Andy Schoonover: Health Insurance Is in a Death Spiral Transcript — TFTC Article: https://www.tftc.io/health-insurance-death-spiral-andy-schoonover Transcript page: https://www.tftc.io/health-insurance-death-spiral-andy-schoonover-transcript Published: 2026-11-04 Machine transcription, lightly cleaned; may contain errors. ======================================================================== [0:37] Marty Bent: Andy, welcome back to the show, [0:39] Andy Schoonover: brother. Always good to see you. [0:41] Marty Bent: Always good to see you. I haven't seen you in person in a while. I'm missing the Austin vibes, but it's good to be able to catch up over calls and on the podcast pretty frequently. [0:51] Andy Schoonover: I would've preferred to be in your location for the last 3 months, but I'm pretty sure you'll prefer to be in my location over the next 3 months. So it's just a trade-off. [0:59] Marty Bent: We've actually had a stretch of beautiful weather the last 3 weeks. It hasn't been a cloud in the sky, but yeah, it's going to turn soon. [1:09] Andy Schoonover: Well, appreciate you having me on. [1:12] Marty Bent: Well, I always love having you on, and I think the tenor of the 4 or 5 conversations we've had over the last 5 years that you've been on this show have been focus specifically on the pain points of health insurance and the healthcare system and how CrowdHealth is working to fix those. But I think we're going to take a different direction with this and speak directly to Bitcoiners who ask, or maybe not even ask the question, but proclaim, why should I interact with CrowdHealth? It's not a Bitcoin business. [1:50] Andy Schoonover: Yeah, man. I think that Bitcoiners are great. That's why I love them. It's like they can sniff out grift. It's just like, don't try to be a Bitcoiner without being a Bitcoiner. And don't try to sell anything to Bitcoiners that aren't truly Bitcoin-based organizations. And like I've said to other people, it's like, look, I'm not at its core a Bitcoin company. I want to be. Ultimately, I want to be, but I think the important part of this is we got a lot of companies that we deal with on a day-to-day basis that aren't truly Bitcoin companies, but it's like, how does Bitcoin, the fundamentals of Bitcoin, change how we run business? [3:20] Marty Bent: I completely agree. And I think I was telling you before we hit record, I've been a CrowdHealth member for 5 years, and through our conversations on the record and off the record, one thing I greatly appreciate about your approach to CrowdHealth and the company you're building and the movement you're trying to incite is the low time preference view. And that was the comment I made to you before we hit record is I've been a member for 5 years and it is a long time, half a decade, but it seems like it's a blink of an eye. And the progress that CrowdHealth has made, the increase of the membership and the improvement of the UX around the product and the communication is— Yeah. [4:49] Andy Schoonover: No, it's not. I mean, I love the trajectory of Bitcoin over the last 17 years, and I can only pray that the trajectory of CrowdHealth is similar over the next 17 years for us, but it's going to take a while. You have these behemoths in our industry that are just going to take a while to get convinced that this is the right way to to do things. Look, I'll tell you, ultimately, my goal as a Bitcoiner, and I've said this on your podcast, I've said it on other podcasts, is I would love to take down the fiat financial system in addition to the fiat health insurance system, 2 birds, one stone. [6:46] Marty Bent: Yeah. That's one of the longstanding beliefs that I've had within Bitcoin specifically. And my perspective on Bitcoin is it just needs to survive and be strong enough that when the opportunity strikes, people have the aha moment like, oh, there's hyperinflation going on. I need to adopt a better money. And again, if we're doing parallels between Bitcoin the fact that it's a distributed, decentralized network of individuals opting into CrowdHealth, I think it's a very similar situation. And I think the conditions that would lead to an aha moment for people weighing the opportunity cost or the decision to re-up on a health insurance plan or opt out, go uninsured and join CrowdHealth are— very much in your favor as the years go on. And I think the last 3 years specifically, it's getting to a point where people are going to be forced to weigh the options. [7:43] Andy Schoonover: Yeah. I mean, when you have inflation, general inflation, and we can argue about CPI, it's the best we have. 5% a year, healthcare is inflating by 12% or 13% a year. And so your health insurance is going up 12% or 13% next year. And so yeah, we're on kind of like the rapid pace that Bitcoin is on in kind of that parallel fiat universe. And so we may hit that stage where people are