I know that because they've used part of the problem, POTP, as their, as their code, you know, we reach out to those folks and we say, hey, the schoonovers have a $3,000 tube problem.
The schoonovers are going to pay the first 500 and then we're going to crowdfund the remaining 2,500 from the group.
Right.
And so it's basically, you know, back to the future a little bit, right?
Because this is how we used to do it for thousands of years is like, if somebody in your community has a problem, we all gather around them and help them out.
Right.
And so we crowdfund basically all of your healthcare expenses.
And so far, you know, over the last year, we've been able to crowdfund those 100% of those on average, 2.3 days.
And, you know, we've really been able to do this.
And this is from an $80 visit to $147,000 visit.
Right.
So small bills and big bills, we've been able to do this really, really effectively.
And you're getting your healthcare by reducing healthcare expenses by almost 50%.
And is there a different strategy for the really big bills?
I mean, that's the thing that I'd imagine because that's one of the concerns I'm sure people have.
I'm sure they have something.
You know, I had my boy had surgery and was in the NICU for weeks after his birth.
I mean, the bill was insane.
Now, by the way, insurance don't cover all of it, but man, I mean, the bill was like $17,000, probably.
Yes, it was, it was almost more than that.
It was right high, high figures.
You know, I mean, it was like, so there, so something like that happens.
How would CrowdHealth deal with it?
Yeah.
So, so here's the great part about this.
We're bringing market forces into healthcare, which are non-existent right now.
Right.
Right.
So I, I say that we got more negotiating power as an individual than United Healthcare does.
And here's the interesting why that is.
So I live in Austin.
There is two health systems in Austin.
So if United Healthcare were to come into Austin and say, hey, I want to negotiate your prices down, they're negotiating against a duopoly, right?
If United loses one of those health systems, they're screwed in Austin because everybody in Austin wants access to both of those health systems, right?
So they have no negotiating power, even though you're the seventh largest company in the entire planet.
For me, if you have, or for you, for example, you have a half a million dollar bill, they have a decision to make, right?
They can either negotiate with you or they can put you into bankruptcy.
And 100 times out of 100, they will negotiate with you.
So we're going to negotiate that bill from $500,000, probably down to about $200,000.
And the other thing is they'll stretch it out over a period of time.
So it'll be $10,000 a month for 20 months, right?
And let's just say you've got a community of 5,000 people.
That's two bucks per person for a year and a half, right?
As opposed to a half a million dollars in one month.
And so it's just modern day finance too, right?
Like, and that's in that, and those hospitals will finance those things for 0% interest.
That is true.
And so that's way easier for the community to absorb than a big half a million or a million dollar bill.
But even today, if we had a half a million dollar bill and the hospital says, you have to pay me now, there's actual federal code that says if you go in and somebody provides you with a service and they don't give you a price, then they have to negotiate with you a reasonable price.
And that reasonable price is based upon how much it costs them to provide the service.
And so the hospital then says, oh, crap, like I have to figure out how much this actually costs me to provide this service.
And they have no idea.
Like there's a Wall Street Journal back in, I think it was last March that, you know, they asked a hospital administrator, how much does it cost to do a knee replacement?
And they're like, oh, I think it's probably like $40,000.
And it was like $8,000, right?
It was like, wasn't even close.
Like they have no idea how much these things are costing them.
So they have to negotiate.
I've talked to doctors.
They don't like just regular doctors with private practices.
They don't even know what insurance they take.
They're so removed.
They're so removed from the prices, the payment option.
Like it's, there's, you'd be hard pressed to find any other industry where there's anything like this, where like the person who owns the business has absolutely no idea how you can pay them and what you pay them.
It's really insane.
So for all your libertarian, you know, folks who are listening who are up on economics, and I think probably more economically educated than most, that makes no damn sense, right?
The business owner has no idea how much it costs them, nor how much they're getting in revenue for the proceed, the services they're providing.
Name one other industry in the country that that's the case.
You can't, right?
And so we're forcing people to now know how much they're getting and how much it's costing them.
And so we're, again, we're adding market forces to healthcare, which I think is the only legitimate way to truly reduce our healthcare costs.
So that's the theory.
