Join me today for Episode 1076 of Bitcoin And . . .
Topics for today:
- The Evolution of Health Insurance in the United States
- The CrowdHealth Model
- Negotiation of Medical Bills
- Bitcoin Integration and Future Plans
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https://blog.foldapp.com/crowdhealth-fold-partnership/
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[00:00:02]
David Bennett:
It is 01:30PM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the April 2025. This is episode ten seventy six of Bitcoin, and it's an interview show. I have Andy Schoonover from CrowdHealth on with me today, and I'm really, really happy that he could come on because I had been dying to ask some guys, any guys over at CrowdHealth a particular set of questions that I didn't think was ever answered on any of the other interviews that I've heard about CrowdHealth. And Andy, being the CEO, was basically in the best position to answer those questions, and he did so. And I can't thank Andy enough for coming on the show and being here with us today. So I'm just gonna drop you right into the into the interview.
If you have any questions at the end of the show about where to go find out more information, I will have links in the show notes. If those aren't good enough for you, feel free to DM me on Twitter. David Bennett, n as in Nancy, b as in boy, or, of course, on Nostr. I'm none your business on Nostr, so you can get a hold of me there. I will do my level best to put you in touch with Andy and any of his crew that I can so that you can learn what you whatever it is that you want to learn about crowd health. It's it's an amazing service, and it is well worth your time to figure out how we're kinda trying to bypass health care well, not health care, but the health insurance industry in The United States because it's just become it's just become too untenable, and and people like Andy are out there trying to give us navigable pathways around it. So without any further ado, here's Andy from CrowdHealth.
[00:02:00] Andy Schoonover:
Amazing.
[00:02:01] David Bennett:
And and I know is I've either talked to you or one of the other one of your other crew members at CrowdHealth. I've asked a couple of questions, I don't know, via Twitter or DM or something like that. Sure. And, so I've talked to y'all before, but you've definitely never been on the show. So welcome to the Bitcoin and podcast. We talk about Bitcoin and other things, and I figure health care is other things. So
[00:02:25] Andy Schoonover:
It's a big it's a big other. Yeah. Well, you know, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
[00:02:31] David Bennett:
Yeah. It is it is a big other. In fact, it's what is it? Like, a $4,100,000,000,000 industry health care in The United States?
[00:02:40] Andy Schoonover:
Last estimates for '24 is hitting five.
[00:02:43] David Bennett:
Oh, god almighty. Okay. That's yeah. This is and it affects everybody. So I what I wanna start here with is I just kinda wanna talk about the landscape of health care as it is right now versus what it used to be. So what do you know of the history of how health care has evolved in The United States? Like, I think what I'm getting at is, like, when I was a kid, there was not really any such thing as health insurance. You just went to the doctor. You just paid. Companies didn't offer it to their employees as a perk. And all of a sudden, the landscape has changed.
Do you know how health health insurance has evolved in The United States, and why are we here? Why why are we doing this?
[00:03:36] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. For sure. I can talk about that. Are we are we are we on now? Are we going? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Let's let's roll it, man. Let's roll. Let's roll it. Okay. Yeah. No. I for sure. You know, health health insurance started back in in the nineteen twenties where hospitals basically said, look. You know, if you pay us a monthly fee, we will take care of all of your needs. And so it was kind of a a subscription based service in in in the twenties. And then, you know, after World War two, what happened was is that the government basically put a cap on what you could pay people.
So they they basically limited the amount that you could pay people. And, you know, as a result of that, employers are like, okay. Well, if I can't pay somebody in salary, what else can I get them, that will, you know, add value to to to get them to join me as opposed to, you know, going and joining somewhere else? And so they started providing health care. And so this really started in, you know, the '19, you know, say, forties. And so that that persisted for a while. And then, you know, fast forward, you know, sixty years, Obamacare, put that you know, codified that as an employer, you now must provide health care to your employees.
So anybody over the age or over 50 employees now is required by law, to provide their their employees with with health care. You know, we also had some steps along the way, which, you know, there's the HMO Act, which was, you know, in the in the late seventies, early eighties, you know, not too distant from when, you know, Nixon took us off the gold standard. You know, it seemed like everything went awry, you know, in the the ten years following coming off the gold standard. And, you know, United, Cigna, Aetna, all were kind of the the original companies that are now those companies started within that kind of 1975 to 1985 range, with the passing of the HMO Act, which basically, you know, modified insurance as as we currently now know it.
And so, you know, it has been a a number of government interventions that with the good intent of giving people additional value, protecting them. Right? As we always know, the government always says, I'm here to protect you. Right. Has created this just you know, has bastardized health care as we've known it. You know, my brother I was born in the seventies. My brother was born in the sixties, and I think my mom paid something like $95 or or something to to have him born, you know, for his birth. Right. And and now the average is somewhere between 15 and $18,000 depending upon, you know, where you live. And so it's just been a number of legislative acts over the last, say, fifty years that have created what we we currently have within health insurance.
And people think this is very, very complex, but I've said before, and I'll say it again, it's not that hard to understand why health care has gotten so crazy. You know, you have the sellers of health care, which are these big hospital systems. They clearly want the price to go up. They want as much for the service they provide as possible. That's capitalism. I have no problem with that. The unfortunately, the buyer of health care is not me and you. We're not buying health care. It's our insurance plan that is ultimately buying health health care. And what people don't fully understand is that health insurance actually has an incentive for the prices to go up also. So, right now, there's a legislative there's a legislative act that went into effect around Obamacare where health insurance plans are maxed out at 15% of our premiums for what they can use for administrative costs and, profit.
So if I have a thousand dollars of premium, the max they can use for administrative cost and profit is a hundred and $50. Okay. So, you know, how they how do they increase profit? How do they go from a hundred and 50 to a hundred and 65, increase it by 10%? Well, your premium has to go from a thousand dollars a month to $1,100 a month. So they actually want your prices to go up over time so that their 15% chunk of your premium is as large as possible. And if you think about that the other way, which is a little bit more crazy, if it were to go down, let's just say your premium went down 10% from a thousand dollars to $900.
Well, guess what? They're the amount they can use for administrative and profit goes from a hundred and $50 to a hundred and $35 Right. Which means their profit goes down, which means they have to cut employees. They have to cancel their trips to Cabo for their big executive leadership team meetings. Right. They have to start cutting things within the organization, and, clearly, they don't wanna do that. And so they have no incentive for these prices to go down over time. And so that's how perverse it is. If you have the buyer of health care, health insurance plans wanting the price to go up, and the seller of health care, which is these big hospital systems, which are becoming more and more consolidated, if they both want the price to go up, as I told yesterday on his podcast, it doesn't take a PhD in economics to figure out what what's gonna happen to the price that the buyer and seller both want them to to go the price to go up.
[00:09:05] David Bennett:
Well yeah. You know, this sounds like a subsidy mindset. We got agricultural subsidies, and it's destroyed our food. We've got educational subsidies, and it seems to have really done in the higher education system. Is this is this pretty much the same thinking? Is is this just another form of subsidy that's destroying health care?
[00:09:29] Andy Schoonover:
Absolutely. I mean, I think that you you have it spot on. I'm sure you've seen the graph. If you have it, it's, like, astounding where they lay out over the last, I think it was thirty years, the inflation in different types or in different kind of subsets of the economy. Mhmm. You know, it's computers and it's TVs and it's cars and it's health care and it's education. Well, guess what is up into the right? Everything that the government touches is up into the right. That's education, health care, primarily. I mean, those two things are massively higher than our base inflation rate. Everything that has gone down is things that you and I purchase out of our own pockets, without government intervention.
It's computers and and food and all of these things have gone down over time, whereas everything the government touches has gone up over time. And so, you know, I I think it's clearly that government intervention, while, again, with the guys of protecting us, has actually increased our cost for health care substantially. And in fact, you know, we pay two times what other countries pay for the same health care service. Our, life expectancy is pretty much flat to now going down, whereas everybody else is up into the right. And so we're spending a lot more money and getting a lot less for it, when compared to to other countries, and I think it's a lot to do with with this this government intervention.
You know, the second component of this is that our our food system is a total and absolute mess where we our our population is about fifty percent more obese than the other, comparative countries. And so, you know, when you have obesity, which is five to 10 times more expensive, you know, than than someone who's who's not obese, who's metabolically healthy, that clearly has an impact on the consumption of of health care, you know, over over a period of time. So we've got, you know, obese people within our our country plus government intervention leads to massively high health care costs.
[00:11:35] David Bennett:
Yeah. And I would've pulled all that I would've pulled all those strings. But first, before we get any further than this, you started a company called CrowdHealth, and that that's why we're here because I wanna know more about what CrowdHealth does, why you started it. So I I think the best thing to ask right here is, what is CrowdHealth, and how does it work?
[00:12:04] Andy Schoonover:
Sure. Yeah. I'll I'll give you a little bit of background, just to give you some context. You know, I this is my second health care company. I sold my first one, and and, as a result of that, I didn't have health insurance because I was no longer employed by that that company. And so, you know, ignorantly, I thought that, the Obamacare plan was my only other option. So me, my wife, and my two girls got onto a plan. I think it's 11 or $1,200 a month. And I joke it worked until I actually had to use it. You know, my my little one was one at the time, and she was having recurring ear infections. And so we went to the ear, nose, and throat doctor or pediatrician first who said, oh, yeah. She's got a hole in her eardrum.
You know, in essence, what was going on is fluid was building up in her ears, and it popped her eardrum. And as you can imagine, a one year old doesn't take too well to that. And so Yeah. Couldn't sleep, screaming all day long, you know, a total total chaos within our on earth in our house. So we went to the ear, nose, and throat doc who's like, yeah. Hole in her eardrum. She's gotta get tubes in her ears, which are these little plastic tubes that enable that that fluid to drain from her ears. And so we went and did that. Was it we were in network. We did everything correct. And, the health insurance plan came back and said, well, first, I got the bill, and it was $8,000.
It was a fifteen minute procedure, and we got charged $8,000 for it. I'm just like, holy crap. You know, $8,000 is crazy. But I was like, this is what health insurance is for. Like, this is the whole point. And, we were at the end of the year, so we had made it most of the way through our deductible already. And so I thought the health insurance plan was gonna pay for this. And a few weeks after we had done the procedure, we got a note from our health insurance plan that says it was, not medically necessary, and so they weren't gonna pay for it. And, I was like, wait. Hold on a second. Like, my ear, nose, and throat said that I needed it. My pediatrician said that I needed it. Yet you guys were saying I don't need it. So, you know, after two rounds of appeals, they basically were like, nope. We're not paying for it. So I had to stroke an $8,000 check to pay for this, you know, year twos within my for my daughter, and I was pissed as you can probably imagine. I would imagine.
And I so I called the health insurance plan. I was like, look. I quit. You know? If you're not gonna pay my bills, I'm not paying your bills, and we became, you know, in essence, uninsured. Yeah. And so my wife looked at me and was like, okay. So, you know, what are we gonna do now? And so over the next twelve or eighteen months, we try to figure out, like, how do you live viably outside of the legacy health insurance business? And so we realized that we could negotiate way better rates if we were to pay the doctor directly without them having to bill health insurance. I didn't know that I can negotiate with the hospital, so that $8,000 bill, I probably could've got down to 4,500, something like that.
And so I was started building these tools to allow me to operate without health insurance. I was like, I bet you other people would like this too. I think, you know, there's a there's a study a few years ago where it's like, what are the the most hated industries in The United States? And government was number one. I didn't even know that was considered an industry, but apparently it is. And health insurance and pharma were two and three. Yep. So I was like, I bet you other people would want something like this too. And so I started CrowdHealth in April of twenty one. Actually, yesterday was our four year birthday. And in essence, what it is is we've gotten a a bunch of people together to tend we're at 10,000 members right now who are willing to fund each other in a decentralized way, their heck their health expenses.
So, you know, if my daughter breaks her arm and it's $5,000, then crowd health will go to 50 people within the community and say, hey. This guy in Austin, Texas, his daughter broke his arm. Would you be willing to give him a hundred bucks? And if you say yes, then a hundred dollars goes from their account to my account. And once 50 people say yes, I now have $5,000 in my account where I can go and pay for this broken arm directly. And as a result, the doctor is giving me way better rates because he or she doesn't have to go and bill health insurance, which is a huge administrative task for them. In fact, about 15 per week is what an average doctor spends fighting with health insurance just to get these bills paid. So if I can pay the doctor directly, he gets the money right away. He doesn't have to fight with health insurance.
