The Health Insurance Death Spiral Is Here
Transcript — TFTC
Article: https://www.tftc.io/tftc-health-insurance-death-spiral-crowd-health
Transcript page: https://www.tftc.io/tftc-health-insurance-death-spiral-crowd-health-transcript
Published: 2026-08-05
Machine transcription, lightly cleaned; may contain errors.
========================================================================

[0:07] Andy Schoonover: You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free. When you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all, 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 Bitcoin.

[0:31] Marty Bent: If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.

[0:33] Andy Schoonover: Probably should be. Probably should be.

[0:36] Marty Bent: And it's that time of year again. We meet again. Open enrollment is here.

[0:41] Andy Schoonover: Everybody's favorite time of the year. It's not because of Thanksgiving or Christmas. It's because of open enrollment.

[0:47] 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 CrowdHealth member. for the last 4 years, I've had 2 babies on it, and I've been texting you behind the scenes, like, I think this is the year for CrowdHealth. If you're looking at the zeitgeist out there, the selfie videos in 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. Yeah.

[1:26] Andy Schoonover: Yeah, I was trying to think back of when we first talked. I think it was, what, 3 years ago maybe? I think 4. 4 years ago?

[1:34] Marty Bent: 4.

[1:35] 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 20,000 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. Like 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 4. Like, that's, that's the record so far.

[2:28] Marty Bent: Yeah.

[2:29] Andy Schoonover: So this is—

[2:30] Marty Bent: 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. This is Trucking Czar. Only employee of my business. This is not, I repeat, not sustainable. This is my renewal note— renewal notice for just health insurance per month before Obama. And there's some harsh language in there. But for him and 5 dependents, it looks like he's gonna be paying $3,200, almost $3,300 a month. It's his business, so he's eating that chunk too. He's gonna have to pay $2,600 a month out of pocket from his paycheck just to support this.

[3:09] Andy Schoonover: Geez. Yeah, I mean, that family with us would be like $750 a month.

[3:16] Marty Bent: Yeah.

[3:17] Andy Schoonover: And I didn't know, I didn't see the deductible on that, but, you know, ultimately, you know, That guy's paying, what, $30,000 a year or something like that? And then he's gotta pay the deductible on top of that. So he's probably $40,000 into his healthcare before the insurance company pays a dime.

[3:35] Marty Bent: Yeah, and here's another one.

[3:36] Andy Schoonover: Which is—

[3:38] Marty Bent: Here's Blue Cross Blue Shield. 9 options, anywhere in the country.

[3:43] Andy Schoonover: Is that Illinois too?

[3:44] Marty Bent: It's Health Insurance Market. I don't know where this guy is, but. Deductible $8,600, $12,000, $3,000, paying upwards of $3,500 a month. Why is it getting this bad?

[4:00] Andy Schoonover: Yeah, I mean, I think what we're seeing ultimately is that back almost 15 years ago, this Affordable Care Act was supposed to make things affordable, but in fact, what it did is made things way more expensive. And it was masked for the last 4 years because of the— I think it was American Rescue Plan that basically gave subsidies to the people who were, I think it was like 400% of the poverty level or something. And so it masked all these huge changes. And so 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 gonna have to jack up rates to make up for 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?

[5:06] Marty Bent: Yeah.

[5:07] Andy Schoonover: And so the mechanics just don't work when all the healthy people exit the system. So that's ultimately what's going down here. We see above inflationary rates for all the medical services and things like that, but that's not what's gonna 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.

[5:31] Marty Bent: Does the government have a plan to solve this?

[5:36] Andy Schoonover: No, there's no, there's no plan to solve this. I mean, even I won't say who, but I saw a state rep or an 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 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— I said, burn.

[7:46] Marty Bent: Yeah. I wonder if Trump's— I'm sure you saw the announcement earlier this week. I think it was yesterday or the day before about discounted Ozempic. 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, OK, let's make Ozempic cheap for people so that we can try to make them skinnier? 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.

