In this episode of Outside The System, I spoke with Andy Schoonover, the CEO of CrowdHealth, a company building an alternative to health insurance while helping patients find quality and fairly priced care. They are one of the few companies I was able to find that is truly trying to build a healthcare solution outside the existing bloated, failing system. I spent several years closely involved in the healthcare system as a caregiver so this is an area that is very close to my heart and one I will continue digging into as the podcast evolves.

I dug into how CrowdHealth's model works for pre-existing conditions, prescription drugs, catastophic care, routine care, and anything else I could think of. We talked about how healthcare currently works from a business perspective in the US, why things cost so much, the perverse incentives for companies that cause healthcare costs to perpetually increase, the role government plays in the problem, what CrowdHealth is doing to try to make things better and much more. If you have questions that we didn't get to in the episode, reach out to Andy on Twitter. 

Links and other things mentioned during the episode:

-One of my favorite books on the healthcare system: Catastrophic Care by David Goldhill - https://amzn.to/3Ks3NCh

-How health insurance works in the US: https://www.uhc.com/understanding-health-insurance

-United Healthcare is the largest healthcare company and 7th largest company overall in the world by revenue: https://fortune.com/company/unitedhealth-group/fortune500/

-CrowdHealth's Bitcoin version: https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/bitcoin

-Graph from The Atlantic showing Healthcare, Education, and Child Care getting more expensive while costs for other items plummets: https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/Screen%20Shot%202014-05-01%20at%202.38.45%20PM.png

-Direct Primary Care (DPC): Direct Primary Care (DPC) is an innovative alternative payment model improving access to high functioning healthcare with a simple, flat, affordable membership fee.  No fee-for-service payments.  No third party billing.  The defining element of DPC is an enduring and trusting relationship between a patient and his or her primary care provider (from https://www.dpcare.org/)

-Jimmy Song: https://twitter.com/jimmysong

-How CrowdHealth works: https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/how-it-works

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If you have questions or thoughts about the episode, you can message me on Twitter.