The doctor patient relationship is reestablished because we don't have a health insurance plan in the middle. So, it's worked, you know, brilliantly over the last four years for about 20,000 bills, everything from little pediatric visits to you know, we've had dozens of cancer cases and NICU babies and automobile accidents and all kinds of things that that we have successfully funded through that decentralized, crowdfunded type of of model. So that at a 20,000 foot level is is how it works. And, you know, like I said, it's it's worked, you know, really, really well over the last four years.
[00:16:54] David Bennett:
So it's it's like crowdfunding only in the specific realm of of replacing the defunct health insurance system and the way they interact with health care. I it it seems like a very simple model, but it's solving a a huge problem. And you guys have have been able to make that work because I've got I've got a a a note here that says one in five in network Obama Obamacare claims are actually denied. That's a 20% denial rate. And with that with those kind of numbers, you're rolling dice, and and still you're you're paying I've heard numbers anywhere between 900 and $1,800 a month depending on the package that you get from healthcare.gov.
And you're just you're paying to roll dice. That's a lot of money to roll dice and come up bupkis, you know, one fifth of the time. And so this this even though that, like, I I don't I don't like the word crowdfunding when it comes to something as important as this, but you guys have seen to make that model work very, very well, because you got 10,000 members, if I heard you correctly. Right?
[00:18:10] Andy Schoonover:
Mhmm.
[00:18:11] David Bennett:
And you started, like, four years ago. So you guys have have have ramped up pretty well. And you were talking about you were talking about, like, a broken arm, but I I've got a a a CBS article here where you guys were actually able to get a a girl a brand new arm because she had it severed. And Crowd Health did that, and their her insurance company
[00:18:40] Andy Schoonover:
wouldn't wouldn't pay for a pros I I'm assuming a prosthetic arm. Right? Is that am I getting close there? Yeah. Yeah. We yeah. So, I mean, you made a bunch of good points, which is, you know, one out of, about one out of five are declined. I, unfortunately, was one out of five, you know, with my 8,000 bill. Yeah. Remy, who that CBS article is about is one out of five. And and so she got her bill declined for medical necessity. And so, you know, we have about 200,000 families every year go bankrupt due to a medical event even though they have health insurance. So as you as you said before, you're rolling the dice. And if the dice doesn't go your way, then you are you're toast. And a lot of these people, you know, if you don't have for me, it was $8,000. For her, it was $24,000.
If you don't have that money, then you either have to do without, which, you know, puts you into medical harm from my perspective, or you, you know, you you, you know, you you you gotta go bankrupt, unfortunately. And, you know, a lot of people don't have $8.10, $1,214,000 dollars sitting in their bank account for a medical emergency. And so that those Obamacare plans from my perspective are putting these people into to medical bankruptcy, which is just an absolute shame. And, again, it's two reasons. It's one, really, really high deductibles where you don't have enough cash in the bank to actually pay your deductible. And two, it's because your bills are denied.
And, you know, if you go to the ER and you have a $50,000 bill and the health insurance plan denies it, most of us are toast. You know, and and and they're relying upon something that I don't think is is really, you know, reliable. And so, you know, to your other point, yes, we're we're we're crowdfunding, and it makes people uncomfortable because the way it's been doing we've been doing this in the past is, like, GoFundMe. Everybody knows GoFundMe. And people have to put it up on their, you know, social media platforms and, you know, a broken arm is not like a a heart tugger that people randomly are just gonna give to you. But what we've done is we've created this group of 10,000 people who've all said, hey. I'll help if somebody has has a problem. And the way that it works is when I request money for my daughter's broken arm or my broken arm or whatever, they actually know if I, over the last 10 times, have said, you know, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes to other people or if I said no, no, no, no, no to other people. And if I've said yes yes yes, I've been a good member of the community. If somebody has asked me, I've given.
If I've said no no no, then I'm just I'm here to be a taker and not a giver. And so, you know, a % of the time where you've you've been a good giver, they've gotten funded. Now it's only, well, somewhere between 1020% of the time if you've only been a taker has that been funded. And so, you know, this reciprocity, it's what drives all communities, not just crowd health. Like, it's you know, if if you're a bad neighbor, and you come over and ask for, you know, salt or whatever, you know, I I may not have salt. If you're a good neighbor Yeah. And you come over and you I'm like, of course, I have, you know, salt or flour or whatever. Right? Like, that you'd ask your neighbor for. So, you know, we're really trying to create a a community here who are willing to help each other. And, you know, like I said, it's been 20,000 bills so far, and 99.9% of them that have been submitted to the community for funding have gotten have gotten funded.
That point 1% that didn't get funded are from people who are takers and and not givers to the community, and so they their bill didn't get fully funded. So it's a really cool process internally and a really cool community to be a part of.
[00:22:30] David Bennett:
Now you've you really hit on what it is that I that I wanted to or the the sort of the model that I had in my head. You got crowdfunding, and everybody thinks of Geyser or GoFundMe or whatever, but you've actually taken it and turned it into a community, and that community relationship building that's inside that is kinda knitting the all this together. Without that community, this wouldn't have worked without those without those community ties, would it? Or or do you think it would?
[00:23:04] Andy Schoonover:
I I think we can we could've created another GoFundMe for just, you know, health care. Right. Man, I don't think that would have worked. I think you have to build build the community. You know? And and look, your Bitcoin, Ann, we've got something like 2,000 of our 10,000. Maybe it's even more than that by now. All our community members are are Bitcoiners. And so the other cool component of this too is, like, look. I'm gonna be asking money from people who are in my tribe. And so that also impacts, you know, my consumption and, you know, whether I go and shop for a good price on health care and a whole bunch of things that have enabled us to, am I willing to negotiate with the health care provider? You know, it's like an ER visit. Like, do I just pay the bill and not worry about it or actually, you know, let crowd help negotiate it for me because that's gonna reduce the price of that bill. And so I don't have to stick another Bitcoiner with an inflated cost.
It it totally changes the behavior within the the the the community as well. Because we're not we're not sending a bill to UnitedHealthcare, which I don't really care about UnitedHealthcare. I'm sending the bill to other people in my community, other people in my tribe, and I do care about them. You know, I want them to stack as many stats as possible. So, you know, I I I'm I'm actually motivated to to to act, you know, like their money is my money in in some ways.
[00:24:30] David Bennett:
Now this is I I've heard I've heard you and, what one other member of your crew on at least three or four podcasts, and I have yet to find a podcast where they're talking about crowd health that dives into the following. You're talking about negotiation. Most of the podcasts that I've heard when y'all are interviewed don't dig into that, and I think that this is the most important component to how crowd health is is not only functional, but is starting to become or has been very, very successful and will probably continue.
And it's that negotiation of the bill. And I I wanna know way more about that because, like you said, you had an $8,000 because my my son had, ear tubes too. He had the exact same problem. Couldn't hear, was always having a headache. You know, it was, like, clearly having major problems. He was an infant when this when this occurred. And, it's a fit like I said, it's fifteen minute procedure. Luckily, you know, I was working for Texas Tech University at the time at Blue Cross Blue Shield, and they basically covered the whole thing. But that's not always the case. And and in fact, I was I I came up, you know, I I came up rolling sevens on that one, but that's not the case. And when when you end up with these bills because I've got a I've got a couple of them laying on my desk right here from some esophageal stuff, and I'm looking at this stuff going, I I can't even navigate this. I'm not even I'm not qualified as a patient to navigate what I'm actually being sent information wise.
Can you please please take us deep into the the negotiation stage of what crowd health does for their members?
[00:26:26] Andy Schoonover:
Sure. You know, I'll I'll give you even a personal example. So, about a year let's see, year and a half ago, I was sitting in Bitcoin Commons here in Austin, and I was on a, you know, similar, you know, Zoom call like this. And I was, talking, and all of a sudden, I couldn't speak. Like, I I could not my vocabulary went from, like, this to, like, this, so I could not put together a sentence. I thought that I was having a stroke. So I walked out, and I handed my phone to, Parker Lewis, who many I'm sure you know Parker who listened to this. I said, Parker, call 911. And so he called 911.
They came. They grabbed me. They took me to the hospital. And, you know, over the course of, you know, three or four hours, they found out that I was just having a migraine. But they kept me in the hospital overnight due to some administrative error on their end, so I was had to stay in the hospital. The the guy who who decided I had a migraine did not communicate that to the next guy who took over, and therefore, it was too late for the neurologist to give me the sign off, and so I had to stick around for another, you know, twelve hours sitting in the hospital. Okay. I, I sit there in the morning, and I'm like, I had a migraine. Why am I here? They're like, you're right. You have a migraine. All good. We'll get you out of here quick. And so I was like, great. So, like, thirty minutes after that, a physical therapist and an occupational therapist came in and said, hey. We just need to do some, you know, some evaluation of you to make sure that you can get out of here. I was like, because they put me in the stroke unit. Uh-huh. And I said, I just had a migraine. I don't need any evaluation. Just let me go home. They're like, promise it'll take ten minutes. So they had me put on socks, brush my teeth, and walk down the hall to make sure that I was okay. Wow.
So I get the bill, and they charged me for in those ten minutes, they charged me eight different visits, four OT visits and four physical therapy visits. Holy. And each one of them were somewhere between 250 and $400 piece. And so, you know, I'm sitting here. I'm looking at this bill. It's like, one, you didn't give me eight visits. Two, you didn't, you I didn't need these visits. And then on top of that, they stuck me with an IV for the entire time. And I asked the the nurse, I was like, why why why is this IV in here? And she's like, oh, and I dehydrated. She's like, no. You're not dehydrated. I just am doing this because this is just what we do on the stroke ward. I was like, I'm not having a stroke. She's like, you know, we're just making sure. And so I and for the for that IV, one thousand milliliters of saline, which I can buy off of Amazon for $8 Uh-huh. Was charged I was charged $5,100 for that.
So Wow. I'm I'm telling you the story because, in essence, what we do is if you get an if you go to the ER, you will send us a bill. You take a pic or you take a picture of a bill and through our app, we got back end tech that scrapes through that bill and says, okay. Is this needed? Is this a fair price? You know, we walk through it with you. And then we then can send on your behalf a letter
[00:29:44] David Bennett:
to the hospital to say, listen. He didn't need an IV.
[00:29:47] Andy Schoonover:
He didn't need to stay overnight. He need didn't need eight PT and OT visits. And by the way, he didn't have eight PT and OT visits. And then on top of that, what we do is benchmark the prices to what a fair price is, and we will send that to the hospital and say, hey. The all for all of these reasons, this is not fair. Right? And so through that negotiation, which we will handle for you, we're typically able to get these bills down by 75% ish. Mhmm. So we take a very active approach in helping you navigate these bills and and, and negotiate them for you. So we're able to scrape out all of the nonsense.
One other quick kind of, point here. About 70 to 80% of the bills that we get in are coded as either emergency, like, not to get into too much detail, but there's five codes that the ER will use. One from, like, minor doesn't need to be in the ER to five, which is this person's about to die. We need to get them involved. Right? Mhmm. Four so the so stage four and stage five, between seventy percent and eighty percent of our visits are four or five, which means they're, like, super critical.
[00:31:03] David Bennett:
Right.
[00:31:04] Andy Schoonover:
The problem with that is that other data has come out to say seventy percent of hospital or ER visits are not needed, which means they're ones or twos. So if we're getting charged our members are getting charged 70 per or 80% of the time for the critical, most critical, or second most critical, yet 70% of the the ER visits are not critical, how does that math work? Right? Right. So we've seen nine nine the the the stage four be billed for, you know, a broken arm. This is not a 99284. This is not a stage four. This is a stage one or stage two. And so what these hospitals do is what it's called upcoding. They upcode to the highest possible level that they can get away with for billing purposes where it's just not accurate. And so we help you figure out what's accurate and what's not. And so we've got a team of people that do that on our end. And, again, all you have to do is upload the bill. We do all the work on the back end to help you with those bills to really navigate those better, in a in essence what we do. And we actually have attorneys on our team to help you go through that and engage the hospital on your behalf. And the vast majority of the time, these hospitals are like, fine. You're right. We'll significantly reduce these bills. And so we take a very active approach in that. See,
[00:32:23] David Bennett:
that's this is one of the things when I after y'all launched, I I I can't remember if it was you or was one of your crew. We were talking about this before I before I hit record. But we had talked about I had asked them a specific question about this negotiation stuff because nobody was really talking about that. And I can't I can't iterate enough how much that is, like, the, like, the the first burn down stage. Because with without that, then you're passing on to the rest of the community a whole hell of a lot more that they gotta take care of, and you're like you guys are like, oh, well, no. We've got this this value added thing here for lack of a better term where what we're gonna do is we know these codes.
We know what's necessary. We've got and I I guess but the question I'm getting at is the people that are doing the the getting on the phone or writing the letters or writing the emails, are they past professional health care workers that are able to negotiate this? Or who are you how how are you doing this? What what kind of person are you getting to do these negotiations?