[8:46] 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 once they get down to that weight, then they're like, okay, now you gotta pay it for yourself, for it yourself, so it's not a burden on others, or you've got to keep the weight off. You can't go back, 'cause everything that I've seen is, Ozempic is great until you get off it, then you gain all the weight back.

[9:59] Marty Bent: I think the latter would be preferable. That's why—

[10:03] Andy Schoonover: For sure, 100%. Yeah. But I think that incentives are everything. So if you're stuck with this situation in which you have to make a lifestyle change, or you have to come out of pocket for $200 a month, or whatever it ends up being to the consumer, then I think incentives might change some lifestyle changes. I don't know if $200 a month or $150 or whatever it is is enough, but I know it's gotta hit their pocket.

[10:27] Marty Bent: Yeah, well, this is something you focus on pretty heavily at CrowdHealth is making sure that community members are doing their best to remain healthy as well for the benefit of the wider community.

[10:43] 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 healthcare services than the people who are, who are unhealthy. Right. And so, you know, we've got a, we got a program at CrowdHealth where we've got 3 different tests that you can take. And if you are in the top quartile for those tests, I mean, you know, like in the top quartile healthiest, then you get a 20% discount.

[11:57] Marty Bent: Yeah.

[11:59] Andy Schoonover: Right?

[11:59] Marty Bent: No. And to my point of the opening sort of statement, I feel like this year particularly, I don't know if you're seeing it, been 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.

[12:24] Andy Schoonover: Yeah, I think that's right. And that's what I think is kind of why people are forecasting the, 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. I know Bitcoiners are great at this and work on probabilities. And most people are being like, it's just not worth it.

[13:41] Marty Bent: Sup, freaks? This rip of TFTC was brought to you by our good friends at BitKey. BitKey makes Bitcoin easy to use and hard to lose. It is a hardware wallet that natively embeds into a 2-of-3 multisig. You have one key on the hardware wallet, one key on your mobile device, and Block stores a key in the cloud for you. This is an incredible hardware device for your friends and family, or maybe yourself who who have Bitcoin on exchanges and have for a long time, but haven't taken the step to self-custody because they're worried about the complications of setting up a private/public key pair, securing that seed phrase, setting up a PIN, setting up a passphrase.

[16:19] Andy Schoonover: I mean, I would call it fraud.

[16:20] Marty Bent: Yeah, fraud. on top of it by the hospital systems to try to gouge you for even more.

[16:25] Andy Schoonover: Yeah. I mean, we also have our internal AI platform that 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.

[18:48] Marty Bent: That's insane.

[18:51] Andy Schoonover: Saltwater. It's saltwater, people. Like, that's what, that's what this is. And that's, that's the egregiousness of these hospitals when they try to do this crap.

[19:00] Marty Bent: What percentage of bills have errors like this or fraudulent markups like this? 80?

[19:08] Andy Schoonover: Yeah, 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 they try to jack the system so they can upcode you. So, you know, for example, if you go to the ER, there's 5 codes that they can use and it goes from 1 to 5, not to bore you, but like 1 to 5.

[19:31] Marty Bent: Okay.

[19:31] Andy Schoonover: And like 80%, 80-some-odd percent of our bills are the 4s or the 5s, which meaning there's like critical, life-threatening. Like those are the 2. I mean, I've seen somebody go into the ER with a broken finger and get critical or life-threatening coded.

[19:50] Marty Bent: Yeah.

[19:51] Andy Schoonover: Yet they say, they do all these tests and things on you to say, oh, well, we thought there might be too much loss of blood or something. And so that gets it to that critical area, but all they're trying to do is get as much money out of the insurance companies as possible. So we see that stuff all the time. Yeah, all the time.

[20:10] Marty Bent: And we've, we've talked about, 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, um, can you describe the dynamic between the health insurance company and the health provider and what their incentives are? the level of collusion or cooperation there is between the two.