like, screw this, I'm out. I need to have an alternative a little bit faster than Bitcoin. But I think the paths are parallel for sure. And I truly believe that both are going to get to that place of hyperinflation. [9:13] Marty Bent: Yeah. And I was over here pulling up a tweet I sent last week because this was pretty astonishing to me. I'm sure you saw it, but Alex Berenson wrote a Substack post. He had somebody write into him and basically share his new health insurance plan, which for a family of 3 in Alabama was $50,000 a year when you factor in the premium and deductible, which is insane. [9:40] Andy Schoonover: Yeah. I mean, I think a family of 3 last year paid probably $5,500, maybe closer to $5,000 with CrowdHealth. And Alex, what'd he say, $45,000, $50,000? [9:52] Marty Bent: $50,000. [9:53] Andy Schoonover: I mean, we're talking about a 90% Yeah, that's almost like a 90% difference. Yeah. The worst I've seen so far is $5,000 a month. So you're talking about $60,000 a year. This is one of the worst I've seen. [10:12] Marty Bent: Well, it's unsustainable too. Who can afford $50,000, $60,000 a year in health insurance in this economy? [10:19] Andy Schoonover: Well, Blue Cross Blue Shield owns Alabama. there's just really nobody else out there. And so they've got a monopoly on Alabama healthcare, and so they can basically charge whatever they want. So that's the challenge that we have in Alabama specifically. Louisiana is very similar. So a lot of those southern states have pretty much monopolies. [10:37] Marty Bent: Are a lot of people looking at this and just dropping health insurance altogether? [10:48] Andy Schoonover: Yeah. I mean, I think we've seen the tailwinds over the last 5 years. Before we started, we kind of were reminiscing about the first time that I was on your show. I think we had like 1,000 customers or something like that, and we'll probably be at about 50,000 by the end of the year. So we're up 50x versus the first time that we had that conversation. And I think people are just tired. I mean, they're tired of the ridiculous premiums. And I think a lot of people are finally looking at this and saying, why don't I just take the risk? Like, if I have to pay $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 a year, like, why don't I just take the risk of, you know, if something bad happens, I'll figure it out. [13:09] Marty Bent: Yeah. And this is in the wake of multi-year unearthing of rampant fraud in Medicare and Medicaid specifically. Yeah. [13:20] Andy Schoonover: I mean, we're looking at hundreds of billions of dollars potentially per year. So we're talking about trillions of dollars over the last decade gone because of Medicaid and Medicare fraud. [13:31] Marty Bent: Yeah. It's disgusting. And it's actually— this is Good timing for this conversation because last week I spoke with Mira and Mike, the director and producer of Broken Country, which is basically a documentary trying to highlight the problems that exist in Canada specifically. And the first third of the movie was about the Canadian healthcare system. And they explicitly said during our conversation, this is a warning to other Western countries, specifically the United States. Yeah. do not go in this direction. Canada likes to boast about a free healthcare system, but when you peel the curtain back and look through the window, what you find is that people actually aren't able to get healthcare. [14:46] Andy Schoonover: I mean, we've gotten so much feedback from Canadians about wanting to figure out a different way to do healthcare up there. And we can't do healthcare in Canada because it's illegal for doctors to take cash pay rates. in Canada, or just it's illegal for them to take cash. And so we've actually started putting together a potential product for Canadians who it's a very low monthly rate, but if something does happen, you can actually fly to the United States and get your surgery as opposed to having to wait 6 or 9 months to get a surgery in Canada. There are situations in which people have broken bones that have had to be rebroken because the bone came together wrong. [16:46] Marty Bent: Well, I've seen your epic back-and-forth battles on X and LinkedIn with detractors who say the model doesn't scale. And as a user for 5 years, as a member for 5 years, It's gotten cheaper for me and my family, even as I've added more children to the mix. [17:04] Andy Schoonover: Well, it's crazy because when we started in 2021, I believe we were charging— it was either $850 or $875 for a family of 4. My family of 4 last month paid $555. So we're down 30%, whereas insurance is up 40 or 50%. And so I think healthcare should be deflationary. And so when we've showed that, and the cool thing about us is like, we call it the data flywheel where we get more customers, we get more, you submit more bills, we take the data off of those bills