[00:33:40] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. I mean, the the person who's in charge of of going through your bill was actually on the hospital side, you know, on the billing billing side. And so understands all these codes, how they work together, you know, which codes go together, which codes don't go together. And so we've got people who understand these codes really, really well because they're they're the ones on the hospital side trying to, you know, upcode these. And this person was basically like, I couldn't do this anymore. Like, in just my morality, I couldn't, you know, do what I was doing. And so I wanna be on the other side of things and actually helping patients get billed correctly as opposed to getting billed maximally, you know, which is what she was tasked with doing on on on the hospital side. So we've got professionals internally that understand this stuff. They understand this stuff way better than me. They understand this stuff way better than you. No offense. But, like, this is, like, their gig to really understand what is going on within the hospital to be able to code these things. And they all if she knows all the tips and tricks, you know, that, these hospitals pull to maximize their billing. So, you know, we put a stop to that,
[00:34:51] David Bennett:
and and our team is really, really good at it. Well, there's no offense taken on my side because as I said, I'm I'm unqualified as a patient to actually look at the stuff I'm being sent by hospitals or doctors. And I'll give you, like, the same example because you were talking about coding needs to be in the emergency room because they're gonna die all the way to doesn't even really need that. But there's but those codes reach way deeper. Like, they get way more granular. Right? Like, Tylenol three is not listed as an as a line item. It's gonna be something like $0.06 $4.01 2.
Right. If I'm looking at my bill and I have a and I have the notion that maybe I'm being overcharged, and I want to call my hospital and say, we need to negotiate this because I I think I'm being charged too much. Well, automatically, that IV that is $5,100, I can't see as see it as an IV. I the information that I get sent is literally a list of codes. Yeah. And I can't read those, which puts me in a bad, bad situation from a negotiation stage. And that's what I think a lot of people don't understand is that they're put being forced into a position where they don't even think negotiation is possible because the language being used is something they don't speak. And that is the easiest way to block somebody off from from them believing that they can perform a particular task, is to make sure that they don't understand or have a hope in hell of ever understanding what is actually going on.
And that's why I get kind of because this was one of the first things that I heard about crowd health was the negotiation side of it. And the crowdfunding part was actually, for me, kinda secondary. It's like somebody who understands how to look at my bill and knows what happened, when it happened, what I was there for, and and do these things actually fit together. And I I just I can't I just wanted to make sure that that we talked about that a lot because that's the way that I can pay. What is it fit is it $55 a month for CRAD Health? Yeah. And that's the that's the base layer. And then if a situation comes up for one of the other members, everybody gets, I guess, gets an email that says, hey. This thing has happened.
You do you wanna kick in, like, extra money? Is is that how it works?
[00:37:30] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. It goes $55 to us, that that keeps the light on lights on for crowd health. And then we ask you for up to an additional a hundred and $40 if you're an individual, to help somebody else out in the community. And we'll only ask you, you know, once, sometimes twice, but mostly once a a a month to help somebody else out in the community. So we're not, you know, spraying you with a thousand emails. It's just once. Right. And, you know, and and I say max of one forty because we only ask for, you know, what the community needs that month. So at the beginning of every month, we kinda look at all the bills and make a projection and say, hey. You know? For so for example, you know, in April, I think we're asking for $80, Sorry. $85 a month of the $1.40.
So that additional $55 a month, you get to keep. You know? You can do with it whatever you wanna do with it. We'll never call that back, but we just don't have enough bills in the system so that we we don't need to ask for the entire $1.40. But that also allows us that if we get, like, a bunch of bills in the system, then we can take that 85 up to $1.40 because that's the max so that those bills, can get paid. But we've only asked for the max three times in the last, you know, four years. So it doesn't happen very often, and that's, you know, where where situations in which we had, you know, a bunch of NICU babies all at the same time. And so we had to ask for, you know, $1.40. And then when those bills got paid, we went back down to, you know, something significantly lower than that. So that's the beauty of this where, you know, there's no big pile of of cash on the back end to pay these bills like health insurance plans. And a lot of people are freaked out about that, but as Bitcoiners, we know, like, that pile of cash is losing value every single day. And so we prefer you to have that money so you can stack stats or do whatever you want with it so that that you you actually get value out of that as opposed to it melting away in this big pile of fiat on the back end. So, that's just our model, and like I said, it's worked super, super well over the last 20,000 bills.
[00:39:32] David Bennett:
Well, you know, I was thinking about that, and and I came up I was on a walk before this because I'd I'd usually try to develop the questions very close to the actual interview. It's probably a bad habit, but I started wondering about that. And it's not just about where where Bitcoin fits in. It's it's more about have you guys do you guys have enough data where you've done, like, a model of the maximum potential payout versus the number of users in your system? Have y'all looked at anything like that? Like like, worst case scenario types issue given how big your network is?
[00:40:12] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. I mean, the so the interesting thing about what we do is that I'll I'll give you one one quick example of, you know, a really big bill, and the way that it works with big bills because it's very different from the way that big bills with health insurance work. We had a guy, who was in Montana who, was out fishing, and he was in Bear Country, wolf Country. And so he had a 44 in his in his holster, and he caught a fish. He leaned down. The gun fell out of his holster. It hit the hammer perfectly. It went off. Oh. It 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. Now this guy was in the middle of nowhere. He was about two hours from the closest hospital. So a helicopter had to come in and pretty much pick him up off the side of a river, take him to the hospital. He was in a coma, for a while. They thought he was gonna die.
They wouldn't let him drive home to California. So, you know, he drove home. He got sepsis on the way home. And so he was in sepsis for, I think, weeks. And so, you know, this is one of those bills that's a monster. I mean, it's an absolute monster bill. Right. But this happened in July. We found out about it. And so we started crowdfunding for this in August, September, October. We started finally getting bills in October. But by that time, you know, it's already three months passed. We had already crowdfunded a bunch of it. And then, you know, it takes typically three to six months to negotiate these bills. So we, you know, continue to crowdfund in October, November, December. And so these big bills typically are stretched out over a long period of time, and therefore, you don't have the huge variations in kind of month to month expenditures.
You can see them coming, and so you can crowdfund accordingly. And so that's how we we deal with some of these, you know, really, really big bills because we can kinda stretch that crowdfunding over a period of time. And so the spikes are much less, you know, large, when you when you can deal with it in in this way. And even some of the big things that people think about, like cancer cases, example. And we've had dozens of cancer cases now and including some really bad ones. I mean, this we have a member, unfortunately, who's who struggle with stage four lymphoma. We've had melanoma. We've had breast bunch of breast cancers. We've had colon cancers, you know, cervical, uterine cancer, you know, all kinds of different stuff. Pretty much any cancer you can think of, we've we've dealt with it. Leukemia.
And so those those are big expenses, but they take place over a long period of time. Right. Right? And so it's not like you have these big variations in in in funding requirements from from month to month. And so, like I said and we're still only on average, we've only asked over the last twelve months a hundred of that one forty. And so we're still, whatever that is, you know, 30 or 35% below what our maximum is. And so we can always lift it to that maximum for a period of time to get those bills paid and then lower it again when the bills fall off. So it's just a totally different way of thinking about these health care expenses than health insurance plans.
And like I said, we've had huge, huge bills pop up. NICU babies are are our biggest. You know, these neck these babies can be in the NICU for months at a time and, you know, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. And as a result of that, we we can, you know, start crowdfunding as soon as we know that this big health event is happening. So the by by the time they get the bills, we've had most of that crowdfunded, and then we can, you know, crowdfunded up to three to six months later. And so it gives us some time to get those paid out. And so it's it's worked really, really well.
[00:43:55] David Bennett:
Well, would because I I know that, that you guys that Bitcoin is part of what it is that y'all do, but y'all aren't actually leveraging Bitcoin on the back end, like, you're keeping it on your books for I I am I trying to say, like, an expandable bladder? Like, you're you're saying, like, health care companies have massive amounts of fiat just chilling out, and if something happens, they they just draw off that pile or whatever. Yep. Are you guys doing that? Are y'all keeping Bitcoin on your books at all in in the same kind of way for the same kind of reasons, or is it just flow through?
[00:44:34] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. I mean, we have Bitcoin on our books, but it's not to pay bills. It's just for a a corporate treasury, strategy. You know? And we, we do not use Bitcoin to to get those bills paid currently. You know, the only Bitcoin play right now is we have a lot of Bitcoiners, and that excess the excess funds that I was talking about. So we can ask you up to $1.40, but we're only asking you 85 this month. That 55, you can contribute, but that 55 goes directly to a a fold account that you start and then convert it to Bitcoin right away. So that excess can basically be auto kind of converted to to stacking sets, and so it's just been a good way for our members to, you know, stack every single month, in in more of an intentional way. You You know? And, ultimately, what we wanna do is I'm I'm a Bitcoiner, and I wanna change health care too. So I'm I'm trying to kill two birds with one stone here. But, ultimately, what we wanna do is create scale within the Bitcoin community, so that we can actually start funding each other in Bitcoin as opposed to dollars.
We're also on the other end getting a database of doctors and even some hospitals now who will accept Bitcoin as payment. And so if we can have the funding and the payment done in Bitcoin, that creates Bitcoin circularity within the health care space. And I I'm a huge advocate of Bitcoin circularity. And so if we can do it within the $5,000,000,000,000 health care space, then I think that goes a long way of getting, you know, Bitcoin circularity in in some of the other industries. And for most of us, health care is our, you know, number either number one, two, or three expense line item on our, you know, monthly, you know, personal budgets. And so if we can take one of those huge line items and transition them to being paid in Bitcoin so you can get out of Fiat in that line item, we think that's a a huge, you know, advancement in in Bitcoin usability and using it truly as a medium of exchange. So that's what I get really excited about.
I need scale to do that clearly. So I'm trying to reach out to the Bitcoin communities. Like I said, I was on Safadine's, podcast yesterday trying to get more Bitcoiners signed up. Because we if we have that scale within the Bitcoin community, then that circularity is is the next step.
[00:46:53] David Bennett:
Well, you you had mentioned getting doctors into the network or or or rather doctors make sure I I make sure I say what you said. Not getting doctors in the network, but getting more doctors to actually accept Bitcoin for their services. And the question that I have is I kinda wanna go back to, like, what I accidentally said is is are y'all actually looking at getting doctors into, for lack of a better term, y'all's network where you're working with a specific set of doctors where you can send people in the community to say, this is this is your guy, or is it just we just wanna get as many doctors as possible to take Pickpoint?
[00:47:37] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. I mean, I think that we have to define network. You know, network is defined within health insurance is here's the set of doctors you can go to. Right. You cannot go out to any other doctors because if you do, then you you basically have to pay for it. Right? So we do not have a network of doctors that you have to pay. What I'm trying to do is provide you with more of a marketplace to say, hey. You know, if you live in Austin, Texas that and you you need a primary care doc, here are 10 primary care docs in Austin, Texas that accept Bitcoin. You know? Go and choose one of them, or you can choose another doctor. I don't care. But we're just trying to give you information so that you can be truly sovereign in your health care and choose who you wanna wanna go to. And most Bitcoiners wanna go to doctors who accept Bitcoin. I mean, there that means they they generally have the same worldview on on some of these self sovereignty issues and and therefore want to, you know, be be a member of of their their practice.
So we're just trying to give our members more more information.
[00:48:37] David Bennett:
And that is what I mean by network in this case. Like like I said, for lack of a better term. And and I definitely don't mean in network versus out of network as much as a network of people that are connected together through some common goal, which, you know, does not preclude somebody being able to go outside that network if they wanna have their own doctor then you know, or their own hospital or whatever. Their their the negotiation team is still there. And and I think that that's really important to iterate that that is that in network, out network is definitely not part of what you're doing. But I just I I keep seeing all these doctors on, like, you know, like, doctor Sean Baker.
Yeah. You know? There there's a whole bunch of doctors on, you know, on Twitter. There's a whole bunch of doctors on Nostra that that, I it and a lot of them understand that most of our health issues are coming out of, you know, like, really bad nutrition. We already talked about the fact that we've we've damn near destroyed our our agricultural system top to bottom. Yep. And we've we've done it in several different ways, but nutrition is definitely one of them. But I I just keep thinking, you know, like, having having these people as, like, part of what you guys are doing. And and I guess the example that I that I had was, like, you know, could could crowd health integrate health professionals that are aligned with sovereignty and nutrition and possibly, you know, allowing like, let's say that some of these doctors have a paywall blog. You can read about their new you know, like, what they think about nutrition.
