Free yourself from health insurance.
Free yourself from health insurance.
Missed the live webinar, or want to go back through it? Here's the full recording.
CrowdHealth CEO Andy Schoonover shares his own experience with high medical costs and denied claims, and explains why CrowdHealth is a different approach to health insurance. He walks through how it works: a monthly subscription, a community of members who help pay each other's medical bills, and access to personal care advocates and bill negotiation. We also cover what CrowdHealth costs and how to sign up.
Ryan Jacob joins to share what it looked like for his family to go through some very big health events, including his son's NICU stay and his own brain cancer treatment.
Want to do a little more digging before you decide?
See what our members are saying:
Check out CrowdHealth reviews from people actually using it.
See the real numbers:
Take a look at our historical monthly cost data and see what members have actually paid over time.
Want to get into the details?
Read the Member Guide for a deeper look at how CrowdHealth works, what’s eligible, and what to expect.
Hey, everybody. My name is Andy Schoonover. I'm the CEO of CrowdHealth. Just wanted to welcome everybody. We had, I think, almost 3,000 people register to to be at this, and so I'm just honored that y'all would take an hour out of your your day to come in and join us. I'm assuming that you're here because you're as frustrated with health insurance as I am, whether it be the the networks or the con continued rising costs or, the denied claims or or whatever it may be. We're just happy that you've joined us to talk a little bit about an alternative.
I am really excited to to tell you a little bit about CrowdHealth, what we do, how we do it. But like I said, I was frustrated with health insurance just like many of you were or are back about seven years ago.
I had health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, and I kinda joke it it worked until I had to use it.
My little one, who's pictured here, was one at the time, and she was having recurring ear infections. And so we went to the ear, nose, and throat doctor who told us that she had a hole in her eardrum. And so we did everything right. We had health insurance.
We went in network. We got the procedure done, and it was a fifteen minute procedure. I got a bill in the mail, and it was $8,000 for a fifteen minute procedure. And I was just blown away by the cost of that.
But I thought, hey. This is what health insurance is for. This is the whole point of us having health insurance. And so I didn't worry too much about it until I got a note via snail mail, from my health insurance plan that it was said it was not medically necessary, and so they weren't gonna pay the bills.
And so I was like, hold on a second. My daughter has a hole in her eardrum. The day before we got the procedure, she was screaming bloody murder day and night because she was having so much pain. And the day after, she was totally fine.
And so I knew this was medically necessary.
And we appealed that twice, and they said, nope. We're not paying for it. So I had to stroke an $8,000 check to get my daughter's ears fixed. It was at that point where I called my health insurance plan, and I said, I'm I'm done.
If you're not gonna pay my bills, I'm not gonna pay your bills. And so I quit health insurance. And as I started doing research, I realized that two hundred and fifty thousand families every year go bankrupt due to a medical event even though they have health insurance. And that's because of denied claims.
It's because of really, really high deductibles.
And that saddened me, and it was at that point where I said, I'm gonna do something about this. So I started paying in cash for me and my family's bills. And what I found was is that by paying in cash, paying directly as opposed to through a health insurance company, we were getting way better rates than insurance companies. And so I thought, well, what if we get a community together, a group of people together to help with some of these big bills?
You know, I was fine paying the pediatrician bill or the primary care bill or whatever that may be. But what happens if we have cancer or a car accident or something big like that? If we had a community of people who could band together, eliminate the health insurance companies, and pay direct, we found that or my theory was that, this would go way, way better. And what I found is that it actually has been successful.
So we started CrowdHealth about six and a half years ago, and we've had 40,000 members since then join us. We have 35,000 members as of today, and we've had 60,000 bills that have been processed through CrowdHealth. 99.9% of the bills submitted to the community have been funded, which is significantly better than health insurance.
And we've saved our members about a $100,000,000 over the last six years. So it has gone to plan. It's actually gone way better to plan. And so I'm so excited to tell you a little bit more about that tonight.