And like I said, it's been working out really, really well.
We're negotiating bills down.
We're getting, we have, Dave, this is a really cool story, real quick.
There was not a political statement here, but there's a guy that we have in Wisconsin that three weeks after he got his COVID vaccine came down with heart problems.
So he went to his local hospital $86,000 to repair his heart, right?
So we found a hospital in Chicago that was willing to do the exact same procedure, actually a better surgeon for $46,000.
So, and then we found a guy in Oklahoma City, again, a really good surgeon who's willing to do it for $25,000.
So you're literally the difference between a thousand miles between Wisconsin and Oklahoma is greater than $50,000, $60,000.
I mean, it's crazy.
So what are we doing?
This person, we're actually paying them to jump on a first-class tickets from Wisconsin to Oklahoma.
We're putting them up at a suite at the nicest hotel in Oklahoma City.
They're getting their thing, their procedure done.
They're staying there for four days.
We're paying them to do that.
And we're still saving $50,000.
Like, that's how screwed up our healthcare system is.
Yeah, really.
It's a beautiful story, though.
I mean, it's a, you know, it's the screwed up system in the backdrop, but then there's a really beautiful thing that you guys were able to do there.
Yeah.
Like, I think the community aspect of it is really the most beautiful part of this company.
I mean, the introducing market forces to healthcare is awesome, but there's just something really cool about that, this kind of idea of like people getting together, kind of recognizing this system is so screwed up.
We've found something, we've found an alternative that's operating outside of this whole craziness, and we're all kind of taking care of each other.
There's something about that that I just find really attractive.
Okay, let me ask you, because so what is, because I know that you're kind of operating, I suppose not in, but in some ways near one of the most heavily regulated, you know, industries in the world.
And so what are the kind of like burdens on you guys?
Are there things that you can't do?
The Insurance Payment Reality00:15:37
Like that you can't, so like even if you um if you always do end up meeting people's bills, you probably can't guarantee it.
Is that correct?
Yeah, we can't guarantee that your bills are going to get paid.
Yeah.
Because that would I can give you statistics.
I can give you statistics.
It's like, hey, here's how many bills we got and here's how many we paid and here's how quickly we got them paid, but I can't guarantee it.
And so that's that, that's the number one hangup for folks with our model is like you can't guarantee it.
And then I also give I give them that stat, which I gave you, you know, 10 minutes ago, which is, but the health insurance plans don't, they guarantee it, but they don't actually do it, right?
Which is actually worse.
I don't guarantee it, but I'm actually getting the bills paid.
They're guaranteeing it, but they're not actually paying the bills.
And that's, that's, that is the, the, the reason why I started the company because I'm like so pissed that a company can get away with saying, yeah, we're going to pay your bills, but then declining one out of three or one out of five or one out of six, wherever you live.
Right.
I was like, man, that's, that's BS.
I mean, that's right, right.
Is there any better example of like just government corruption than that?
That they will literally say, you're not allowed to guarantee it, or we'll shut down your company.
Like you, you won't be able to operate your company if you guarantee it, but we'll allow all these other companies to guarantee it and then not pay it.
Exactly.
That's that's government for you, like right there in a nutshell.
Yeah, I mean, I've talked to some Department of Insurance commissioners and they're like, look, we don't have any problem with what you're doing.
We have problems with what, you know, they call the BUCAs, the Blue Cross, United, Cigmas, Aetnas of the world are doing, which are saying they're going to pay your bills, but they don't, or they send you a surprise bill afterwards.
Like I always kind of joke, but the two things that I hate seeing in the mail are my property taxes.
I live in Texas.
They're terrible.
and bills from healthcare health insurance providers.
These are like, I have no freaking clue what this is going to say.
This could say I owe $2 or $20,000.
I'm not sure.
And in both cases, you're completely at the mercy of their whims because it's kind of like, well, what are you going to do?
Not pay your taxes?
Okay, they'll come ruin you.
And then what are you going to do?
If you have, you know, like in your example, you got a kid who's got, you know, an ear infection or whatever.
It's like, what are you going to do?
Not fix it?
Are you going to not pay?
So you just, you're like, you, you basically are in this situation.