Or, like, you know, like, they're they have, like, extra things that they can give, but, you know what, they don't wanna give away for free to be able to work out a deal with these doctors to come into crowd health and say, somehow or another, we're gonna partner up, and you're gonna give all of your stuff to our customers. Like, you're I, like, I, as a customer of crowd health, would be able to be reach beyond any paywall for any of these doctors that have extra information on nutrition, carnivoreism, keto diet Mhmm. Anything like that? Because I know they exist out there. And Yeah. I I just wonder if those kinds of networking opportunities are considered in, you know, within what you guys are doing is in your business model or not? I'm just kinda, like, reaching for stuff here.
[00:51:03] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. No. I mean, I I I I love, you know, doctor Baker. I've been on his podcast twice now. You know, the carnivores kinda right behind the Bitcoiners, are our second probably largest contingent in in the, in the crowd health community. But we have not, like, reached out and and asked for special access to them or or anything like that. I mean, I think there's probably opportunities to do that as we as we scale up. You know, if we've got 500 people in Austin, Texas who are looking for a carnivore doc, you know, I what what we are hearing from doctors is I want more people who pay me directly as opposed to, you know, me billing through health insurance.
And we get dozens of doctors every month. I think one week, we had, like, 50 or 60 doctors reach out to us, and it was like, I I wanna be a I wanna be a part of whatever database you have because if I have crowd health members in Austin or I don't care where Minneapolis or Topeka or whatever, like, I would love for them to have access to me because I have the same world view as as them. So, you know, it's it's it is a a a a a network per se, but network more in terms of, like, a business network where you need the the buyers of the service and the sellers of the service both to come together in a marketplace.
And if I only have one person in Austin, Texas looking for a carnivore doc, then, you know, the carnivore doc is like, okay. That's great. But, like, I need scale on my side too. So I need I need both the buyers and the sellers to get together on a marketplace. And that's in essence what we're trying to do is is create some scale so that we can have doctors in Austin or Minneapolis or Topeka, actually provide services to only carnivores because now we have, you know, the scale to enable them to do that financially so that they can ditch UnitedHealthcare altogether. They don't have to deal with that nonsense. They don't have to deal with, you know, the the billing, you know, component of that, and they can get paid directly by their members. I mean, that's my ultimate goal is to give doctors the ability to get to escape the system and and get paid directly from from our members.
And I think we're gonna be able to do that with some scale.
[00:53:08] David Bennett:
Well, just to be clear, you guys are available nationwide. I mean, it's not just Texas. Right?
[00:53:14] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. We're in all 50 states. Yep. Puerto Rico, DC, US Virgin Islands, anywhere. And in fact, you know, you can even live outside the country as long as you are able to get a US bank account. Because one of the things that we do when you sign up is you you sign up for a bank account, and that's how all the funds are transferred is through through the actual bank because we can't actually transfer funds. And we don't want it to touch our our balance sheet because, you know, we just don't wanna touch the money. So Right. You can and, actually, I think Sethadin is a member. He lives in, I believe, Lebanon, and he's a paying member of Sprout Health even though he lives in Lebanon because he can he he he has the ability to get a US bank account. So we've got probably a couple hundred members or something like that that actually live out of the country.
The other great thing with CrowdHealth too is which if you're traveling, you can use CrowdHealth wherever you go. Yeah. So you don't have to get travel insurance or anything like that. We had a guy who got, bacterial meningitis when he was in Japan and went into a coma and submitted that for the community. So, you know, you you can use Crowd Health wherever you are, you know, regardless of where you are in the in in the world.
[00:54:27] David Bennett:
Well, we were talking earlier about, about the negotiation part, which I I still believe is a critical issue here. So here's my here I I wanna throw out a scenario here. Let's say that I don't have health insurance, but my wife works for a university and she has UnitedHealth. Like, one one of the big four. Alright? And I decide to go ahead and sign up to CrowdHealth. Do you is it possible that crowd health would be able to like, let's say that I like, I'm on her I would be on her insurance. Like, so I would have I would be covered on my wife's insurance through UnitedHealth. Something happens. I get a stupid bill, but I'm also paying for CrowdHealth.
Would CrowdHealth be able to or willing to negotiate that bill down even though it's gonna what it ends up getting left is gonna end up getting paid for by the the other insurance company. Is that even possible?
[00:55:31] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. We have about 20% of our members who also have health insurance. You know, and most of them are just trying out crowd health to make sure that we're legit since we're so different. They're just not, you know, fully trusting that we're gonna be able to get it done. But we've helped members do that before. Yeah. So if if you have your current health insurance, we can definitely you know, we're best in taking a look at those bills and being like, yeah. That's not the right code or this was, you know, not you know, if if if a female was born and gets a circumcision, clearly, there's a problem there. You know? Like, we can look through those types of things. Right. It's harder to negotiate the price down because you're in bed with United. And United has a contract with, you know, whatever hospital your your wife works at, and they are the hospital is obligated to to pay that you know, to to get that price because that's what, you know, United has actually negotiated with them. So it's harder. It's not impossible, but it's it's way easier for us to negotiate if you're with Proud Health and don't have health insurance because there's not a prenegotiated rate already.
Okay. But we can still we can absolutely still help. Yeah. We had a we had a member who got an an a a five ER bill with, you know, per we're talking about before. Right. And because her daughter was dehydrated and went in and got fluids and, you know, we were able to help her get that down to a three instead of a five. Right? And so that was several thousand dollars of negotiations that we were able to get down. But the the member still had to pay whatever, I think this was Blue Cross Blue Shield, still had to pay whatever Blue Cross Blue Shield negotiated rate was because she used her insurance as opposed to using crowd help. Uh-huh. You know? And we're getting about 50% better prices than the big insurance plans for these large bills. So, you know, it's it's just an an inefficient way of doing it. But the other thing we can do too is is help you fund your deductible. So anything that the health insurance plan doesn't pay, we can submit to the community to pay. So if you have got, like, a Obamacare plan that's $14,000 deductible, we will be able to help you fund that $14,000 deductible because the health plan won't pay it.
So that is, one of the reasons why our members would use crowd health. Yeah. That's a huge thing. So you've got a discount for members
[00:57:54] David Bennett:
who are metabolically fit. Could you say a couple of things about that?
[00:57:58] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. You know, it's interesting with with health insurance, you know, unlike other types of insurance. You know, if you have homeowners insurance and you live in a place that is prone to natural disasters, you're gonna pay more. Yeah. If you have car insurance and you're a bad driver, you're gonna pay more. For for health insurance, it's actually illegal for people to, you know, to vary rate depending upon how healthy you are. This is another government regulation. And so, you know, what we do is basically you know, we're not health insurance, and so we we can, you know, give people better deals. And so as of right now, we give you a 10% discount if you're metabolically healthy. So you either have to submit a an insulin, a fasting insulin.
I think it's under 5.5 or if you are in the bottom twenty five percent of people with visceral fat. So your visceral fat levels are really, really low. Right. And just for those listening who don't don't understand, visceral fat is not necessarily the fat around your belly. It's the fat that's, like, hanging out in between your organs, and that's the stuff that creates really bad chronic conditions. And so we will we'll give you a 10% discount on crowd health if you fit into one of those categories. Starting in q four, that will go from 10% to 20% if you have both of them. So if you can show us a low visceral fat and a low fasting insulin, we'll actually give you 20%.
I'm actually I'm actually trying to add a third component, which is whether you can squat, 1.75 times your body weight. Yeah. Yeah. Which means that, you know, you're actually, like, doing what you need to do to take care of your body. I mean, 1.75 is a lot. But, you know, it's it's one of these things. Like, I want to incentivize people to get stronger, healthier because, ultimately, I want you to live your best life in your seventies, eighties, and nineties. You know? And if you're metabolically unhealthy in your forties, fifties, and sixties, then you're not gonna live your best life.
I want you to die fast instead of die slow, if you know what I mean. Right. You know? Nobody wants to live the last three or four years in a nursing home, you know, having somebody else, you you know, with a with a tube stuck into you for feeding. Right? Or, you know, somebody have to take you to the nobody wants to live that life, and so we want people to thrive through their seventies, eighties, and nineties. And I think metabolic health is the clearest way of of getting there. So So we're giving people discounts, for being metabolically healthy.
[01:00:22] David Bennett:
And you guys have also inked a deal with Fold. Right? Because we're talking about that a little bit earlier today. You wanna say something about exactly what is it just that I get a full plus membership with, CrowdHealth?
[01:00:36] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. You get a full plus membership, which, you know, currently is about a hundred bucks a month or a year. And so we will pay that hundred dollars, a year for you. And, you know, as a part of our kind of crowdfunding component, anything any of those excess funds go directly to fold and then convert it to Bitcoin. So you're intentionally stacking sats in addition to paying for your health care. So you almost have, like, a little, Bitcoin HSAA, you know, on the side. It's not an HSA, but it's it kinda feels like that, right, where you're you're stacking for something big happens in the future, and we don't have any access to that. That's totally on your full account. You can use it for whatever you want, but I just kinda the way I think about it when I when I put money into that account is, like, yeah. It's my little mini Bitcoin HSA over here that's growing in value as opposed to melting away in in Fiat and some other HSA.
[01:01:28] David Bennett:
Awesome. And they'll I wanna keep this at an hour because I know you got stuff to do. You got a book coming out. Yeah. What what's the name of it?
[01:01:38] Andy Schoonover:
It's called Fiat Medicine. Nice. And it is going to be published by by Safedine's Safe House. I'm writing it with Matt Lishak who also wrote Fiat Food. So the two of us are putting together a a book that should be out late summer, early fall called Fiat Medicine. In essence, what it does is, you know, as we started the conversation, kinda walks through the history of health care and why it's so screwed up and all these government interventions, a lot for, you know, consumer protectionism, but also for profiteering. And then we you know, Matt takes us up to the current current state. I talk about the current state and then what health care could look like going forward.
And, I think it's a good I think it's a great read. So, you know, we'll we'll let everybody know when that's out, but it's it's right around the corner, and I think, it's gonna be a fun read for folks. So y'all are almost finished with it? Yeah. You know, we were on our our our second draft with the editor right now, and, I think we're probably, you know, two or three weeks away from that being finalized. And once it's finalized, it heads out for publishing, and that takes, you know, a couple months. And so I think at the at the latest, we're gonna be, you know, beginning of the fall, more likely end of end of summer.
[01:02:53] David Bennett:
Okay. Well, for all those that are interested in in, reaching out to you, how can they get in contact with you, and where's the best place that they can go find inform more information about crowd health?
[01:03:05] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. All the social media accounts is join crowd health. You know, you can keep up with us there. That's probably the best way. Join crowd health Com is our website. If anybody's a Bitcoiner out there, which I know a lot of your listeners are, use promo code Bitcoin, and that'll give you $99 for the first three months, which, you know, is about, you know, 30 or 40% off of what you normally would pay. And, you know, we'd love for you to join us. More Bitcoiners, the better.
[01:03:33] David Bennett:
Yeah. I'd I'd have to agree with that one. Well, Andy, I I can't thank you enough, for clearing up some of the some of the questions that I've had for three years, honestly, because I've been wanting to ask somebody, you know, like, have an in-depth discussion about this for a long, long time, and I can't thank you enough for spending your time here on the Bitcoin ad podcast. Is there any parting shots that you wanna take? Anything else that you wanna leave the listeners with?
[01:04:00] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. I mean, I would just say, as being, somebody in in the Bitcoin space and trying to build a Bitcoin company, you know, I think one of the biggest thing is that and I and I, you know, spent the last three years at the Bitcoin commons amongst people who are entrepreneurs trying to buy Bitcoin companies. You know, it's just support Bitcoin companies. I mean, everybody needs scale to do this well. And so, you know, in any way you can support Bitcoin companies, go and and and do that, because we need more and more people on some of these services to make them really, really great. So, that's just my one push for Bitcoiners to kinda get involved in the Bitcoin space and support those of us who are trying to build Bitcoin companies.
[01:04:40] David Bennett:
Is that what you're at where you're at right now? Is it Bitcoin Commons?
[01:04:44] Andy Schoonover:
I'm at a different location today. Okay. But, yeah, normally, I'm I'm at Bitcoin Commons, which is, you know, a ton of fun to be around those folks.
[01:04:52] David Bennett:
Yeah. I just I haven't been to Austin in a long time, and I certainly haven't been there since Bitcoin Commons came up. So I don't even I I don't know where it is. I presume it's behind you somewhere. It is. Yep. I kinda figured. Alright, Andy. Well, hey. Listen, man. Again, thank you so much for being here, and we'll talk to you later.
[01:05:12] Andy Schoonover:
Thanks, brother. Thanks for having me.