in terms of your cash pay rates, and then we can get them back to the Martys and the Andys of the world so that if you are looking for a really great orthopedic surgeon in Philly or Austin or whoever. [18:41] Marty Bent: Similar to Bitcoin in a way. The more people getting— [18:45] Andy Schoonover: Absolutely. There is overlap there. Right? Yeah. You know, once you, once you have additional kind of liquidity through the miners and things like that, like, it's actually easier to use. The transaction fees go down. Like, the, the— it's supply and demand. Like, it's free market economics. Like, let's get back to free markets and, and, and prices will drop, um, because everybody has an incentive to, to do that. And so we're trying to do that with, with healthcare. And, and, you know, ultimately, I think we have been able to, to do this. We've seen, you know, We're getting 50% better rates than UnitedHealthcare. Our members are, 50%. And UnitedHealthcare is the largest health insurance plan in the country or in the planet. They're one of the top 10 largest companies, period. And they can't negotiate really good rates because they don't have an incentive to do so. [19:38] Marty Bent: Well, not only that, I think one of the other points of contention that the naysayers have had with CrowdHealth throughout the years, and one that I've had to respond to as a member and a partner with you guys, is what about catastrophic bills? And I think your Tuesday bill negotiation updates have been very illustrative of how you can actually take care of those. I've seen bills cut from $1 million down to $90,000. [20:11] Andy Schoonover: Yeah, those last weeks, I think. Yeah, a million. That was what, from $950,000 to like $75,000 or something? Yeah, like that. Today's was a preemie, so NICU stay, and I think it was like $500,000 was what was billed, and then it was negotiated down to, I think, $30,000. And so, you know, people— healthcare is not expensive if you live outside of the health insurance space. Healthcare gets very expensive when you're in health insurance, and people don't realize that. These hospitals take the insurance plans to the cleaners because they do have an oligopoly. I don't know how it is where you are, but where I am in Austin, there's 2 big health systems. [21:54] Marty Bent: Yeah. And I think, again, going back to the parallels of Bitcoin, and what you're doing at CrowdHealth, it's like Bitcoin, a lot of what we focus on is, hey, you're a fish in water. You're led to believe that the dollar, the fiat currency that you work so hard for every day is just a foregone conclusion. It is a necessary evil, if you will, of everyday life. It is just the dollar. It is what it is. The government and the central banks mandate it. This is the only money I can use. a lot of time spent educating people about Bitcoin is, no, that's not true. If you look at the course of human history, there have been multiple monetary goods, and the fiat currencies actually are the worst that you could use, and Bitcoin is providing you the ability to opt out and use a better money. [23:14] Andy Schoonover: Yeah. And look, to be totally transparent, my Bitcoin journey started in kind of 2020. I think I was radicalized a little bit by COVID, like many of us. And And that's when my CrowdHealth journey started too, in 2020. And so my CrowdHealth journey and my Bitcoin journey kind of were being done in parallel. And so I read Satoshi's white paper and I'm thinking about CrowdHealth in my business plan and thinking about the incentive systems that Satoshi is thinking about, me thinking about the incentive systems of CrowdHealth and the health insurance plans. And so it just ultimately made so much sense to me as I was learning more about Bitcoin that these fundamentals, these principles should be done in business regardless. [25:43] Marty Bent: Sup, freaks? This was brought to you by good friends at Square. Bitcoin on block is creating a whole ecosystem of companies, Cash App, BitKey, and Square to make Bitcoin everyday money. The way Square does that is by enabling eligible businesses to accept Bitcoin over Lightning. This is a superior way to do payments compared to incumbent payment processors. And if you're a Square merchant that enables Bitcoin payments, if you're an eligible Square merchant that does that, you're going to have 0% processing fees through 2026. Another benefit, there's no chargeback. There's no chargebacks. Think about what that means. The card networks have been skimming every local business for decades, plus chargeback risk on top. [28:28] Andy Schoonover: They're beginning to realize. I've now had probably a 6 or 9-month conversation with one of the biggest hospital systems in the country. It's top 10. about accepting Bitcoin, and they're extremely interested. They want it. There's a couple folks within those systems that really want