And in fact, here's our growth numbers. You can see on the chart on the left, we've been skyrocketing. I think that's as a result of the health insurance getting so, so expensive. In fact, next year, what we have heard is that the Affordable Care Act is going to increase by, on average, about 15%.
Commercial health plans are gonna be increasing by about 12%. And we are actually down about 5% this year versus last year for our members and what they're they're paying. So we've we've done an an incredible job of getting these bills, negotiated and and and paid for, and we're gonna talk to you a bit more about the mechanics here in a minute.
The thing I'm most proud of is our customers love CrowdHealth. We have a 4.9, rating. That's over almost 1,200 reviews. I think we hit 1,200 reviews today. So if you go look at some of the other insurance companies, I think you'll see the the ratings for those, the reviews for those aren't quite as pleasant.
And so if anybody is is really considering CrowdHealth after this, we hope you will. Go and just Google CrowdHealth reviews and read through them. I think you're gonna see some, you know, incredible stories of of how we've backed people and helped them get some of these big bills paid.
We also were on the Inc. 5,000 list. We came in at 270, so we're the two hundred and seventieth fastest growing company in The United States according to Inc. And so we're really, really excited about the results and and more excited to tell you about exactly how this works.
So the agenda for today, we're gonna keep it to an hour, I promise. If you have questions at the end, I'll give you a link so you can schedule a call with one of our folks internally to ask any follow-up questions. I'm gonna try to get as many questions today as possible, but we're first gonna go through the crowd health mechanics. How this works, it's a little bit different from health insurance, and so we're just gonna walk through the mechanics of that.
We're gonna have a member testimonial. Ryan Jacob, who's been through two very, very large health events with CrowdHealth, is gonna give a little bit of an overview of what it's been like with CrowdHealth going through really big health events. He's gone through cancer, and he's gone through, having a NICU baby. And so he's gonna walk through that.
Then And we're gonna have plenty of time for for questions and answers. So excited about that. Just one disclaimer because I don't wanna have somebody go all the way to the end and not be eligible. There's there's really two things in which, that CrowdHealth is it doesn't work for.
Unfortunately, if you are 65, we can't currently engage with Medicare members, Medicare eligible members due to some regulatory rules. So if you're 65 and over, keep a lookout. We're trying to develop a 65 program, but we don't have that yet. So look out for that in 2027, hopefully.
And, also, if you're a current or a former smoker, and that's basically if you smoked every day for at least a year straight, then you wouldn't be eligible for crowd health. Let's jump into the mechanics.
You pay us a subscription fee. One of the things that I realized with health insurance is that insurance companies actually make more money when your bills go up, and so we call that a perverse incentive. That's an incentive that is against the members or the patients of that health insurance plan. And so we are just charge you a $60 per month per person per month fee.
So if you have one person, it's 60. If you have four, it's $240. And what you get for that is you get a personal care advocate. One of the things I hated about health insurance is when I had something big go on in life, like the thing I talked about with my daughter, I would call somebody.
I'd be on hold for twenty minutes. I would have to tell them, you know, the most intimate details of my health care. That wouldn't be the right person. They would punt me to somebody else.
I'd have to wait in line. If I had hair, I'd probably have would have ripped it out. And so with CrowdHealth, you have actually a personal care advocate. So when you reach out to us, you can call us.
You can text us. You can email us. The same person will, respond every time. They get to know you.
You get to know them. And so it's really a much more kind of an intimate relationship that we feel like is is one of the best things about CrowdHealth is having somebody, a guide to walk you through some of these complex situations.
This also includes negotiation services. So we have a group of people who are on your seat team, who are on your side to help you negotiate some of these bills. And so you can see some on the right where we've gotten significant discounts by our team, which includes attorneys to help you negotiate these bills. One of the most frustrating things is when you get a bill in the mail, you have no idea what it is or what it's about.
With CrowdHealth, all you have to do is upload it. We take a look at it. We go through it. We have experts look at those bills to make sure there aren't any errors on it, and then we'll go and negotiate those bills on your behalf with the hospital or the doctor, whoever it may be.