[01:05:14] David Bennett:
This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
It is 01:30PM Pacific Daylight Time. It is the April 2025. This is episode ten seventy six of Bitcoin, and it's an interview show. I have Andy Schoonover from CrowdHealth on with me today, and I'm really, really happy that he could come on because I had been dying to ask some guys, any guys over at CrowdHealth a particular set of questions that I didn't think was ever answered on any of the other interviews that I've heard about CrowdHealth. And Andy, being the CEO, was basically in the best position to answer those questions, and he did so. And I can't thank Andy enough for coming on the show and being here with us today. So I'm just gonna drop you right into the into the interview.
If you have any questions at the end of the show about where to go find out more information, I will have links in the show notes. If those aren't good enough for you, feel free to DM me on Twitter. David Bennett, n as in Nancy, b as in boy, or, of course, on Nostr. I'm none your business on Nostr, so you can get a hold of me there. I will do my level best to put you in touch with Andy and any of his crew that I can so that you can learn what you whatever it is that you want to learn about crowd health. It's it's an amazing service, and it is well worth your time to figure out how we're kinda trying to bypass health care well, not health care, but the health insurance industry in The United States because it's just become it's just become too untenable, and and people like Andy are out there trying to give us navigable pathways around it. So without any further ado, here's Andy from CrowdHealth.
[00:02:00] Andy Schoonover:
Amazing.
[00:02:01] David Bennett:
And and I know is I've either talked to you or one of the other one of your other crew members at CrowdHealth. I've asked a couple of questions, I don't know, via Twitter or DM or something like that. Sure. And, so I've talked to y'all before, but you've definitely never been on the show. So welcome to the Bitcoin and podcast. We talk about Bitcoin and other things, and I figure health care is other things. So
[00:02:25] Andy Schoonover:
It's a big it's a big other. Yeah. Well, you know, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
[00:02:31] David Bennett:
Yeah. It is it is a big other. In fact, it's what is it? Like, a $4,100,000,000,000 industry health care in The United States?
[00:02:40] Andy Schoonover:
Last estimates for '24 is hitting five.
[00:02:43] David Bennett:
Oh, god almighty. Okay. That's yeah. This is and it affects everybody. So I what I wanna start here with is I just kinda wanna talk about the landscape of health care as it is right now versus what it used to be. So what do you know of the history of how health care has evolved in The United States? Like, I think what I'm getting at is, like, when I was a kid, there was not really any such thing as health insurance. You just went to the doctor. You just paid. Companies didn't offer it to their employees as a perk. And all of a sudden, the landscape has changed.
Do you know how health health insurance has evolved in The United States, and why are we here? Why why are we doing this?
[00:03:36] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. For sure. I can talk about that. Are we are we are we on now? Are we going? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Let's let's roll it, man. Let's roll. Let's roll it. Okay. Yeah. No. I for sure. You know, health health insurance started back in in the nineteen twenties where hospitals basically said, look. You know, if you pay us a monthly fee, we will take care of all of your needs. And so it was kind of a a subscription based service in in in the twenties. And then, you know, after World War two, what happened was is that the government basically put a cap on what you could pay people.
So they they basically limited the amount that you could pay people. And, you know, as a result of that, employers are like, okay. Well, if I can't pay somebody in salary, what else can I get them, that will, you know, add value to to to get them to join me as opposed to, you know, going and joining somewhere else? And so they started providing health care. And so this really started in, you know, the '19, you know, say, forties. And so that that persisted for a while. And then, you know, fast forward, you know, sixty years, Obamacare, put that you know, codified that as an employer, you now must provide health care to your employees.
So anybody over the age or over 50 employees now is required by law, to provide their their employees with with health care. You know, we also had some steps along the way, which, you know, there's the HMO Act, which was, you know, in the in the late seventies, early eighties, you know, not too distant from when, you know, Nixon took us off the gold standard. You know, it seemed like everything went awry, you know, in the the ten years following coming off the gold standard. And, you know, United, Cigna, Aetna, all were kind of the the original companies that are now those companies started within that kind of 1975 to 1985 range, with the passing of the HMO Act, which basically, you know, modified insurance as as we currently now know it.
And so, you know, it has been a a number of government interventions that with the good intent of giving people additional value, protecting them. Right? As we always know, the government always says, I'm here to protect you. Right. Has created this just you know, has bastardized health care as we've known it. You know, my brother I was born in the seventies. My brother was born in the sixties, and I think my mom paid something like $95 or or something to to have him born, you know, for his birth. Right. And and now the average is somewhere between 15 and $18,000 depending upon, you know, where you live. And so it's just been a number of legislative acts over the last, say, fifty years that have created what we we currently have within health insurance.
And people think this is very, very complex, but I've said before, and I'll say it again, it's not that hard to understand why health care has gotten so crazy. You know, you have the sellers of health care, which are these big hospital systems. They clearly want the price to go up. They want as much for the service they provide as possible. That's capitalism. I have no problem with that. The unfortunately, the buyer of health care is not me and you. We're not buying health care. It's our insurance plan that is ultimately buying health health care. And what people don't fully understand is that health insurance actually has an incentive for the prices to go up also. So, right now, there's a legislative there's a legislative act that went into effect around Obamacare where health insurance plans are maxed out at 15% of our premiums for what they can use for administrative costs and, profit.
So if I have a thousand dollars of premium, the max they can use for administrative cost and profit is a hundred and $50. Okay. So, you know, how they how do they increase profit? How do they go from a hundred and 50 to a hundred and 65, increase it by 10%? Well, your premium has to go from a thousand dollars a month to $1,100 a month. So they actually want your prices to go up over time so that their 15% chunk of your premium is as large as possible. And if you think about that the other way, which is a little bit more crazy, if it were to go down, let's just say your premium went down 10% from a thousand dollars to $900.
Well, guess what? They're the amount they can use for administrative and profit goes from a hundred and $50 to a hundred and $35 Right. Which means their profit goes down, which means they have to cut employees. They have to cancel their trips to Cabo for their big executive leadership team meetings. Right. They have to start cutting things within the organization, and, clearly, they don't wanna do that. And so they have no incentive for these prices to go down over time. And so that's how perverse it is. If you have the buyer of health care, health insurance plans wanting the price to go up, and the seller of health care, which is these big hospital systems, which are becoming more and more consolidated, if they both want the price to go up, as I told yesterday on his podcast, it doesn't take a PhD in economics to figure out what what's gonna happen to the price that the buyer and seller both want them to to go the price to go up.
[00:09:05] David Bennett:
Well yeah. You know, this sounds like a subsidy mindset. We got agricultural subsidies, and it's destroyed our food. We've got educational subsidies, and it seems to have really done in the higher education system. Is this is this pretty much the same thinking? Is is this just another form of subsidy that's destroying health care?
[00:09:29] Andy Schoonover:
Absolutely. I mean, I think that you you have it spot on. I'm sure you've seen the graph. If you have it, it's, like, astounding where they lay out over the last, I think it was thirty years, the inflation in different types or in different kind of subsets of the economy. Mhmm. You know, it's computers and it's TVs and it's cars and it's health care and it's education. Well, guess what is up into the right? Everything that the government touches is up into the right. That's education, health care, primarily. I mean, those two things are massively higher than our base inflation rate. Everything that has gone down is things that you and I purchase out of our own pockets, without government intervention.
It's computers and and food and all of these things have gone down over time, whereas everything the government touches has gone up over time. And so, you know, I I think it's clearly that government intervention, while, again, with the guys of protecting us, has actually increased our cost for health care substantially. And in fact, you know, we pay two times what other countries pay for the same health care service. Our, life expectancy is pretty much flat to now going down, whereas everybody else is up into the right. And so we're spending a lot more money and getting a lot less for it, when compared to to other countries, and I think it's a lot to do with with this this government intervention.
You know, the second component of this is that our our food system is a total and absolute mess where we our our population is about fifty percent more obese than the other, comparative countries. And so, you know, when you have obesity, which is five to 10 times more expensive, you know, than than someone who's who's not obese, who's metabolically healthy, that clearly has an impact on the consumption of of health care, you know, over over a period of time. So we've got, you know, obese people within our our country plus government intervention leads to massively high health care costs.
[00:11:35] David Bennett:
Yeah. And I would've pulled all that I would've pulled all those strings. But first, before we get any further than this, you started a company called CrowdHealth, and that that's why we're here because I wanna know more about what CrowdHealth does, why you started it. So I I think the best thing to ask right here is, what is CrowdHealth, and how does it work?
[00:12:04] Andy Schoonover:
Sure. Yeah. I'll I'll give you a little bit of background, just to give you some context. You know, I this is my second health care company. I sold my first one, and and, as a result of that, I didn't have health insurance because I was no longer employed by that that company. And so, you know, ignorantly, I thought that, the Obamacare plan was my only other option. So me, my wife, and my two girls got onto a plan. I think it's 11 or $1,200 a month. And I joke it worked until I actually had to use it. You know, my my little one was one at the time, and she was having recurring ear infections. And so we went to the ear, nose, and throat doctor or pediatrician first who said, oh, yeah. She's got a hole in her eardrum.
You know, in essence, what was going on is fluid was building up in her ears, and it popped her eardrum. And as you can imagine, a one year old doesn't take too well to that. And so Yeah. Couldn't sleep, screaming all day long, you know, a total total chaos within our on earth in our house. So we went to the ear, nose, and throat doc who's like, yeah. Hole in her eardrum. She's gotta get tubes in her ears, which are these little plastic tubes that enable that that fluid to drain from her ears. And so we went and did that. Was it we were in network. We did everything correct. And, the health insurance plan came back and said, well, first, I got the bill, and it was $8,000.
It was a fifteen minute procedure, and we got charged $8,000 for it. I'm just like, holy crap. You know, $8,000 is crazy. But I was like, this is what health insurance is for. Like, this is the whole point. And, we were at the end of the year, so we had made it most of the way through our deductible already. And so I thought the health insurance plan was gonna pay for this. And a few weeks after we had done the procedure, we got a note from our health insurance plan that says it was, not medically necessary, and so they weren't gonna pay for it. And, I was like, wait. Hold on a second. Like, my ear, nose, and throat said that I needed it. My pediatrician said that I needed it. Yet you guys were saying I don't need it. So, you know, after two rounds of appeals, they basically were like, nope. We're not paying for it. So I had to stroke an $8,000 check to pay for this, you know, year twos within my for my daughter, and I was pissed as you can probably imagine. I would imagine.
And I so I called the health insurance plan. I was like, look. I quit. You know? If you're not gonna pay my bills, I'm not paying your bills, and we became, you know, in essence, uninsured. Yeah. And so my wife looked at me and was like, okay. So, you know, what are we gonna do now? And so over the next twelve or eighteen months, we try to figure out, like, how do you live viably outside of the legacy health insurance business? And so we realized that we could negotiate way better rates if we were to pay the doctor directly without them having to bill health insurance. I didn't know that I can negotiate with the hospital, so that $8,000 bill, I probably could've got down to 4,500, something like that.
And so I was started building these tools to allow me to operate without health insurance. I was like, I bet you other people would like this too. I think, you know, there's a there's a study a few years ago where it's like, what are the the most hated industries in The United States? And government was number one. I didn't even know that was considered an industry, but apparently it is. And health insurance and pharma were two and three. Yep. So I was like, I bet you other people would want something like this too. And so I started CrowdHealth in April of twenty one. Actually, yesterday was our four year birthday. And in essence, what it is is we've gotten a a bunch of people together to tend we're at 10,000 members right now who are willing to fund each other in a decentralized way, their heck their health expenses.
So, you know, if my daughter breaks her arm and it's $5,000, then crowd health will go to 50 people within the community and say, hey. This guy in Austin, Texas, his daughter broke his arm. Would you be willing to give him a hundred bucks? And if you say yes, then a hundred dollars goes from their account to my account. And once 50 people say yes, I now have $5,000 in my account where I can go and pay for this broken arm directly. And as a result, the doctor is giving me way better rates because he or she doesn't have to go and bill health insurance, which is a huge administrative task for them. In fact, about 15 per week is what an average doctor spends fighting with health insurance just to get these bills paid. So if I can pay the doctor directly, he gets the money right away. He doesn't have to fight with health insurance.
The doctor patient relationship is reestablished because we don't have a health insurance plan in the middle. So, it's worked, you know, brilliantly over the last four years for about 20,000 bills, everything from little pediatric visits to you know, we've had dozens of cancer cases and NICU babies and automobile accidents and all kinds of things that that we have successfully funded through that decentralized, crowdfunded type of of model. So that at a 20,000 foot level is is how it works. And, you know, like I said, it's it's worked, you know, really, really well over the last four years.