[20:36] Andy Schoonover: Yeah. So back in 2009, the Affordable Care Act went into place. And what they did is they told the hospitals, the federal government told the hospitals, or excuse me, the insurance companies, you can only make 15% of revenue as profit. So, you know, if it's $1,000 of premium this month for my family, they can only profit $150. And the thought process behind that, right, all these smart lawyers in DC thought, oh, well, we can't have health insurance plans gouge their members and make a ton of money off of their healthcare. So I'm gonna limit the amount that you can profit. Well, the problem with this is that most of these health insurance plans are for-profit organizations, right?

[23:18] Marty Bent: And going back to your point about UnitedHealthcare 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 to max. We have ACA implemented here, around here. It was trading at below $100. 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.

[24:08] Andy Schoonover: Yeah. If you look at all the health insurance plans, You'll see that.

[24:13] Marty Bent: Yeah.

[24:14] Andy Schoonover: Yeah. I mean, these were behind the scenes. 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 in the past. And so this ACA marketplace was a whole new marketplace for them that they gorged upon. The other thing that was going on there too is there's a privatization of Medicare, which typically we really love privatization. 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 a 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.

[26:11] 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 we're going to bleed the taxpayer dry, allegedly.

[26:39] Andy Schoonover: Yeah, that's exactly what's going on. And then we had Luigi 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 shine some light on some of the things that 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.

[28:31] Marty Bent: I know, I know. But we've—

[28:33] Andy Schoonover: yeah, it's 2025, Marty. You never know.

[28:35] Marty Bent: We've successfully had 2 children and paid for their births via CrowdHealth. It's been an incredible experience. And you just said, like, for us, we're a family of 5 now. I think we're paying $750 a month. We supplement that with direct primary care. All in, it's like $900 and $950 a month for a family of 5, 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.

[29:01] Andy Schoonover: I think you guys are $695 a month, but same thing. And direct primary care too, which basically is a subscription fee to a doctor that you can call anytime. If you're a member of CrowdHealth, I don't know if you're doing this, Marty, but you can submit $300 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.

[29:31] Marty Bent: No.

[29:31] Andy Schoonover: 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 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 is 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 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 huge advocates of DPC, direct primary care.

[30:05] 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 CrowdHealth 4 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 far and it seems like you're taking a risk, but once you get onboarded and you live the experience for 3 months, 6 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 CrowdHealth 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.

[30:53] Andy Schoonover: Yeah. I mean, the biggest barrier is people like, what happens when we have the big one, like 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 guy who— did I talk about the guy who shot himself in the last one that we talked about?

[31:23] Marty Bent: I don't recall. I feel like I would recall that too, so I don't think you did.

[31:27] Andy Schoonover: 44 in his holster, and he caught a fish. 44 fell out of his holster, Hit a rock perfectly and 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 green stuff, I think it was bile, was basically coming out of his chest. So, We, uh, 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 the shirt around his thigh, ran up to the top of the hill, called 911.

[32:38] Marty Bent: Wow.

[32:39] Andy Schoonover: He got sepsis on the way home. And so that was almost a million-dollar bill, and the crowd funded that with no problem. And so I think that most people have to just get over the hurdle of like, what if something really catastrophic happens? We got a person at MD Anderson right now who's got stage 4 melanoma or something like that. I think it's melanoma. And so we've taken care of dozens of cancer patients and these other big events. And so it's like, man, we can do this. The community can do this. We've got 15,000 people. We'll probably have somewhere between 20,000 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 funded, right?

[33:29] Marty Bent: Yeah.

[33:30] Andy Schoonover: That's the biggest hurdle for people to get over, I think, is Can you get the big bills funded?

[33:34] 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 that 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.

[36:47] Andy Schoonover: Yeah, our prices are 6 to 8% lower depending upon the month this year than they were last year. So 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 faster or the prices are gonna drop from my perspective. So, um, yeah.