So that's that's a part of the $60 a month.
We also have a bill analyzer, which can analyze that bill, make sure that that bill's fairly priced. As I as I mentioned, if there are any errors on it, I heard one just last week where, a hospital billed two codes that they're not actually legal to bill legal to bill at the same time. And so our people internally found that and and let the the member know, and so we were able to wipe that off their bill immediately.
We also have a doctor quality database. So if you live in a city where you're looking for a knee replacement, for example, all you have to do is go into our app and say, I'm looking for a knee replacement in Tampa, Florida, and you will pull up a list of all of the the people in Tampa, Florida that our members have gone to that we've evaluated. You'll see what their error rate is on those knee knee replacements. If you're looking for an OBGYN, we can tell you if that OBGYN does too many C sections when compared to others.
So we're giving you all of this data right in your app.
And then we provide the crowdfunding platform, which is the platform that we use to enable people to pay their bills directly as opposed to going through health insurance. And so we're gonna talk a little bit more about that now.
The cool thing about CrowdHealth is that you're actually helping other members. You're not sending your money directly to a health insurance company. You will get an email once a month with a specific person that needs help in the community. The email, for example, is on the right. I know that's a little bit small, but it's but here, it says we have a member in in Colorado that needs help.
Looks like a ear infection. And so they're asking me I think this was actually mine from two two months ago. And so if you you can say yes or no to that. And if you say yes, then your money is gonna go directly to another person in the community.
And so that's a really cool thing. Your your money is going directly to them. It's not going to a health insurance company.
It's not going to, you know, buy the CEO's plane or anything like that. So, you know, it's a really cool thing. I was actually at a dinner last night with a CrowdHealth member.
And let's see here. Apparently, I'm getting a little bit of feedback. What I'm what I'm hearing is a little bit of an echo. So hold on one second. Sorry for that. Let's see if we can can change that up and see if we can do this a little bit better. Team, is that any better?
Sorry for the the feedback y'all.
I'm gonna I'm gonna keep going and see if we can correct this along the way.
But we're gonna ask you if you are age zero to 54 up to a $140 a month to help somebody else out in the community. If your age is 55 to 64, it's up to $280 a month. Or if you're a family of four plus, it's $420 a month. And so this money, like I said, is going directly to another person in the community to help them with their their health care needs.
So good. I think we got feedback figured out. So that's a really cool part of what we do. And so you're helping another person directly.
It's not going through a health insurance plan. And so, you know, the guy last night said, it's the first time ever that I've actually paid for my health care and felt really, really good about because they knew that they're helping somebody else out in the community. So there's two components to this. There's that subscription fee, and then there is a crowdfunding component.
So if you're age 50 to four, you're $60 of membership and then up to a $140. So 60 plus one forty is $200. And so that's the maximum you will pay at with CrowdHealth in any one month.
No other things associated with that, so we're not asking you for anything else.
There is, like, a point 5% transaction fee. But other than that, that's how much is maxed for your your CrowdHealth membership. And in the same way, you're maxed at $3.40 if you're 55 to 64.
Or if you're a family four plus, it's $660. Now I keep saying it's the max. So why is that? Well, we only ask you in that crowdfund component that up to 2 $1.40
for a single. We only ask you for what the community needs. So if the community is doing really, really well, we don't ask you for all one forty. If you remember the previous slide, I think in that slide a couple months ago, we only asked for 80 of the one forty.
And so we don't ask the entire thing every single month. And in fact, we've only asked for the maximum three times in the last six years. I think the last time was two years ago. So it's been a long time since we've we've done that. And so that hopefully under helps you all understand the the way that crowd that CrowdHealth works.
So I'm waiting for my file to come back up here. Sorry about that, y'all.
Here we go. And so this is the way it looks like. So on average, for a single human or a single person, it's been a $145 total for a single person 55 over the last twelve months. That's an average.
And so it's it's has trended significantly below 200. For a family of four, it has been on average about $486. You can actually go on our website and go to resources, and you can show in results. It's right up there.