[00:16:54] David Bennett:
So it's it's like crowdfunding only in the specific realm of of replacing the defunct health insurance system and the way they interact with health care. I it it seems like a very simple model, but it's solving a a huge problem. And you guys have have been able to make that work because I've got I've got a a a note here that says one in five in network Obama Obamacare claims are actually denied. That's a 20% denial rate. And with that with those kind of numbers, you're rolling dice, and and still you're you're paying I've heard numbers anywhere between 900 and $1,800 a month depending on the package that you get from healthcare.gov.
And you're just you're paying to roll dice. That's a lot of money to roll dice and come up bupkis, you know, one fifth of the time. And so this this even though that, like, I I don't I don't like the word crowdfunding when it comes to something as important as this, but you guys have seen to make that model work very, very well, because you got 10,000 members, if I heard you correctly. Right?
[00:18:10] Andy Schoonover:
Mhmm.
[00:18:11] David Bennett:
And you started, like, four years ago. So you guys have have have ramped up pretty well. And you were talking about you were talking about, like, a broken arm, but I I've got a a a CBS article here where you guys were actually able to get a a girl a brand new arm because she had it severed. And Crowd Health did that, and their her insurance company
[00:18:40] Andy Schoonover:
wouldn't wouldn't pay for a pros I I'm assuming a prosthetic arm. Right? Is that am I getting close there? Yeah. Yeah. We yeah. So, I mean, you made a bunch of good points, which is, you know, one out of, about one out of five are declined. I, unfortunately, was one out of five, you know, with my 8,000 bill. Yeah. Remy, who that CBS article is about is one out of five. And and so she got her bill declined for medical necessity. And so, you know, we have about 200,000 families every year go bankrupt due to a medical event even though they have health insurance. So as you as you said before, you're rolling the dice. And if the dice doesn't go your way, then you are you're toast. And a lot of these people, you know, if you don't have for me, it was $8,000. For her, it was $24,000.
If you don't have that money, then you either have to do without, which, you know, puts you into medical harm from my perspective, or you, you know, you you, you know, you you you gotta go bankrupt, unfortunately. And, you know, a lot of people don't have $8.10, $1,214,000 dollars sitting in their bank account for a medical emergency. And so that those Obamacare plans from my perspective are putting these people into to medical bankruptcy, which is just an absolute shame. And, again, it's two reasons. It's one, really, really high deductibles where you don't have enough cash in the bank to actually pay your deductible. And two, it's because your bills are denied.
And, you know, if you go to the ER and you have a $50,000 bill and the health insurance plan denies it, most of us are toast. You know, and and and they're relying upon something that I don't think is is really, you know, reliable. And so, you know, to your other point, yes, we're we're we're crowdfunding, and it makes people uncomfortable because the way it's been doing we've been doing this in the past is, like, GoFundMe. Everybody knows GoFundMe. And people have to put it up on their, you know, social media platforms and, you know, a broken arm is not like a a heart tugger that people randomly are just gonna give to you. But what we've done is we've created this group of 10,000 people who've all said, hey. I'll help if somebody has has a problem. And the way that it works is when I request money for my daughter's broken arm or my broken arm or whatever, they actually know if I, over the last 10 times, have said, you know, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes to other people or if I said no, no, no, no, no to other people. And if I've said yes yes yes, I've been a good member of the community. If somebody has asked me, I've given.
If I've said no no no, then I'm just I'm here to be a taker and not a giver. And so, you know, a % of the time where you've you've been a good giver, they've gotten funded. Now it's only, well, somewhere between 1020% of the time if you've only been a taker has that been funded. And so, you know, this reciprocity, it's what drives all communities, not just crowd health. Like, it's you know, if if you're a bad neighbor, and you come over and ask for, you know, salt or whatever, you know, I I may not have salt. If you're a good neighbor Yeah. And you come over and you I'm like, of course, I have, you know, salt or flour or whatever. Right? Like, that you'd ask your neighbor for. So, you know, we're really trying to create a a community here who are willing to help each other. And, you know, like I said, it's been 20,000 bills so far, and 99.9% of them that have been submitted to the community for funding have gotten have gotten funded.
That point 1% that didn't get funded are from people who are takers and and not givers to the community, and so they their bill didn't get fully funded. So it's a really cool process internally and a really cool community to be a part of.
[00:22:30] David Bennett:
Now you've you really hit on what it is that I that I wanted to or the the sort of the model that I had in my head. You got crowdfunding, and everybody thinks of Geyser or GoFundMe or whatever, but you've actually taken it and turned it into a community, and that community relationship building that's inside that is kinda knitting the all this together. Without that community, this wouldn't have worked without those without those community ties, would it? Or or do you think it would?
[00:23:04] Andy Schoonover:
I I think we can we could've created another GoFundMe for just, you know, health care. Right. Man, I don't think that would have worked. I think you have to build build the community. You know? And and look, your Bitcoin, Ann, we've got something like 2,000 of our 10,000. Maybe it's even more than that by now. All our community members are are Bitcoiners. And so the other cool component of this too is, like, look. I'm gonna be asking money from people who are in my tribe. And so that also impacts, you know, my consumption and, you know, whether I go and shop for a good price on health care and a whole bunch of things that have enabled us to, am I willing to negotiate with the health care provider? You know, it's like an ER visit. Like, do I just pay the bill and not worry about it or actually, you know, let crowd help negotiate it for me because that's gonna reduce the price of that bill. And so I don't have to stick another Bitcoiner with an inflated cost.
It it totally changes the behavior within the the the the community as well. Because we're not we're not sending a bill to UnitedHealthcare, which I don't really care about UnitedHealthcare. I'm sending the bill to other people in my community, other people in my tribe, and I do care about them. You know, I want them to stack as many stats as possible. So, you know, I I I'm I'm actually motivated to to to act, you know, like their money is my money in in some ways.
[00:24:30] David Bennett:
Now this is I I've heard I've heard you and, what one other member of your crew on at least three or four podcasts, and I have yet to find a podcast where they're talking about crowd health that dives into the following. You're talking about negotiation. Most of the podcasts that I've heard when y'all are interviewed don't dig into that, and I think that this is the most important component to how crowd health is is not only functional, but is starting to become or has been very, very successful and will probably continue.
And it's that negotiation of the bill. And I I wanna know way more about that because, like you said, you had an $8,000 because my my son had, ear tubes too. He had the exact same problem. Couldn't hear, was always having a headache. You know, it was, like, clearly having major problems. He was an infant when this when this occurred. And, it's a fit like I said, it's fifteen minute procedure. Luckily, you know, I was working for Texas Tech University at the time at Blue Cross Blue Shield, and they basically covered the whole thing. But that's not always the case. And and in fact, I was I I came up, you know, I I came up rolling sevens on that one, but that's not the case. And when when you end up with these bills because I've got a I've got a couple of them laying on my desk right here from some esophageal stuff, and I'm looking at this stuff going, I I can't even navigate this. I'm not even I'm not qualified as a patient to navigate what I'm actually being sent information wise.
Can you please please take us deep into the the negotiation stage of what crowd health does for their members?
[00:26:26] Andy Schoonover:
Sure. You know, I'll I'll give you even a personal example. So, about a year let's see, year and a half ago, I was sitting in Bitcoin Commons here in Austin, and I was on a, you know, similar, you know, Zoom call like this. And I was, talking, and all of a sudden, I couldn't speak. Like, I I could not my vocabulary went from, like, this to, like, this, so I could not put together a sentence. I thought that I was having a stroke. So I walked out, and I handed my phone to, Parker Lewis, who many I'm sure you know Parker who listened to this. I said, Parker, call 911. And so he called 911.
They came. They grabbed me. They took me to the hospital. And, you know, over the course of, you know, three or four hours, they found out that I was just having a migraine. But they kept me in the hospital overnight due to some administrative error on their end, so I was had to stay in the hospital. The the guy who who decided I had a migraine did not communicate that to the next guy who took over, and therefore, it was too late for the neurologist to give me the sign off, and so I had to stick around for another, you know, twelve hours sitting in the hospital. Okay. I, I sit there in the morning, and I'm like, I had a migraine. Why am I here? They're like, you're right. You have a migraine. All good. We'll get you out of here quick. And so I was like, great. So, like, thirty minutes after that, a physical therapist and an occupational therapist came in and said, hey. We just need to do some, you know, some evaluation of you to make sure that you can get out of here. I was like, because they put me in the stroke unit. Uh-huh. And I said, I just had a migraine. I don't need any evaluation. Just let me go home. They're like, promise it'll take ten minutes. So they had me put on socks, brush my teeth, and walk down the hall to make sure that I was okay. Wow.
So I get the bill, and they charged me for in those ten minutes, they charged me eight different visits, four OT visits and four physical therapy visits. Holy. And each one of them were somewhere between 250 and $400 piece. And so, you know, I'm sitting here. I'm looking at this bill. It's like, one, you didn't give me eight visits. Two, you didn't, you I didn't need these visits. And then on top of that, they stuck me with an IV for the entire time. And I asked the the nurse, I was like, why why why is this IV in here? And she's like, oh, and I dehydrated. She's like, no. You're not dehydrated. I just am doing this because this is just what we do on the stroke ward. I was like, I'm not having a stroke. She's like, you know, we're just making sure. And so I and for the for that IV, one thousand milliliters of saline, which I can buy off of Amazon for $8 Uh-huh. Was charged I was charged $5,100 for that.
So Wow. I'm I'm telling you the story because, in essence, what we do is if you get an if you go to the ER, you will send us a bill. You take a pic or you take a picture of a bill and through our app, we got back end tech that scrapes through that bill and says, okay. Is this needed? Is this a fair price? You know, we walk through it with you. And then we then can send on your behalf a letter
[00:29:44] David Bennett:
to the hospital to say, listen. He didn't need an IV.
[00:29:47] Andy Schoonover:
He didn't need to stay overnight. He need didn't need eight PT and OT visits. And by the way, he didn't have eight PT and OT visits. And then on top of that, what we do is benchmark the prices to what a fair price is, and we will send that to the hospital and say, hey. The all for all of these reasons, this is not fair. Right? And so through that negotiation, which we will handle for you, we're typically able to get these bills down by 75% ish. Mhmm. So we take a very active approach in helping you navigate these bills and and, and negotiate them for you. So we're able to scrape out all of the nonsense.
One other quick kind of, point here. About 70 to 80% of the bills that we get in are coded as either emergency, like, not to get into too much detail, but there's five codes that the ER will use. One from, like, minor doesn't need to be in the ER to five, which is this person's about to die. We need to get them involved. Right? Mhmm. Four so the so stage four and stage five, between seventy percent and eighty percent of our visits are four or five, which means they're, like, super critical.
[00:31:03] David Bennett:
Right.
[00:31:04] Andy Schoonover:
The problem with that is that other data has come out to say seventy percent of hospital or ER visits are not needed, which means they're ones or twos. So if we're getting charged our members are getting charged 70 per or 80% of the time for the critical, most critical, or second most critical, yet 70% of the the ER visits are not critical, how does that math work? Right? Right. So we've seen nine nine the the the stage four be billed for, you know, a broken arm. This is not a 99284. This is not a stage four. This is a stage one or stage two. And so what these hospitals do is what it's called upcoding. They upcode to the highest possible level that they can get away with for billing purposes where it's just not accurate. And so we help you figure out what's accurate and what's not. And so we've got a team of people that do that on our end. And, again, all you have to do is upload the bill. We do all the work on the back end to help you with those bills to really navigate those better, in a in essence what we do. And we actually have attorneys on our team to help you go through that and engage the hospital on your behalf. And the vast majority of the time, these hospitals are like, fine. You're right. We'll significantly reduce these bills. And so we take a very active approach in that. See,
[00:32:23] David Bennett:
that's this is one of the things when I after y'all launched, I I I can't remember if it was you or was one of your crew. We were talking about this before I before I hit record. But we had talked about I had asked them a specific question about this negotiation stuff because nobody was really talking about that. And I can't I can't iterate enough how much that is, like, the, like, the the first burn down stage. Because with without that, then you're passing on to the rest of the community a whole hell of a lot more that they gotta take care of, and you're like you guys are like, oh, well, no. We've got this this value added thing here for lack of a better term where what we're gonna do is we know these codes.
We know what's necessary. We've got and I I guess but the question I'm getting at is the people that are doing the the getting on the phone or writing the letters or writing the emails, are they past professional health care workers that are able to negotiate this? Or who are you how how are you doing this? What what kind of person are you getting to do these negotiations?