it, and so they're trying to get everybody rounded up to be like, we want to do this. So all you need is a couple influential people within these big hospital systems to make them tip over. Unfortunately, it always goes back to regulatory BS, man. Ultimately, one of the biggest hangups we have right now with hospital systems is the auditors basically said, I don't want to be your auditor if you guys have Bitcoin on the balance sheet, because it makes my life hell just trying to figure out how to audit this correctly. [29:40] Marty Bent: such a lazy answer. [29:41] Andy Schoonover: It's such a lazy answer. [29:43] Marty Bent: Hey, you're not like— this is like the market is evolving. You're an auditor. You're supposed to evolve with the times. It's not my problem. Figure it out. This is the service you're supposed to provide. [29:52] Andy Schoonover: And as Bitcoin gets more ubiquitous in terms of being on the balance sheet, corporate balance sheets, they're going to have to do that. They're going to have to be able to deal with Bitcoin, or they're going to go out of business. Ultimately, we need to get to that place. We do have Bitcoin on our balance sheet, and we had to find an auditor that will actually audit us with Bitcoin on our balance sheet. One of the main reasons I wanted to do that was to force the issue, because more of us have to force this issue that the accounting side of these things have to catch up with the times. So, you know, you lose enough business because you won't do Bitcoin and you'll start doing Bitcoin ultimately is my theory. [30:38] Marty Bent: Bringing this back to like, I've had this parallel thought trail in the back of my mind once you mentioned Medicare for All potentially being on the table if there's a blue wave. Do you worry about similar regulations that you see in Canada where they won't allow cash pay? Like, is there a call to action we should send the audience to be aware of Medicare for All and potential contingencies that could come with that in terms of your ability to access something like Crowdhouse? [31:08] Andy Schoonover: Yeah. I mean, I don't know what the call to action is today other than— and this is going to clearly make me look self-serving, but it's like we've got to create a true alternative that people will be like, okay, this actually works. at scale. And so, you know, the only things that are working at scale are insurance companies as we currently know them. And, you know, we can argue they're not working, but they, they get 80% of the bills paid, so that's good enough for the regulators, I guess. And then Medicare for All is, you know, working. And so they only have 2 choices now to, to, to choose from, or 2 options to choose from. [33:10] Marty Bent: Well, on that tip, Another thing, going back to fish and water as it pertains to Bitcoin, I think it's funny because once you're in Bitcoin for a while, you take things for granted, one of which is the ease of acquiring Bitcoin. And people— I had a conversation last week, somebody's like, do you think I should buy Bitcoin? I was like, yeah, I think it's a good— buy a little bit per paycheck just to hedge and just treat it as a savings account. Don't go too crazy. He's like, well, how do I do that? I was like, do you have Cash App? He's like, yeah. I was like, you just go there and buy a little. And they don't know. And I think similarly with somebody who's on a health insurance plan and hears about CrowdHealth, they're like, okay, well, how do I actually do it? Well, how easy is it for somebody to drop health insurance and get on the CrowdHealth? [33:58] Andy Schoonover: Yeah, I mean, super easy. Right now we're sitting in open enrollment time, so you have to make a decision anyway about next year. you know, unless you're a CrowdHealth member, there's no open enrollment. So you can start whenever you want, you can end whenever you want. And so, um, I kind of asked the question the other day on X, like, how long does it take people to sign up? And I think the lowest was like 3 minutes, like 3 minutes to sign up for CrowdHealth. And then the question then is like, how easy is it to use? And I would say it's way easier than health insurance. [35:47] Marty Bent: Well, that— and you think of the negative externalities of that price inflation and how much money the healthcare industry makes from this inefficient market is how I would put it, and how they're able to influence things like ad dollars in major networks and lobbying dollars on the Hill. There's, there's a ton that overpaying for healthcare does to benefit these, these oligopoly, uh, oligopolistic, uh, oligopolistic— what would it be? [36:22] Andy Schoonover: Oligopolistic. [36:25] Marty Bent: oligopolistic companies to put their thumbs on the scale of how things happen. And I think that's an underappreciated but very important aspect of all this to understand is