We show what we've asked from our members for every month for the last, I think, two or three years. And so you can go and check that out on our website.
So what happens when you have a health event? How does that work? Well, you can choose any doctor you want. We do not have networks. So go to wherever you'd like. So you won't lose your doctor. We promise.
For the big ones, all we ask is that you call us because what we will probably be able to do is find you a really high quality, fairly priced doctor in your area to do any of these big procedures, or we can negotiate on your behalf with the doctor that you would like to go to if there is one you'd like to go to. Most members who are going to get a big procedure, they'll call us first. They're like, hey. I need to go and get my ACL fixed.
You know, what do I do? And then we can find them a really great orthopedic surgeon within their area to help them that we know is is fairly priced. And then you go and you submit your bills in the app. You'll get a bill from the doctor or a good faith estimate.
You'll take a picture of that bill in our app, and that uploads it to us.
And then what we do is we then send it out to a community the community to get that funded. And so let's just say, for example, it's a $4,000 bill.
You pay the first $500 of that bill. So for any health event, you pay the first $500. We don't have deductibles. And then we will go to the crowd and ask, which is, say, 35 people for a $100.
They will send that money directly to you. You will see that arrive in the app. You can see a picture of that on the right. This is our product manager, Jennifer, who has $300 in her account that she got crowdfunded from the community.
And then you can withdraw that money directly into your private bank account, your own bank account, and then go pay that bill. And so that's how it works. It's super, super easy. I know it's different than health insurance.
But in essence, what our what we're trying to do is to enable our members to pay their doctor directly and therefore get much, much better rates. Our whole system is built upon you get better rates if you can pay your doctor directly. Why is that? Well, doctors spend on average between twelve and sixteen hours a week just fighting with health insurance plans to get paid.
So can you imagine if, you know, you're employed and you're getting a paycheck, you have to fight for two of the five days to get just to get your paycheck? That's super inefficient. And so if you go and pay the doctor directly, they don't have to fight with health insurance plans or anything like that. They get the money immediately.
They don't have to fight, and so they are giving willing to give significant discounts. Over the 60,000 bills that we've processed through CrowdHealth, we have found that our members are getting about 50% better rates than health insurance plans for the exact same procedure. And so that's really what makes this work. So if you have any questions on that, ask them in the comments section on the right hand side, and I will promise I'll get them to them at the end.
Just really quickly here before we go into talking to to Ryan, if you would like like to sign up for CrowdHealth, use the code webinar 23, and you will get the first three months for $99 a month per person. And so that's a significant reduction versus what it is normally, which is what we just saw in the previous couple slides. Or if somebody told you about this webinar, please use their code. Because what happens then is you get the same $99 a month, but we will send that member who sent you $250.
One of the cool things about CrowdHealth is we hate spending money on Meta and Google and all those. We love giving money back to our members. And in fact, we've given almost $2,000,000 away to our members. I think the number one person was like a 100 or a $120,000 last year just by telling their friends, their family, their social media followers, whoever it is.
And we give you $250 for any anybody who signs up with CrowdHealth and continues on beyond three months. So please use this code.
You can use that at joincrowdhealth.com.
We're gonna welcome Ryan to the little live webinar here. Brother, how are you?
Hey.
I'm doing Bald Head Guides Unite.
To and Greg. To and Greg.
Ryan, I've known Ryan for several years now. Ryan, how long have you been a member?
It's been five years, I believe.
Five years. Okay. Ryan started out as a member. I consider him a friend. We've we've been through some battles together, you know, with with some of these health events, which, you know, I'm excited for you, Ryan, to to tell us a little bit about you know, one of the biggest concerns with crowd health is what happens when something big happens.
You know? Is this is this is the crowd able to to support you both, you know, in terms of helping you through that journey, but also getting these bills paid? So we'd love for you to to take it away and just tell us a little bit about your journey with CrowdHealth.