[37:23] Marty Bent: Do you think this is the year that many people wake up to this?

[37:26] Andy Schoonover: If there's— if, if our phone calls are any indicator, yes. I mean, I was on the phone for 2 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 about 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 Marty 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. You know, so we're getting people from all over the place.

[38:43] Marty Bent: That's insane.

[38:45] Andy Schoonover: In 4 days.

[38:46] Marty Bent: Is that purely because of open enrollment or just—

[38:48] Andy Schoonover: Only of— we signed up 1,500 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 2 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 are learning about the company and jumping on as opposed to doing it just for open enrollment. So I think that's an indicator of something good happening this year.

[39:30] 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?

[39:44] 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. 6 trillion. 6 trillion of paying in Bitcoin, that would be pretty special. And our database of Bitcoin doctors, doctors who want to accept Bitcoin, is growing.

[41:26] Marty Bent: Mm-hmm.

[41:27] Andy Schoonover: Where Not to get into too much of the mechanics, but ultimately, we don't ask you for the full amount every single month because if the community is doing really, really well, then we allow you to keep that money. With the insurance system, if the community is doing really, really well, the insurance company makes the money. In our case, you make the money, but there's kind of a margin between our maximum ask and what we actually ask. So, 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.

[43:21] Marty Bent: The Fold integration has been incredible because I have it turned on.

[43:28] Andy Schoonover: Oh, you do?

[43:28] Marty Bent: Cool. On my CrowdHealth account. And I'll open Fold because I use the debit card just to check the rewards balance. And I'll notice my other Bitcoin balance is higher than it was before. And I'm like, oh yeah, CrowdHealth is just passively stacking.

[43:41] Andy Schoonover: It's like set it and forget it. You're just stacking Bitcoin and you don't even Think about it. It's a pretty cool thing.

[43:47] Marty Bent: Yeah. Do you think— I mean, we talked about it earlier. Does the government have any plans to change this? No. 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? I know people gave you flak 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 healthcare that actually makes sense and is affordable?

[44:25] Andy Schoonover: I mean, I think we step back, right? Why does the government not have any really good solutions? It's because healthcare spends more on lobbying than any other industry between insurance, pharma, hospitals. They have a massive amount of lobbying in DC. And so 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. I really do believe that there's probably something here in terms of who owns Congress and the presidency in the next cycle, because I would say that probably if this thing swings left, It's probably on a path to Medicare for All, so we'll all have government insurance.

[47:21] 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 the healthcare system that really doesn't deserve the money at the end of the day.

[47:37] Andy Schoonover: Well, dude, I, I, I don't— I haven't said this publicly, um, 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 Holy shit. 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 he— all that 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 going to happen. So I think, you know, we're— there's this great quote in Moneyball and I don't know if— have you ever seen Moneyball?

[48:43] Marty Bent: Yeah, I've read it too.

[48:46] Andy Schoonover: Yeah, it's like the first guy through the door is always— or through the wall is always bloodied.

[48:52] Marty Bent: Mm-hmm.

[48:52] Andy Schoonover: It's like everybody who's got their hand on the steering wheel, the hand on the stick, driving, is pissed when you upset the way that they do business, the way you play the game. And people are upset. I think more and more, if we not only have 15,000, but what if we have 150,000? I think more and more people are going to be upset about it. And so not to play the victim or whatever, but we had to increase security in our house and all these kinds of things, load the guns and—

[49:24] Marty Bent: I'm sorry to hear that. It's terrifying.

[49:27] Andy Schoonover: Take some protection. And look, I can't say with 100% certainty it was around the medical industrial complex being pissed, but there's enough evidence there that they're really ticked at what we're doing. So we just got to deal with that. So my kids were freaked out, as you can imagine. My 7 and 9-year-old, when the cops are all over your house, that's a pretty traumatic experience. So it was quite a couple of days in the Schoonover household.