they're able to write the laws, the rules, the FDA guidelines, and really introduce a lot of perverse incentive in the system. [36:48] Andy Schoonover: Well, banks are to Bitcoin as health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are to healthcare. I mean, they're the ones that are pulling the strings. They're the ones that have the attention of the regulators. They're the ones that have the attention of the legislators. They're the ones writing the rules ultimately, and their tentacles go far and wide. We even had to— I can't get into details because of an NDA, but We put out a spoof on a very well-known comedy show that is owned by a very large media conglomerate that gets hundreds of millions of dollars from pharmaceutical companies. And our spoof was on pharmaceutical companies. And guess what? We got a call. We got a call from them saying, you have to take it down or we're going to sue you. Right. And so, you know, like their tentacles go far and wide into even the media and things like that. And so you just don't realize it until you're living it on a day-to-day basis, you know? [38:00] Marty Bent: Yeah. [38:00] Andy Schoonover: So it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a brutal place to operate. But if we want our kids to have an option, somebody's got to figure it out. So. [38:10] Marty Bent: Sup, freaks? This episode is brought to you by Simple Mining. I'm sure many of you listening to this right now own Bitcoin and own it the same way. You go on an exchange, you buy it, sweep it to the cold storage, maybe you keep it on the exchange and you pay full price. There's a smaller group of business owners, family offices, and investors with sharp CPAs that are quietly getting theirs a different way. They own the machines that make it. Here's how it works. You buy the miners at Simple Mining. Simple Mining hosts them, runs them at their facilities in Iowa on industrial power rates you could never get on your own. [41:16] Andy Schoonover: I mean, I truly believe the impact of incentivizing people to treat healthcare similarly to the way they treat everything else in life, which is like, you want to go and buy a new car, you go and do all the work, right? You figure out, is it right for my family? Does it have enough seats? Is it enough horsepower? Is the gas mileage good? Is it getting the Car and Driver trust rating score? All these things that we look at, we just don't do that for healthcare because we haven't been given that information in the past. And so what I think has been really cool is to see our members actually yearn for some of that information and then use that information to actually make healthcare decisions. [43:02] Marty Bent: Because I don't know if we're— [43:03] Andy Schoonover: I mean, unless somebody uses it, like, you're not going to care as a doctor what's C-section rate. And actually, you're incentivized to do more C-sections because you're, you're going to make more money. But now if you have, again, the kind of a free market system in which I now know what your C-section rate is, because before I didn't, I'm going to start making decisions based upon that, which hopefully, if you're really working within a free market system, will impact your behavior. So that's one of the coolest things that I've seen happen over the last, especially year. [43:33] Marty Bent: That's insane. Well, again, talk about fixing incentives, like doctors incentivized to get the highest ticket item, which may be a C-section as it relates to pregnancy and birth, but Yeah. Fixing the incentives there, putting everybody on check. People are going to know exactly what your C-section rates are, what your error rates are, and they're going to choose whether or not to use your services based off of that information. Now that you mention it, that's something that should be out-of-the-box available to everybody. Yeah. [44:08] Andy Schoonover: I mean, if you had an alien show up today and looked at our buying habits, And they're like, hold on a second. For your car, you're going to go through dozens or hundreds of pages of reviews and things, but for our health, we just kind of show up as to whoever's in our provider network and just assume that they're good doctors? We have no idea. They look at us like we're nuts. That's where we should be spending most of our information to figure out, is the doctor I'm going to actually a really good doctor? And right now, we don't really have any clue. There's no metrics to at least on the consumer side, there's no metrics to see, are these doctors good or not? And so we're starting to provide that data to our members that allow them to do that, which I think should be a no-brainer, but people don't even think about it because we've just been conditioned to go whoever's in the network directory for our health plan. [44:58] Marty Bent: And again, going back to scale, the