Sure. Yeah. I'd be happy to do so. I know I started with CrowdHealth, I think, at the time because I was working with a private company.
It was pretty small. And so they offered an insurance option that was, I mean, awful. And then we saw CrowdHealth, and I said, oh, that's pretty interesting. Let me check it out.
And at the time, you know, a super healthy guy. It's like, this is probably a way to save some money. I'll try it out. You know, fast forward a few years later and, you know, the first event and I remember actually talking to the CrowdHealth team whenever my son was born.
Son my son is named Judah. He was born with Down syndrome.
He had a heart defect, which is pretty common for Down syndrome when he was born, and then he was also deaf. And so I remember we're literally in the NICU, and I go out, I think, to get some clothes or something for my wife and I. And I called CrowdHealth, and I said, hey. This is what's going on.
Like, am I in trouble? Like, have I messed up now? Because, you know, big things are happening, and the team was spectacular. They just said, you're perfectly fine.
You're covered. This is what the kind of stuff was made for, and let's guide this and figure this out together. And so they asked me some really good questions.
I was able to get information that we needed to share so that we can start working on, you know, savings and finding like, all the detailed bills that need to be sent over. I was able to fill out that information, get that done, and it just was a different experience. I feel like most of the time I don't if you guys feel this way, but anytime we've had insurance in the past, it's like everything's a fight. They wanna, you know, shut us off.
They wanna say, oh, sorry. This is a technicality. You can't you can't cover that. And it felt like CrowdHealth was more on our team and still is on our team, through this process.
And, I mean, the last thing you wanna worry about when your son has a major heart issue and was just born with Down syndrome, his death, is the bills. You know, you wanna take care of your family, and I feel like we were actually put in a position where we could do that because of the team that was around us. And, to share everything about it, because we just wanna be the details. Right?
When Judah was born, we kind of broke CrowdHealth.
I don't think they were ever really set up initially to have all these ways to upload and different things. And and so I I shared that with the team. And instead of saying, oh, you know, sorry. This is how it is or, you know, now figure this out.
They were said, you know, this is a really good point. This is you know, we have are gonna have other people on the crowd like Judah, and we wanna work to do this better. And I can't remember the technical name of the individual. I think it was, like, the head of experience or director of experience or something, but I got on a phone call and literally was able to share, hey.
This is what's working really well. Here are some frustrations that we have.
And they actually took that information, and some of the updates that have come since, in the app and everything was actually some of that same information that was shared, and that just blew my mind, that that was even an option. So that's how that's how it started. We you know, I I can say that we were able to navigate, Judah in the NICU stay. I think it was, like, eighteen days or nineteen days.
I know with, open heart surgery and cochlear, you know, crowd crowd health was the right way with us every step of the way for anything that we needed. I think they even send over, like, some toys or some things to the kid to our little kiddos on birthdays. Like, little stuff. Like, who does those things that really makes it different to everybody?
And then so after after the experience with Judah, which, again, with CrowdHealth did great, everything was taken care of. We you know, everything was paid for and done. We negotiated some things. There were some bigger bills.
And I we actually had a situation where the crowd actually gave back money to some of us because we were able to negotiate some of the additional bills even more. And Andy, I was really shocked by this too, but they came up and said, hey. Like, we were able to do a better discount than we even thought we could do. And so it actually gave a percentage back of some of that savings that we were able to negotiate because we were actively negotiating as part of this process.
So that was Judah. And by itself, guys, that would be enough to say, hey. You guys should be using CrowdHealth for forever, in my opinion. But it actually gets a little crazier.
So about June, I was with my daughter just driving, getting some groceries, and I had just a moment where I couldn't think of words for about a minute.
And so that's kinda weird, but I called my my wife who's also a nurse and said, hey. It's probably no big deal. Probably sugar or something. No big deal.
Two weeks later, I was at lunch with a mentor, and it happened again. And when it happened the second time, my wife said, okay. Yeah. You need to go to the ER and get a scan.
And so I went to the ER. Everything looked great. They're about to cut me out, and then they did a scan, and that's where they saw the mass in my brain.