[50:00] Marty Bent: Well, it's fascinating because it is— I mean, you mentioned Luigi Maggioni. 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 this system or the options to access healthcare. And I witnessed this firsthand, not a death threat, but like people who in the healthcare industry that like to chirp at you guys when we collaborated on LinkedIn to post the AI video that we made. Oh yeah, yeah. 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 CrowdHealth. You can tell you guys are certainly threatening them.

[50:41] 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 CrowdHealth 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, I mean, I think the medical industrial complex elites and the academics and all these people are throwing shade.

[51:59] Marty Bent: Much lower. You get a personal health advocate. By the way, the latest app update is incredible. The UX, the UI. It's very easy.

[52:06] Andy Schoonover: Who's your advocate? Do you know who your advocate is?

[52:10] Marty Bent: Name is escaping me off the top of my head, but I will check right now. It is Alexis.

[52:26] Andy Schoonover: Oh yeah.

[52:27] Marty Bent: Oh wait, no, that's for—

[52:28] Andy Schoonover: No, no, no. You're a Bitcoiner. You're a Bitcoiner. So you have Naram, probably. Naram.

[52:32] Marty Bent: Yes, that's what it is.

[52:33] Andy Schoonover: Yeah. Naram's awesome. He's freaking awesome, dude. Let me tell you a quick story about Naram. Narum. So this little kid was 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 we called him. He's like, how's the little guy doing? Narum 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 on a hike with his dad anymore because he's afraid he's going to get hurt. And so Narum sent him this little like hiking thing that you could put into your living room.

[54:07] Marty Bent: We've had coffee delivered to the house from you guys.

[54:10] Andy Schoonover: Yeah, we give you coffee. Like what health insurance? UnitedHealth 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 a pretty cool, cool thing about our, our system. Yeah. You get your own care advocate. So every time you talk to— the reason I did that is because when I was dealing with my issue, You know, 6 or 7 years ago with my little one, I would call the insurance plan. I would sit on 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.

[55:26] 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 know, 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 CrowdHealth, 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— ear, nose, and throat doctor for the kids, and you tell them you're paying in cash.

[56:31] Andy Schoonover: Yeah, I mean, that's, that's one of the things. I just don't think Bitcoiners really give a shit 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, or I'm a cash-paying 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. Um, so I think, I think we have it as a badge of honor. And in fact, we have t-shirts that say 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.

[57:34] Marty Bent: No, I can't tell you the number of individuals working the front desk of either a doctor's office, ear, nose, and throat hospital. And when we say, their whole demeanor completely changes when you say, can I get your insurance card? They're like, oh, we're not insured. It's like a funny social signal that we've been pushed into this system. It's like fish in water. They are not used to hearing that. And I think there's— Yeah. 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 healthcare coverage, or not coverage, but healthcare experience has increased significantly.

[58:28] Andy Schoonover: We're fiat poor. We're Bitcoin rich.

[58:32] Marty Bent: That's funny. Well, 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 money in the bank account doesn't mean I don't have money at all, and trying to explain Bitcoin to them.

[58:48] Andy Schoonover: No joke.

[58:50] Marty Bent: No, it's a joke. It's funny though.

[58:53] Andy Schoonover: What, um, so, so bust out of the health insurance system. Like, you guys have already busted out of the Bitcoin system. Like, bust out of the health insurance system, you know, and, and give it a shot, man. That's what— that's, that's my, my plea to Bitcoiners is give it a, give it a shot. Well, you know, you can use TFTC. You get it for $99 a month for the first 3 months. If you like it, awesome. If you don't, then go buy fiat health insurance. Like, go for it. That would be my, that would be my plea. But I guarantee you that you're going to be, you're going to have a much better experience with us than you've had with, with health insurance. Just like Bitcoin is a much better experience than fiat.