more this scales, the more information you get, the more the feedback loop triggers. [45:05] Andy Schoonover: Yeah, exactly. [45:07] Marty Bent: It may not be at the scale yet to really affect the tendencies of doctors to weigh the opportunity cost of going for the higher-ticket item or giving the best care as is necessary per individual event, but at a certain scale, you can begin to see that tipping towards the direction of better care. [45:27] Andy Schoonover: Yeah. You only can get to scale through small. We have to go through this growth stage and being smaller than subscale, let's just call subscale, to get to scale. I have to go subscale to get to scale. So ultimately what I'm asking Bitcoiners especially is like, man, if you're tired of the system, yeah, we're not quite there yet, but be on the subscale side so that we can get to scale. Back in the Bitcoin days, let's just say 2012, subscale. Join me now because I want to be on the ride to get to the scale. And here we are at a couple trillion dollars worth of value. So I need people who are willing to join the bandwagon at subscale to help me get to scale ultimately. [46:17] Marty Bent: Well, you've 50x'd since we first met 5 years ago. I think through our conversations, it seems like things are going exceptionally well for you guys now. How far away from scale do you think you are? Yeah, [46:32] Andy Schoonover: I'm talking about scale. Let me clarify. We have scaled to get really big bills paid because we had a $3 million NICU baby. They were actually twin NICU babies, $3 million. We have a guy going through glioblastoma right now, which is a very aggressive form of brain cancer. 5 or something. I haven't looked in the last couple of weeks, but— And those bills are getting funded. So we have the scale to get bills funded. Now the question is, How big do you need to be to actually change the way that doctors and hospitals provide care or change the way that they will be compensated for care? [48:20] Marty Bent: Well, I mean, I think if people are going to look at re-upping health insurance and getting $50,000 a year, in premium and deductible costs could happen much faster, which I think— Yeah. I mean, I've said this every time we've talked over the last 5 years. I think this is not only an imperative from the perspective of managing your personal balance sheet and worrying about better healthcare, but also a moral imperative because I think, again, going back to the negative externalities and perverse incentives that exist in the incumbent healthcare and health insurance and big pharma system. I think if you've listened to this podcast long enough, you know I have my qualms with it, moral qualms. [49:55] Andy Schoonover: I would say 2 things. One is doctors love CrowdHealth. I kind of joke, other than patients, doctors love us most. If you think about, doctors spend about 2 days a week fighting with health insurance plans just to get paid. So that's 2 days a week gone just to get paid, which we eliminate that bureaucracy if you pay them directly at the point of care. So if you show up and give them your credit card, they get paid immediately. They have— there's no bureaucracy or administrative tasks around that. And so doctors love that. So, you know, the best doctors in the world are already transitioning to a cash pay only type of system. [51:29] Marty Bent: if you think they're currently wasting 2 days a week on administration, administrative BS to actually get paid from the health insurers, you free up that 2 days, [51:38] Andy Schoonover: try more, [51:39] Marty Bent: open up your calendar. [51:40] Andy Schoonover: Yeah, [51:40] Marty Bent: more volume of patients. [51:42] Andy Schoonover: Yeah. I mean, if you go from 3 days to 5 days, what is that? You're increasing your capacity, your revenue capacity by 60%, 66%, right? [51:52] Marty Bent: Yeah. [51:52] Andy Schoonover: So I'm willing then to give better rates to fill that calendar because I have more calendar to fill. Goes back to supply and demand. [52:03] Marty Bent: Yeah. And thinking of the parallels to Bitcoin while we're on, On this particular thread, I think that's the other thing I appreciate about CrowdHealth too is, again, first off, hopefully nobody ever needs to fund a healthcare bill. Maybe outside of pregnancies, we like people having children. That is a necessary and very welcome bill to pay. But ideally, you're healthy enough that you're not You're not in a situation where you have to go to the doctors once a month, whatever it may be. And again, thinking about parallels to Bitcoin and CrowdHealth, Bitcoin, very low time preference culture of don't spend more than you make, live within your means, save the excess in Bitcoin. [53:27] Andy Schoonover: Yeah. [53:27] Marty Bent: An aversion to sensible preventative healthcare measures that you can take on a diet perspective, but that's about it. [53:35] Andy Schoonover: Well, I did the math, or I had Claude do the math for me a couple days ago, being like, if you took all the money that I saved by using CrowdHealth, which is tens of thousands of dollars, and if I would've put every dollar of that savings into Bitcoin, I think I'd have over 2 Bitcoin just by choosing CrowdHealth as opposed to health insurance. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's crazy the amount of, you know, savings that you can get. Again, put it into Bitcoin, and we've been, you know, we've had a rough couple years, but that post-2021 crash to, you know, recently, um, is, is legit. You say it's $73,000, so there's, there's a Bitcoin there. Now imagine if you would have put that back into Bitcoin over the 5 years that you were with CrowdHealth, right? [54:29] Marty Bent: It'd be multiple Bitcoin. And I think an important caveat to this, the savings are likely more because the monthly cost when I joined CrowdHealth was based off of what I was paying for a family of 3. Now I have a family of 5. And premiums and deductibles have gone up over the last 5 years, but this is the savings I have based off of the rate I was paying right before I joined CrowdHealth, which was a family of 3. And premiums and deductibles were much lower than they are now. So I think the savings are probably over $100,000 easily. [55:02] Andy Schoonover: Yeah. I looked this morning. I think our community has saved about $115 million since funding. And so that's ripping $115 million out of the health insurance and hospital space and putting it into your own pockets. And a decent chunk of that has been invested in Bitcoin through some of our Bitcoin members and our fold program. So, um, you know, there's, there's a ton of money to be saved here, and it's just a way better way, man. It's just such a way better way. [55:35] Marty Bent: What, uh, what is the message you would send anybody weighing their— whether or not they're going to re-up health insurance this year particularly? [55:45] Andy Schoonover: Yeah, I would say just give us a chance. Um, give us a chance to serve you and your families. Um, go to the reviews. Um, go to X, you know, check out some of our X posts. I mean, I think that you'll see that like We are significantly better at getting bills paid than health insurance plans. Significantly better by, you know, 90% less bills are not funded than health insurance plans. So 1 out of every 5 bills with health insurance plans are denied. That was 120 million bills in just the ACA in 2024, which is the last data point. I had Claude do the math for it and almost a billion. [57:32] Marty Bent: Yeah. And I guess the last parallel between Bitcoin and CrowdHealth to end on the theme that we've been running with throughout this conversation is people are going to think you're crazy. They're going to think your family members are going to be like, you don't have health insurance? You're crazy. But I'll just look at the 70, it's probably over $100,000 I've saved over the last 5 years, the improvement in the quality of health services that we've got. And I'll gladly let people think I'm crazy because at the end of the day, I'm saving money. My family and I are getting better care, and we're not supporting an extractive system via paying premiums and deductibles to health insurance. [58:15] Andy Schoonover: Well, they think you're crazy, Marty, because of 2 things, I think. One is they haven't done the work, They haven't done the work to understand it. So go and do the work to understand it. If you do the work to understand Bitcoin, you'll get it. The only reason you won't get it is because of fear. Fear is the emotion that ultimately will drive the, you're crazy. So the Bitcoiners, they've ultimately got over the fear of the fiat, or this dollar is precious and we have to do it in dollars. They've gotten over that. So that's why I think they're such great partners for us is like they can get over that, like the fear is a liar, and like go and do your work. And I think once you do your work, you'll understand that this works way better than health insurance. So come and join us. We'd love to— like I said, I would— we'd be honored to have the opportunity to serve y'all. [59:02] Marty Bent: Opt out, go uninsured. Peace and love, freaks. Hey there, thank you for watching the whole video. If you made it this far, I imagine you got some value out of it. If you wouldn't mind liking and subscribing, And maybe sharing with friends and family. It helps us out here at TFTC immensely. And then beyond that, we have a very valuable newsletter called The Commoner. io and subscribe to that. We cover Bitcoin, AI, energy markets, macro, political, cultural discussions. We've been running it for a decade. Highly recommend you sign up for that to stay up to date with what we're covering beyond these conversations. io/ai as well.