And so it turns out that I, you know, had a tumor in my brain, and I was immediately taken to from e from the ER to the hospital.
That was a Friday afternoon. And by Monday morning, I was having a crane a craniotomy surgery. I know in that process too, I mean, there's a lot of things that was going through my mind, but the thing that was really neat too is I know Andy specifically, I had a conversation with you about what's upcoming and, you know, praying together about, everything that we're do we since we share faith, like, what we're being afraid like, for. And the biggest thing too is the CrowdHill team saying, hey. Like, focus on getting well. We will take care of these other things. Tell us what you need.
And they were just part of that process. And then, unfortunately, I actually had to get a second craniotomy in July because the first one didn't really get done the way we needed to get done. And so we were actually able to change doctor groups and actually found a an option. I think we actually were looking some out of state options, Andy, if I remember right, and CrowdHealth was onboard. They said, hey. If you need to go, like, let us know.
But it turns out we actually were able fund Anderson, I think, where Yeah.
MD Anderson.
Yeah. MD Anderson is said they were recommending, but then that would be in Houston, and we'd have to basically, you know, move to do those things. But, you know, CrowdHealth said, sure. If that's what we had to do to get it done, we will. But, we actually go to OU now at Stevenson here in Oklahoma, and they actually are, I don't know if it's called sister, community groups. But, essentially, my craniotomy that was done by the other doctor, he was he trained in MD Anderson. He fellowships there, and he actually went to France because he my second craniotomy was actually awake, which is also kinda weird to get that done.
But, again, both those things were done. There was healing during that time. There was community during that time, and we're actually navigating some of those those bills now together as a team as we're also exploring next steps.
Something else I I wanna share to you is with what I have, it's it's called a glioblastoma is what I was diagnosed with is basically a brain cancer. It's a pretty aggressive one. And so there there isn't, like, a a easy cure. Like, here it is. It's gone. And so one of the things that we were able to do at Crown Hill too is look at different things, not just traditional options, but maybe some nontraditional options and explore those things together. And I know for a fact some of the things that they're covering now or helping with, like vitamin c and hyperbaric, are things that I know for a fact insurance does not ever touch.
And so we're getting taken care of even more than we could have before, and it's, yeah, it's still a process. It's still a journey that I'm in, but it really feels like the team, is with us the whole time. And it's it's a very unique experience. And, you know, in this time, you know, I started working for somebody else. I actually run a company now, and I have about, you know, 10 or 11 employees. And all of us are on CrowdHealth now.
It's it's so much a better a better solution, especially for a small business. And I can, you know, tell everything every single one of them about, hey. This is what happened. Here's how they took care of that. Here's how I can help navigate these things. And it's just been a great experience all over.
Thank you for that. We are wishing you well.
And as you potentially go to Germany to do a genomic test, we're supporting you all the way, and we're gonna have you back here next year doing this. Right?
And Oh, yeah.
And and tell them the same story.
And you're gonna be totally healed of this thing, and it's gonna be awesome.
Yeah. God God is good. He's he's taking care of us, and I'm I already feel so blessed that I I I've had two brain surgeries, and I'm sitting here talking and able to do things, like, normally.
And so, yeah, God is good, and having CrowdHealth in our team is definitely a part of that as well, and we appreciate it.
Thanks for joining us, Will. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Guys, we're gonna move on to q and a. So we've got a bunch of questions here that we're gonna go through. Brett, if you'll pull back up my my slides, there are some that we have kind of started here because these are the ones that have been asked on the previous webinars.
And so, you know, one of the things that people ask is is is this risky? You know, health insurance plans, quote, unquote, guarantee that the bills are paid. So, you know, what happens with with CrowdHealth? With CrowdHealth, ultimately, our members are responsible for their own bills. However, what we have shown is a significantly higher probability of getting your bills paid than than health insurance plans. The latest data has shown that about one in five health insurance plans claims are denied.