[59:34] Marty Bent: Well, I tweeted it out a couple, I think a month or two ago, like with the premiums going up as much as they are within the Affordable Care Act, like the opportunity cost is like incredibly diminished. What is the risk of switching to CrowdHealth considering how expensive traditional healthcare is becoming, health insurance is becoming? You can go spend, if you've got a family of 5, $30,000 a year, $25,000 to $30,000 a year just to get coverage and then an additional $8,000 to $15,000 depending on what your deductible is. So anywhere from $25,000 to $35,000. grand a year, or you can pay $700 a month, pay 7 grand if that, a little bit more than that.

[1:00:57] Andy Schoonover: Well, I think more importantly is you're taking between the 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.

[1:02:15] Marty Bent: And you're beginning to see a number of doctors begin to realize this too and drop out. I had Mary Talley-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 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 works in your favor too because I think that's a trend that's going to continue to grow is you're going to have a bunch of doctors opting out of it on the other side.

[1:02:58] 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. Like, I truly believe that because they're so fed up with the insurance system.

[1:04:30] Marty Bent: It really is. And it's funny, I know, and 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 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 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 momentum building.

[1:05:20] Andy Schoonover: 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.

[1:06:44] 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, of my health, health insurance costs on a monthly basis. That is harder with CrowdHealth. Are you guys working on ways 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 costs 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 CrowdHealth, their employer has a health insurance plan, but they want to sort of reap benefits from their employer.

[1:07:31] Andy Schoonover: Yeah. If you're— if you're— yeah, if you work for a small employer, you can go to them because typically the small employer is paying $25,000 for a family. to have health insurance. A family with CrowdHealth is about $7,000. So you can go back to them and be like, listen, instead of paying $25,000 for my family, why don't you raise my salary by $10,000 or $12,000? You save money, I'm going to go get CrowdHealth, I save money. We've had a bunch of members go and do that, and it works for small employers. It doesn't work for big employers. But ultimately, I think that the government needs to bite the the employer health insurance kind of connection.

[1:08:44] 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 3, um, sort of—

[1:08:55] Andy Schoonover: Absolutely.

[1:08:55] Marty Bent: They didn't leave is, I need the health insurance.

[1:08:57] Andy Schoonover: Absolutely. So go ask your employer. Like, 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. Worst they can is no. And if they say no, that's fine, but they might say yes because it's beneficial for both parties.

[1:09:16] Marty Bent: Yeah, it really is. No, I remember right before I joined CrowdHealth as a member, it was when I left Great American Mining, which was paying my health insurance, to really focus on TFTC and 1031, and was in that lull period. And 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 2 months. I was like, all right, we're going CrowdHealth. That was the thing that pushed me over the edge. But that was the scariest thing about going out and focusing on this as a solo entrepreneur at the time. I was like, we have no health insurance. I just had a 1-year-old child at the time. And it was—

[1:09:56] Andy Schoonover: Oh.

[1:09:56] Marty Bent: It didn't make us think like twice and 3 times about, all right, do we really want to do this? went to stomach the cost of Cobra. It was just like, okay, there's a better option. What do we have to lose?

[1:10:08] Andy Schoonover: I appreciate you joining, man. You've been incredibly— we're incredibly grateful for all that you've done for us. And look, if anybody wants to join, use TFTC, the code. You get $99 for the first 3 months, and it's worth a try. And then anybody out there who's a CrowdHealth member, thank you. Thank you for being members. Tell your friends about CrowdHealth, and if they use your code, we'll pay you $250 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?

[1:11:22] Marty Bent: You cut out there for a little bit, but I think you know that. I would concur. It's a beautiful thing. The feeling is mutual. You know me, Annie, we were working out of the same office together for 3, almost 4 years here at TFTC. 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.

[1:12:40] Andy Schoonover: Appreciate it.

[1:12:41] 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.

[1:12:46] Andy Schoonover: We would love that. Thanks for having me, brother. All right.

[1:12:50] Marty Bent: Peace and 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 gets 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.

[1:13:42] Andy Schoonover: Okay.