You have no option.
Yeah, exactly.
It's frustrating.
But, you know, it's really cool companies come out of like really frustrating, you know, examples and experiences, right?
Like, so there's a silver lining on this.
And, and, you know, so, so far, our customers are just, you know, ecstatic about, you know, what, what service they're providing.
I mean, these people getting going flying to Oklahoma City, you're like, really?
You're, you're giving us first class tickets to Oklahoma?
I'm like, yeah, like they're excited about going to Oklahoma first class.
You know, it's like, yeah, you're not going to hear about, you're not going to hear about Aetna doing that for anybody.
Believe me, that's with all the stories of people's experiences with health insurance, you're not going to hear that one.
Okay, so I guess another thing that I'd imagine would be a concern for a lot of people would be like, are they going to be able to see the doctor that they want to see?
That's always like a big sticking point for people with healthcare.
People, you know, have relationships with their doctors and they're like, I don't want to not be able to see my, you know, whatever, my family doctor who my whole family has been seeing.
Yeah.
Unlike Obama, who's like, you can, you won't lose your doctor.
I promise you, you won't lose your doctor.
You can go to whatever doctor you want.
We don't really, we don't really care what doctor you go to.
You know, if you want to, if for the big procedures, we just ask you to call us so we can give you another option, right?
Because if you're going to go to a doctor that his knee replacement is $45,000 and we can go to a better doctor that's $25,000, we just like, hey, will you do this?
And then you have a choice.
And oftentimes we will incentivize people to go do that too, to go to the lower cost doc.
So, but we have no way mandate, you know, what doctor you can or cannot go to.
Okay.
Yeah, that's great.
Again, you can, it's so funny that this system, you can promise people that they can go to whatever doctor they can, but then you could just be lying about that.
Or if you like your plan, you could keep your plan was the other thing, which was also a big lie.
Okay.
So what else?
You tell me, like, what else do you think are usually the things that like, besides the ones that I've mentioned, like the concerns that people have or the hangups that they have about kind of switching to this other model than what they're used to with the health insurance model?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's, you know, our number one objection is, well, that, you know, the health plans will pay, right?
It's almost like the devil you know versus the devil you don't.
Right.
And I think people really have to get around the fact that, you know, health insurance plans, I feel like are screwing us as consumers.
And so do you want to take, you know, the opportunity to do something that really changes the way that we do healthcare?
And that's why, you know, as I advertise on your podcast, you said that before.
I mean, the folks that are really engaging in this are the libertarian folks who are saying, I'm tired of somebody else being in between me and my doctor.
Right.
And if you go to healthcare.gov, I'm going to be a little bit controversial here, but I'm going to use your words as you are a part of the problem because you are supporting a healthcare system in which the government is encroaching upon owning your healthcare, which should be between you and your doc.
And that's where we're kind of reading out to people.
It's like, like ditch healthcare.gov and come and give us a shot.
And we've paid 100% of the health bills thus far for the last year.
And I said some of them are big, 150 grand.
So give us a shot and don't be a part of the problem.
Really engage in something that is a significant change from what you've experienced with some of these other plans.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that.
And I don't think it's unreasonable to be like, well, look, I mean, it's almost certainly not going to be a political solution that solves this health care mess.
And I mean, look, I would love to believe that like libertarians, you know, I just get on Rogan enough times and convince enough millions of people to be libertarians.
And then we elect all great libertarians and they repeal Obamacare and they roll back Medicare and Medicaid and all these stupid regulations.
And then the healthcare system is a free market and companies like yours can guarantee things if they want to and can do other things and they don't have to worry about that.
But the odds of that happening, like this is an industry that is backed by big money, big money in pharmaceutical companies, big money in health insurance companies.
It's going to be very hard to roll all that back politically.
Two biggest lobbyists are pharma and insurance, two biggest, right?
It's hundreds of millions of dollars.
I mean, it's a lot of money going into lobbying.
So it is much more likely that creative companies like this are going to be what could actually kind of free up this system.
And if enough people were to get on board with this type of model, it could really do something to bring down healthcare costs and really get people.
I don't know what the proper term is to say, taken care of.