And so that's literally tens of millions, maybe even hundreds of millions. I think there was, like, 40,000,000 claims in New York alone were denied. And so if you think, you know, the the the folks at the the state capital are gonna be able to help you 40,000,000 with 40,000,000 claims tonight. It just doesn't happen.
So there's really no recourse. What we have shown is we have we can viably get these bills paid over the 60,000 bills. And as as Ryan said, even for the very, very large ones, which he's had, you know, several, you know, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for these these surgeries. And so we believe that actually, I believe that health insurance is more risky than than than CrowdHealth is.
We see the two hundred and fifty thousand people going bankrupt every year even though they have health insurance due to a medical event.
And so we we we truly believe that this is a a viable way of of paying for health care bills that is very different from health insurance, and we think that's a good thing.
What about previously diagnosed conditions? You know, one of the things when we started CrowdHealth and and Ryan's first scenario with Judah was pretty early on in our in our experience. That's why we hadn't gotten everything, you know, buttoned up for some of those big bills, but we do now.
What happened was is we had people jump in and get a knee replacement and then jump back out again. And so what we really wanna build is a community that you can't just jump in and jump out. And for regulatory reasons, we can't have open enrollments and and things like that. So what we had to do is say, hey.
Look. We we want you to be a part of the community before you start submitting bills for health events prior to joining the community. So if you start today and you, god forbid, get in a car accident tomorrow, that would be eligible for funding. If you got a diagnosis last week of you know, that you need your knee replaced and you joined CrowdHealth, that would not be eligible for funding until after you've been a part of the community for two years.
And then after you've been a part of the community for two years, then you can start submitting those bills. Now what is a, you know, pre how do we define previously diagnosed condition? In essence, that's anything that happened five years before you joined CrowdHealth. So if it if you had cancer ten years ago and you joined CrowdHealth and tomorrow you got diagnosed with that same cancer, that would be eligible.
So we only have a five year look back for that.
And so, hopefully, that's helpful in understanding how we we deal with previously diagnosed conditions.
Pregnancies, similar. You know, we don't want somebody to go thirty weeks and then have a baby and then jump out right after the baby is born. And so if you are currently pregnant, that would not be eligible. And so the way that we look at this is pregnancies due dates have to be three hundred days after you start.
And so if you're looking to get pregnant, join today because, you know, we we we look at due dates. And so that's basically a two or three week window of when you can see join and then conceive. And so that's the way we work. And the only reason we did two or three weeks is because we didn't wanna fight you over over when the conception was.
That's an awkward conversation.
So we just say three hundred days from when you start is when you your due date is three hundred days from when you start for eligible pregnancies.
There are probably folks on here that are live in one of the five states or the District Of Columbia that require you to have health insurance.
And if you don't have health insurance, then you are penalized for that. And so we do not meet that insurance requirement for those five states. However, stay tuned because I think there's someone coming out with a product that's a low cost product that will help you meet that insurance requirement. So we hope to have, you know, some some resources and let you know what company that is in in the next couple of weeks.
So stay tuned if you're in Massachusetts, California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, or Vermont or DC because we think that there is a an alternative coming here in the next couple of weeks.
There's always a question about what if my doctor doesn't accept crowd health? Well, we've had 60,000 bills. I have only heard of it two or three times that the doctor won't accept a direct payment. They require you to have health insurance.
And so it does not happen often. And I will tell you that those three two or three times were all in one state. It was Massachusetts.
And so we have members in Massachusetts, but we, you know, have not had many problems with it, just two or three over the over the the years. And so there are not many doctors out there that won't accept the direct payment because it's better for them in so many ways.
A lot of people ask is is kind of alternative health therapies, like functional medicine, all integrative medicine, naturopathic eligible for funding? They are. They are eligible for funding. And so, you know, Ryan is is headed to Germany or he's evaluating, heading heading to Germany for a genomic test to help him, you know, battle his his cancer. The only thing we ask is that any of these alternative therapies have some kind of clinical background that says that this works. So we know a lot of doctors out there that give magic pixie dust and spend you know, charge a bunch for it.