[00:33:40] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. I mean, the the person who's in charge of of going through your bill was actually on the hospital side, you know, on the billing billing side. And so understands all these codes, how they work together, you know, which codes go together, which codes don't go together. And so we've got people who understand these codes really, really well because they're they're the ones on the hospital side trying to, you know, upcode these. And this person was basically like, I couldn't do this anymore. Like, in just my morality, I couldn't, you know, do what I was doing. And so I wanna be on the other side of things and actually helping patients get billed correctly as opposed to getting billed maximally, you know, which is what she was tasked with doing on on on the hospital side. So we've got professionals internally that understand this stuff. They understand this stuff way better than me. They understand this stuff way better than you. No offense. But, like, this is, like, their gig to really understand what is going on within the hospital to be able to code these things. And they all if she knows all the tips and tricks, you know, that, these hospitals pull to maximize their billing. So, you know, we put a stop to that,
[00:34:51] David Bennett:
and and our team is really, really good at it. Well, there's no offense taken on my side because as I said, I'm I'm unqualified as a patient to actually look at the stuff I'm being sent by hospitals or doctors. And I'll give you, like, the same example because you were talking about coding needs to be in the emergency room because they're gonna die all the way to doesn't even really need that. But there's but those codes reach way deeper. Like, they get way more granular. Right? Like, Tylenol three is not listed as an as a line item. It's gonna be something like $0.06 $4.01 2.
Right. If I'm looking at my bill and I have a and I have the notion that maybe I'm being overcharged, and I want to call my hospital and say, we need to negotiate this because I I think I'm being charged too much. Well, automatically, that IV that is $5,100, I can't see as see it as an IV. I the information that I get sent is literally a list of codes. Yeah. And I can't read those, which puts me in a bad, bad situation from a negotiation stage. And that's what I think a lot of people don't understand is that they're put being forced into a position where they don't even think negotiation is possible because the language being used is something they don't speak. And that is the easiest way to block somebody off from from them believing that they can perform a particular task, is to make sure that they don't understand or have a hope in hell of ever understanding what is actually going on.
And that's why I get kind of because this was one of the first things that I heard about crowd health was the negotiation side of it. And the crowdfunding part was actually, for me, kinda secondary. It's like somebody who understands how to look at my bill and knows what happened, when it happened, what I was there for, and and do these things actually fit together. And I I just I can't I just wanted to make sure that that we talked about that a lot because that's the way that I can pay. What is it fit is it $55 a month for CRAD Health? Yeah. And that's the that's the base layer. And then if a situation comes up for one of the other members, everybody gets, I guess, gets an email that says, hey. This thing has happened.
You do you wanna kick in, like, extra money? Is is that how it works?
[00:37:30] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. It goes $55 to us, that that keeps the light on lights on for crowd health. And then we ask you for up to an additional a hundred and $40 if you're an individual, to help somebody else out in the community. And we'll only ask you, you know, once, sometimes twice, but mostly once a a a month to help somebody else out in the community. So we're not, you know, spraying you with a thousand emails. It's just once. Right. And, you know, and and I say max of one forty because we only ask for, you know, what the community needs that month. So at the beginning of every month, we kinda look at all the bills and make a projection and say, hey. You know? For so for example, you know, in April, I think we're asking for $80, Sorry. $85 a month of the $1.40.
So that additional $55 a month, you get to keep. You know? You can do with it whatever you wanna do with it. We'll never call that back, but we just don't have enough bills in the system so that we we don't need to ask for the entire $1.40. But that also allows us that if we get, like, a bunch of bills in the system, then we can take that 85 up to $1.40 because that's the max so that those bills, can get paid. But we've only asked for the max three times in the last, you know, four years. So it doesn't happen very often, and that's, you know, where where situations in which we had, you know, a bunch of NICU babies all at the same time. And so we had to ask for, you know, $1.40. And then when those bills got paid, we went back down to, you know, something significantly lower than that. So that's the beauty of this where, you know, there's no big pile of of cash on the back end to pay these bills like health insurance plans. And a lot of people are freaked out about that, but as Bitcoiners, we know, like, that pile of cash is losing value every single day. And so we prefer you to have that money so you can stack stats or do whatever you want with it so that that you you actually get value out of that as opposed to it melting away in this big pile of fiat on the back end. So, that's just our model, and like I said, it's worked super, super well over the last 20,000 bills.
[00:39:32] David Bennett:
Well, you know, I was thinking about that, and and I came up I was on a walk before this because I'd I'd usually try to develop the questions very close to the actual interview. It's probably a bad habit, but I started wondering about that. And it's not just about where where Bitcoin fits in. It's it's more about have you guys do you guys have enough data where you've done, like, a model of the maximum potential payout versus the number of users in your system? Have y'all looked at anything like that? Like like, worst case scenario types issue given how big your network is?
[00:40:12] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. I mean, the so the interesting thing about what we do is that I'll I'll give you one one quick example of, you know, a really big bill, and the way that it works with big bills because it's very different from the way that big bills with health insurance work. We had a guy, who was in Montana who, was out fishing, and he was in Bear Country, wolf Country. And so he had a 44 in his in his holster, and he caught a fish. He leaned down. The gun fell out of his holster. It hit the hammer perfectly. It went off. Oh. It 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. Now this guy was in the middle of nowhere. He was about two hours from the closest hospital. So a helicopter had to come in and pretty much pick him up off the side of a river, take him to the hospital. He was in a coma, for a while. They thought he was gonna die.
They wouldn't let him drive home to California. So, you know, he drove home. He got sepsis on the way home. And so he was in sepsis for, I think, weeks. And so, you know, this is one of those bills that's a monster. I mean, it's an absolute monster bill. Right. But this happened in July. We found out about it. And so we started crowdfunding for this in August, September, October. We started finally getting bills in October. But by that time, you know, it's already three months passed. We had already crowdfunded a bunch of it. And then, you know, it takes typically three to six months to negotiate these bills. So we, you know, continue to crowdfund in October, November, December. And so these big bills typically are stretched out over a long period of time, and therefore, you don't have the huge variations in kind of month to month expenditures.
You can see them coming, and so you can crowdfund accordingly. And so that's how we we deal with some of these, you know, really, really big bills because we can kinda stretch that crowdfunding over a period of time. And so the spikes are much less, you know, large, when you when you can deal with it in in this way. And even some of the big things that people think about, like cancer cases, example. And we've had dozens of cancer cases now and including some really bad ones. I mean, this we have a member, unfortunately, who's who struggle with stage four lymphoma. We've had melanoma. We've had breast bunch of breast cancers. We've had colon cancers, you know, cervical, uterine cancer, you know, all kinds of different stuff. Pretty much any cancer you can think of, we've we've dealt with it. Leukemia.
And so those those are big expenses, but they take place over a long period of time. Right. Right? And so it's not like you have these big variations in in in funding requirements from from month to month. And so, like I said and we're still only on average, we've only asked over the last twelve months a hundred of that one forty. And so we're still, whatever that is, you know, 30 or 35% below what our maximum is. And so we can always lift it to that maximum for a period of time to get those bills paid and then lower it again when the bills fall off. So it's just a totally different way of thinking about these health care expenses than health insurance plans.
And like I said, we've had huge, huge bills pop up. NICU babies are are our biggest. You know, these neck these babies can be in the NICU for months at a time and, you know, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. And as a result of that, we we can, you know, start crowdfunding as soon as we know that this big health event is happening. So the by by the time they get the bills, we've had most of that crowdfunded, and then we can, you know, crowdfunded up to three to six months later. And so it gives us some time to get those paid out. And so it's it's worked really, really well.
[00:43:55] David Bennett:
Well, would because I I know that, that you guys that Bitcoin is part of what it is that y'all do, but y'all aren't actually leveraging Bitcoin on the back end, like, you're keeping it on your books for I I am I trying to say, like, an expandable bladder? Like, you're you're saying, like, health care companies have massive amounts of fiat just chilling out, and if something happens, they they just draw off that pile or whatever. Yep. Are you guys doing that? Are y'all keeping Bitcoin on your books at all in in the same kind of way for the same kind of reasons, or is it just flow through?
[00:44:34] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. I mean, we have Bitcoin on our books, but it's not to pay bills. It's just for a a corporate treasury, strategy. You know? And we, we do not use Bitcoin to to get those bills paid currently. You know, the only Bitcoin play right now is we have a lot of Bitcoiners, and that excess the excess funds that I was talking about. So we can ask you up to $1.40, but we're only asking you 85 this month. That 55, you can contribute, but that 55 goes directly to a a fold account that you start and then convert it to Bitcoin right away. So that excess can basically be auto kind of converted to to stacking sets, and so it's just been a good way for our members to, you know, stack every single month, in in more of an intentional way. You You know? And, ultimately, what we wanna do is I'm I'm a Bitcoiner, and I wanna change health care too. So I'm I'm trying to kill two birds with one stone here. But, ultimately, what we wanna do is create scale within the Bitcoin community, so that we can actually start funding each other in Bitcoin as opposed to dollars.
We're also on the other end getting a database of doctors and even some hospitals now who will accept Bitcoin as payment. And so if we can have the funding and the payment done in Bitcoin, that creates Bitcoin circularity within the health care space. And I I'm a huge advocate of Bitcoin circularity. And so if we can do it within the $5,000,000,000,000 health care space, then I think that goes a long way of getting, you know, Bitcoin circularity in in some of the other industries. And for most of us, health care is our, you know, number either number one, two, or three expense line item on our, you know, monthly, you know, personal budgets. And so if we can take one of those huge line items and transition them to being paid in Bitcoin so you can get out of Fiat in that line item, we think that's a a huge, you know, advancement in in Bitcoin usability and using it truly as a medium of exchange. So that's what I get really excited about.
I need scale to do that clearly. So I'm trying to reach out to the Bitcoin communities. Like I said, I was on Safadine's, podcast yesterday trying to get more Bitcoiners signed up. Because we if we have that scale within the Bitcoin community, then that circularity is is the next step.
[00:46:53] David Bennett:
Well, you you had mentioned getting doctors into the network or or or rather doctors make sure I I make sure I say what you said. Not getting doctors in the network, but getting more doctors to actually accept Bitcoin for their services. And the question that I have is I kinda wanna go back to, like, what I accidentally said is is are y'all actually looking at getting doctors into, for lack of a better term, y'all's network where you're working with a specific set of doctors where you can send people in the community to say, this is this is your guy, or is it just we just wanna get as many doctors as possible to take Pickpoint?
[00:47:37] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. I mean, I think that we have to define network. You know, network is defined within health insurance is here's the set of doctors you can go to. Right. You cannot go out to any other doctors because if you do, then you you basically have to pay for it. Right? So we do not have a network of doctors that you have to pay. What I'm trying to do is provide you with more of a marketplace to say, hey. You know, if you live in Austin, Texas that and you you need a primary care doc, here are 10 primary care docs in Austin, Texas that accept Bitcoin. You know? Go and choose one of them, or you can choose another doctor. I don't care. But we're just trying to give you information so that you can be truly sovereign in your health care and choose who you wanna wanna go to. And most Bitcoiners wanna go to doctors who accept Bitcoin. I mean, there that means they they generally have the same worldview on on some of these self sovereignty issues and and therefore want to, you know, be be a member of of their their practice.
So we're just trying to give our members more more information.
[00:48:37] David Bennett:
And that is what I mean by network in this case. Like like I said, for lack of a better term. And and I definitely don't mean in network versus out of network as much as a network of people that are connected together through some common goal, which, you know, does not preclude somebody being able to go outside that network if they wanna have their own doctor then you know, or their own hospital or whatever. Their their the negotiation team is still there. And and I think that that's really important to iterate that that is that in network, out network is definitely not part of what you're doing. But I just I I keep seeing all these doctors on, like, you know, like, doctor Sean Baker.
Yeah. You know? There there's a whole bunch of doctors on, you know, on Twitter. There's a whole bunch of doctors on Nostra that that, I it and a lot of them understand that most of our health issues are coming out of, you know, like, really bad nutrition. We already talked about the fact that we've we've damn near destroyed our our agricultural system top to bottom. Yep. And we've we've done it in several different ways, but nutrition is definitely one of them. But I I just keep thinking, you know, like, having having these people as, like, part of what you guys are doing. And and I guess the example that I that I had was, like, you know, could could crowd health integrate health professionals that are aligned with sovereignty and nutrition and possibly, you know, allowing like, let's say that some of these doctors have a paywall blog. You can read about their new you know, like, what they think about nutrition.
Or, like, you know, like, they're they have, like, extra things that they can give, but, you know what, they don't wanna give away for free to be able to work out a deal with these doctors to come into crowd health and say, somehow or another, we're gonna partner up, and you're gonna give all of your stuff to our customers. Like, you're I, like, I, as a customer of crowd health, would be able to be reach beyond any paywall for any of these doctors that have extra information on nutrition, carnivoreism, keto diet Mhmm. Anything like that? Because I know they exist out there. And Yeah. I I just wonder if those kinds of networking opportunities are considered in, you know, within what you guys are doing is in your business model or not? I'm just kinda, like, reaching for stuff here.