I don't want to say covered or insured because that's technically not right, but get them something that they need so they don't have to worry about, you know what I mean?
Like, how am I going to pay these bills?
And on top of that, I would also just mention that, look, I mean, you guys all listening to the show, I mean, you saw it during this pandemic over the last couple of years.
Once the vaccines were introduced, how quick people were to demonize the unvaccinated and to even very powerful people musing about whether or not we should even take care of the unvaccinated.
And perhaps we should say insurance companies should just not cover the bill or hospitals should turn people away or like any of this stuff.
So, I mean, the more government control, this is really a dangerous prospect.
It's not just that they destroy the industry and that they drive all these costs up.
It's also can really lead to once government is in control of such an intimate part of your life, who knows how bad they can get.
So if you know that this is the best shot at a solution to this problem, and if you know how kind of scary the problem is, I don't think you're unreasonable to say like, hey, come be part of this solution rather than going in and just propping up this status, you know, industry.
The alternative needs scale.
And this is not just me wanting to grow my company.
I mean, I sold a company before, made a bunch of money.
This is mission for me.
This is truly, I'm trying to impact the way that healthcare is being paid for.
And again, I see the stat of 250,000 people going bankrupt and I see the stat of all these credit card debt.
And it's like, this is a massive tax on the middle class and probably the biggest tax on the middle class, even more than you're paying to the federal government, right?
And so, you know, if we can really figure out a way to reduce that by, you know, 30 or 40%, I think we have, we pay twice as much as the next country in terms of our per capita healthcare costs, twice as much.
It's because of these screwy legislative things that we do in this country.
And it's like, man, I've done the work.
We've paid the attorneys to build a system that looks a lot more like crowdfunding than it does an insurance company, but it really works.
It's really effective.
It's market-based.
I think we've got something special.
We just need some scale and not necessarily to pay the bills, but scale to really impact, you know, what goes on in the legislatures across the country.
And that's why, you know, we'd love your help, folks like you, your help and the libertarians across the country, because I think they're the ones that are going to actually be the agents for change here.
Yeah.
And that's a good point where, you know, if we have, you know, I don't know exactly how many people are libertarians or libertarian leaning around the country, probably like a couple million.
Now, that ain't enough to win a presidential election, but it's definitely enough to do something like this and really kind of like drastically alter one of the most statist industries.
So we do have to kind of be creative and think about what we can do to actually, you know, kind of change the world for the better.
Because yeah, even as you say it, I mean, it's got to be, it's got to be the income tax and the health insurance has to be number one and number two of the biggest financial burdens on regular working class, middle class Americans who right now are getting squeezed, you know, like crazy with the destruction of the dollar and with all the other craziness that's that's going on in the economy.
So yeah, it is really, really something to think about.
I mean, a couple million doesn't sound a lot given it's, you know, a country of 300 plus million, right?
So it's a percent, let's just say, but, you know, you need that spark to catalyze change, right?
And it is the minority a lot of times that can be that catalyst because I think there's also 100 million or 150 million people who are just like us pissed off about the way this is this is going and don't know that there's an alternative.
And so if you have a million or two million people that stand up and say, no, there's an alternative, we will not do this thing that's screwing people.
We're going to do an alternative.
I think that could be the catalyst for change.
I mean, I really, really do.
Yeah.
And the fact that the people, and I've heard back from some of the people who have signed up for this who really love it.
And the fact that the people really enjoy the company and enjoy get a good service out of it.
And the fact of what you said before that the doctors really like it.
I think that's a really interesting combination where it's like, if you have both of those, you know, no matter how many bureaucrats an insurance company is and all these people are in between, if the doctors and the patients both really like this, that's a really big part of the healthcare field.
Like it's the really, the really crucial part, the doctors and the patients.
Well, you know, only one other thing that I would say is kind of an important part of what we're doing or a new kind of important part of what we're doing.
You know, it's, I know a lot of your listeners are into the crypto scene.
You had a bunch of Bitcoin folks and others.
You know, one of the things that health insurance companies do too is they stick this into a pool of capital that is depreciating in value because of inflation, especially with healthcare, this has gone on for a long time where you've had inflationary pressure.
And so they have to charge you more and more every year to refill that pool.
We are building what we're calling a crowd of folks that are going to put their money into their accounts in Bitcoin.
So you get the value of that appreciating asset as opposed to it's all yours.
It's not ours.
And so if you, if anybody's interested in doing that, they can go to joincrowdhealth.com slash BTC.
So we're trying to get about a thousand people, which is, we think, where we need to be to be, you know, kind of viable are people who want to put it in Bitcoin as opposed to in dollars.
That's something that we're doing too.
And we think that it's, you know, the Bitcoin folks and the crypto folks are our type of folks too.
They're a little bit more like buck in the system.
And what they're fighting for on the monetary financial side, we're fighting for on the healthcare side.
And if you can combine those two things, we think it's a really interesting marriage.
Yeah, that is a really interesting idea.
And if you're betting on these cryptocurrencies anyway, then what you, the bet would be that it's like, yeah, no, you're not going to have what the equivalent of like premiums going up.
every year would be, which also is something, of course, they sold Obamacare as this is going to stop now.
Premiums aren't going to keep going up.
But as everybody knows, that's just, that was, you know, that was obviously BS from the first year, but that's just part of life also.
If you're in the market exchange, that it's like, oh, yeah, whatever that like crazy high premium you pay every month, you can expect that every single year to go up.
Yeah.
Well, the crazy thing with Obamacare, people think like I tweeted this out yesterday and, you know, people are like, why are healthcare prices going up so much?
Like, I don't understand.
It's too complex for me to understand.
It's not.
It's actually very simple, right?
In Obamacare, they maxed out the profit that health insurance plans can get on your premium at about 15%.
So if you have a $1,000 premium, the max profit they can take is $150, right?
So outside looking in, that's like, oh, that's amazing.
We don't want health plans profiting too much.
But the problem with that is these are for-profit entities.
And so for their profit to go up, your premium has to go up, right?
If your premium goes from $1,000 to $900, they now can't make $150.
They can only make $135 on you, right?
So the buyer of healthcare, which is health plans, want the price to go up.
The sellers of healthcare, which is these big hospital systems, they want to make a profit too.
So they just bump their prices up every year, right?
So if the buyers of healthcare and the sellers of healthcare both want the price to go up, guess what?
The price is going up, right?
It doesn't take an economics major to figure this out.
No, it's another perfect example of government, a policy that sounds nice on its face, but when you really look at it a little bit closer, you go, so you've just completely disincentivized reduction in premium prices.
You're going to punish all of these companies if they reduce their premium prices.
Well, then guess what?
You're probably not going to see premiums reduced.
It's one of the most obnoxious things.
If you read it, you're like, holy crap.
Like, I understand why they did it.
Like you said, but it really does have perverse outcomes or incentives.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
A Beautiful New System00:01:38
Okay.
Is there anything else that we haven't touched on that you think isn't?
I don't think so.
You know, joincrowdhealth.com is our website.
We got a special code for you all, P-O-T-P.
So part of the problem is the code.
And it gives you a discounted rate for, I think, the first six months.
And so if you want to sign up, we'd love for you to have you.
And we've got other lots of other libertarian leading folks who are part of our platform.
So would love to have you guys involved.
Yeah, I really appreciate you coming on.
And I think this is a really fascinating topic.
I think it's a really beautiful thing that this company is doing.
I love having sponsors that I really believe in, you know, and not just the aspect of introducing market prices to this corrupt industry, but the idea of building a community of like kind of like-minded people who are all kind of taking care of each other and that it's done in this way, where even as you pointed out, even when there's like some crazy huge bill, it's really not that much of a burden if everybody kind of steps up and does it.
I think there's something really beautiful there.
So thank you so much for coming on and explaining this to all of us.
It's a really cool thing.
I wish you the best of the best of luck.
And I hope a lot more of my listeners jump on board.
Thank you, sir.
Appreciate it.
All right.
Andy, hold on.
I'm sorry.
I'll edit that right there.
Schoon over.
Schoon over, right?
You got it.
I was going to say it right.
And then I just hit it.
All right, Andy Skoonover, everybody, the CEO and founder of CrowdHealth.