[00:51:03] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. No. I mean, I I I I love, you know, doctor Baker. I've been on his podcast twice now. You know, the carnivores kinda right behind the Bitcoiners, are our second probably largest contingent in in the, in the crowd health community. But we have not, like, reached out and and asked for special access to them or or anything like that. I mean, I think there's probably opportunities to do that as we as we scale up. You know, if we've got 500 people in Austin, Texas who are looking for a carnivore doc, you know, I what what we are hearing from doctors is I want more people who pay me directly as opposed to, you know, me billing through health insurance.
And we get dozens of doctors every month. I think one week, we had, like, 50 or 60 doctors reach out to us, and it was like, I I wanna be a I wanna be a part of whatever database you have because if I have crowd health members in Austin or I don't care where Minneapolis or Topeka or whatever, like, I would love for them to have access to me because I have the same world view as as them. So, you know, it's it's it is a a a a a network per se, but network more in terms of, like, a business network where you need the the buyers of the service and the sellers of the service both to come together in a marketplace.
And if I only have one person in Austin, Texas looking for a carnivore doc, then, you know, the carnivore doc is like, okay. That's great. But, like, I need scale on my side too. So I need I need both the buyers and the sellers to get together on a marketplace. And that's in essence what we're trying to do is is create some scale so that we can have doctors in Austin or Minneapolis or Topeka, actually provide services to only carnivores because now we have, you know, the scale to enable them to do that financially so that they can ditch UnitedHealthcare altogether. They don't have to deal with that nonsense. They don't have to deal with, you know, the the billing, you know, component of that, and they can get paid directly by their members. I mean, that's my ultimate goal is to give doctors the ability to get to escape the system and and get paid directly from from our members.
And I think we're gonna be able to do that with some scale.
[00:53:08] David Bennett:
Well, just to be clear, you guys are available nationwide. I mean, it's not just Texas. Right?
[00:53:14] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. We're in all 50 states. Yep. Puerto Rico, DC, US Virgin Islands, anywhere. And in fact, you know, you can even live outside the country as long as you are able to get a US bank account. Because one of the things that we do when you sign up is you you sign up for a bank account, and that's how all the funds are transferred is through through the actual bank because we can't actually transfer funds. And we don't want it to touch our our balance sheet because, you know, we just don't wanna touch the money. So Right. You can and, actually, I think Sethadin is a member. He lives in, I believe, Lebanon, and he's a paying member of Sprout Health even though he lives in Lebanon because he can he he he has the ability to get a US bank account. So we've got probably a couple hundred members or something like that that actually live out of the country.
The other great thing with CrowdHealth too is which if you're traveling, you can use CrowdHealth wherever you go. Yeah. So you don't have to get travel insurance or anything like that. We had a guy who got, bacterial meningitis when he was in Japan and went into a coma and submitted that for the community. So, you know, you you can use Crowd Health wherever you are, you know, regardless of where you are in the in in the world.
[00:54:27] David Bennett:
Well, we were talking earlier about, about the negotiation part, which I I still believe is a critical issue here. So here's my here I I wanna throw out a scenario here. Let's say that I don't have health insurance, but my wife works for a university and she has UnitedHealth. Like, one one of the big four. Alright? And I decide to go ahead and sign up to CrowdHealth. Do you is it possible that crowd health would be able to like, let's say that I like, I'm on her I would be on her insurance. Like, so I would have I would be covered on my wife's insurance through UnitedHealth. Something happens. I get a stupid bill, but I'm also paying for CrowdHealth.
Would CrowdHealth be able to or willing to negotiate that bill down even though it's gonna what it ends up getting left is gonna end up getting paid for by the the other insurance company. Is that even possible?
[00:55:31] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. We have about 20% of our members who also have health insurance. You know, and most of them are just trying out crowd health to make sure that we're legit since we're so different. They're just not, you know, fully trusting that we're gonna be able to get it done. But we've helped members do that before. Yeah. So if if you have your current health insurance, we can definitely you know, we're best in taking a look at those bills and being like, yeah. That's not the right code or this was, you know, not you know, if if if a female was born and gets a circumcision, clearly, there's a problem there. You know? Like, we can look through those types of things. Right. It's harder to negotiate the price down because you're in bed with United. And United has a contract with, you know, whatever hospital your your wife works at, and they are the hospital is obligated to to pay that you know, to to get that price because that's what, you know, United has actually negotiated with them. So it's harder. It's not impossible, but it's it's way easier for us to negotiate if you're with Proud Health and don't have health insurance because there's not a prenegotiated rate already.
Okay. But we can still we can absolutely still help. Yeah. We had a we had a member who got an an a a five ER bill with, you know, per we're talking about before. Right. And because her daughter was dehydrated and went in and got fluids and, you know, we were able to help her get that down to a three instead of a five. Right? And so that was several thousand dollars of negotiations that we were able to get down. But the the member still had to pay whatever, I think this was Blue Cross Blue Shield, still had to pay whatever Blue Cross Blue Shield negotiated rate was because she used her insurance as opposed to using crowd help. Uh-huh. You know? And we're getting about 50% better prices than the big insurance plans for these large bills. So, you know, it's it's just an an inefficient way of doing it. But the other thing we can do too is is help you fund your deductible. So anything that the health insurance plan doesn't pay, we can submit to the community to pay. So if you have got, like, a Obamacare plan that's $14,000 deductible, we will be able to help you fund that $14,000 deductible because the health plan won't pay it.
So that is, one of the reasons why our members would use crowd health. Yeah. That's a huge thing. So you've got a discount for members
[00:57:54] David Bennett:
who are metabolically fit. Could you say a couple of things about that?
[00:57:58] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. You know, it's interesting with with health insurance, you know, unlike other types of insurance. You know, if you have homeowners insurance and you live in a place that is prone to natural disasters, you're gonna pay more. Yeah. If you have car insurance and you're a bad driver, you're gonna pay more. For for health insurance, it's actually illegal for people to, you know, to vary rate depending upon how healthy you are. This is another government regulation. And so, you know, what we do is basically you know, we're not health insurance, and so we we can, you know, give people better deals. And so as of right now, we give you a 10% discount if you're metabolically healthy. So you either have to submit a an insulin, a fasting insulin.
I think it's under 5.5 or if you are in the bottom twenty five percent of people with visceral fat. So your visceral fat levels are really, really low. Right. And just for those listening who don't don't understand, visceral fat is not necessarily the fat around your belly. It's the fat that's, like, hanging out in between your organs, and that's the stuff that creates really bad chronic conditions. And so we will we'll give you a 10% discount on crowd health if you fit into one of those categories. Starting in q four, that will go from 10% to 20% if you have both of them. So if you can show us a low visceral fat and a low fasting insulin, we'll actually give you 20%.
I'm actually I'm actually trying to add a third component, which is whether you can squat, 1.75 times your body weight. Yeah. Yeah. Which means that, you know, you're actually, like, doing what you need to do to take care of your body. I mean, 1.75 is a lot. But, you know, it's it's one of these things. Like, I want to incentivize people to get stronger, healthier because, ultimately, I want you to live your best life in your seventies, eighties, and nineties. You know? And if you're metabolically unhealthy in your forties, fifties, and sixties, then you're not gonna live your best life.
I want you to die fast instead of die slow, if you know what I mean. Right. You know? Nobody wants to live the last three or four years in a nursing home, you know, having somebody else, you you know, with a with a tube stuck into you for feeding. Right? Or, you know, somebody have to take you to the nobody wants to live that life, and so we want people to thrive through their seventies, eighties, and nineties. And I think metabolic health is the clearest way of of getting there. So So we're giving people discounts, for being metabolically healthy.
[01:00:22] David Bennett:
And you guys have also inked a deal with Fold. Right? Because we're talking about that a little bit earlier today. You wanna say something about exactly what is it just that I get a full plus membership with, CrowdHealth?
[01:00:36] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. You get a full plus membership, which, you know, currently is about a hundred bucks a month or a year. And so we will pay that hundred dollars, a year for you. And, you know, as a part of our kind of crowdfunding component, anything any of those excess funds go directly to fold and then convert it to Bitcoin. So you're intentionally stacking sats in addition to paying for your health care. So you almost have, like, a little, Bitcoin HSAA, you know, on the side. It's not an HSA, but it's it kinda feels like that, right, where you're you're stacking for something big happens in the future, and we don't have any access to that. That's totally on your full account. You can use it for whatever you want, but I just kinda the way I think about it when I when I put money into that account is, like, yeah. It's my little mini Bitcoin HSA over here that's growing in value as opposed to melting away in in Fiat and some other HSA.
[01:01:28] David Bennett:
Awesome. And they'll I wanna keep this at an hour because I know you got stuff to do. You got a book coming out. Yeah. What what's the name of it?
[01:01:38] Andy Schoonover:
It's called Fiat Medicine. Nice. And it is going to be published by by Safedine's Safe House. I'm writing it with Matt Lishak who also wrote Fiat Food. So the two of us are putting together a a book that should be out late summer, early fall called Fiat Medicine. In essence, what it does is, you know, as we started the conversation, kinda walks through the history of health care and why it's so screwed up and all these government interventions, a lot for, you know, consumer protectionism, but also for profiteering. And then we you know, Matt takes us up to the current current state. I talk about the current state and then what health care could look like going forward.
And, I think it's a good I think it's a great read. So, you know, we'll we'll let everybody know when that's out, but it's it's right around the corner, and I think, it's gonna be a fun read for folks. So y'all are almost finished with it? Yeah. You know, we were on our our our second draft with the editor right now, and, I think we're probably, you know, two or three weeks away from that being finalized. And once it's finalized, it heads out for publishing, and that takes, you know, a couple months. And so I think at the at the latest, we're gonna be, you know, beginning of the fall, more likely end of end of summer.
[01:02:53] David Bennett:
Okay. Well, for all those that are interested in in, reaching out to you, how can they get in contact with you, and where's the best place that they can go find inform more information about crowd health?
[01:03:05] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. All the social media accounts is join crowd health. You know, you can keep up with us there. That's probably the best way. Join crowd health Com is our website. If anybody's a Bitcoiner out there, which I know a lot of your listeners are, use promo code Bitcoin, and that'll give you $99 for the first three months, which, you know, is about, you know, 30 or 40% off of what you normally would pay. And, you know, we'd love for you to join us. More Bitcoiners, the better.
[01:03:33] David Bennett:
Yeah. I'd I'd have to agree with that one. Well, Andy, I I can't thank you enough, for clearing up some of the some of the questions that I've had for three years, honestly, because I've been wanting to ask somebody, you know, like, have an in-depth discussion about this for a long, long time, and I can't thank you enough for spending your time here on the Bitcoin ad podcast. Is there any parting shots that you wanna take? Anything else that you wanna leave the listeners with?
[01:04:00] Andy Schoonover:
Yeah. I mean, I would just say, as being, somebody in in the Bitcoin space and trying to build a Bitcoin company, you know, I think one of the biggest thing is that and I and I, you know, spent the last three years at the Bitcoin commons amongst people who are entrepreneurs trying to buy Bitcoin companies. You know, it's just support Bitcoin companies. I mean, everybody needs scale to do this well. And so, you know, in any way you can support Bitcoin companies, go and and and do that, because we need more and more people on some of these services to make them really, really great. So, that's just my one push for Bitcoiners to kinda get involved in the Bitcoin space and support those of us who are trying to build Bitcoin companies.
[01:04:40] David Bennett:
Is that what you're at where you're at right now? Is it Bitcoin Commons?
[01:04:44] Andy Schoonover:
I'm at a different location today. Okay. But, yeah, normally, I'm I'm at Bitcoin Commons, which is, you know, a ton of fun to be around those folks.
[01:04:52] David Bennett:
Yeah. I just I haven't been to Austin in a long time, and I certainly haven't been there since Bitcoin Commons came up. So I don't even I I don't know where it is. I presume it's behind you somewhere. It is. Yep. I kinda figured. Alright, Andy. Well, hey. Listen, man. Again, thank you so much for being here, and we'll talk to you later.
[01:05:12] Andy Schoonover:
Thanks, brother. Thanks for having me.
[01:05:14] David Bennett:
This has been Bitcoin, and and I'm your host, David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon. Have a great day.
Introduction and Guest Introduction
The Evolution of Health Insurance in the U.S.
The Impact of Government Intervention on Healthcare Costs
CrowdHealth: A New Model for Healthcare
Negotiating Medical Bills with CrowdHealth
Bitcoin and Healthcare: Creating Circularity
Building a Community of Health-Conscious Members
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