And we just don't think that's fair to submit to the community. And so those would not be eligible. But if there's some clinical background that these are eligible, then then those would be eligible for funding by by the community. The key component here that's really important is CrowdHealth doesn't actually make the decision, whether it's eligible or ineligible.
What we do is we take a look at the bills and says, hey. This doesn't look eligible. We let you know that. And then you have the ability to appeal that to a group of CrowdHealth members who make that ultimate decision.
And so it's not CrowdHealth corporate making that decision. It is a community based decision making process.
And it that those appeals don't happen all that often because it's pretty, you know, black and white. But, you know, ultimately, it is the decision of the community to to do that. With all that said, that might sound scary, but 60,000 bills, 99.9% of them have gotten gotten funded. You know, people ask, well, what about the 1.1%? Like, what is that? You may remember back a little ways when I was saying that you could say yes or no to a a funding request.
Most people have it automated, so it says yes every single time. That's the way that I have it because I don't wanna have to go in there and say yes or no. So it's automated. You just it just tells you who you gave to.
But if you say no, you can do that. And you just have to know that if you do do that and then you submit bills to the community, the community will know that you said no to other people in the community. So that's how that works. And it's worked incredibly well, over the last, you know, five or six years.
So that's how that works. We're gonna go to some, questions now. We got another about twenty minutes.
We how does the crowd help work with families?
So, Meg, thanks for the question. So families, you know, it's $60 a person and then $420 for maximum for what you give on a a monthly basis. I think the average for a family of four has been $4.85. So if you have a family of five, that would be an additional $6 $60.
Excuse me. If you have a family of six, that would be an extra $120 to a $120 total. So that's how that works. If you go to our website, join crowdhealth.com,
there is a calculator about halfway down the page.
So it's about a scroll one scroll and a half down there, and you can actually plug in how many family members you have and how much it costs, and that will give you the the how much it it costs for that. One of the other cool things about CrowdHealth for families especially is you get $300 a year of wellness visits. And so you can use that for pretty much whatever you want for for wellness. If you wanna I use it personally for my kids' dental because pediatric dental is really expensive.
And so we use that for for my kids. My wife uses it for her gynecology appointment. I use it for labs. And so you get $300 per year per person to use on any wellness events that you that you would like.
Anybody who's on direct primary care, that's also eligible. And so that's a cool part of this, especially with with families.
And so see. My my pal is 60 years. She has five years more before Medicare.
Medicare requires continuous coverage. Does Crown Health satisfy this requirement? We believe so. Yeah. I mean, Medicare requires continuous coverage once you get into Medicare from my understanding, so it does not preclude you from jumping on Medicare.
And in fact, we lose, I think, ten members a month or something like that to Medicare, and all of them have been able to transition to Medicare easily. We've not had any feedback that they haven't been able to do that. So it's it's continuous coverage if you are you are in in Medicare. So let's see here.
What would cost be a family of three? So a family of three would be $60 times 3, $1.80, and then up to $4.20. So your maximum would be 600 for a family of three.
Again, we haven't asked for that in a long, long time, but that would be the maximum we would ask you. We've been averaging for a family of four about $4.85. So you'd deduct 60 from that. It'd be about $4.25
on average. So, hopefully, that that works.
Another question is, do you cover prescriptions? Yes. Prescriptions, we are are eligible for a you know, any health event that you have that is eligible for for funding. So let's just say, you know, in Ryan's example, he's going through some serious, you know, issues with with his brain cancer.
There's a number of prescriptions that are associated with that.
And so if you have a health event and you need prescription drugs as a result of that health event, then that is eligible. I do wanna stop and just have people understand what a health event is because I think that's somewhat confusing. A health event, Ryan's brain cancer is all one health event. So his first surgery, his second surgery, his doctor visits, his prescription drugs, his trip to Germany for the genome therapy, and anything else associated with that brain surgery, that's all one health event.
And so you're paying the first 500 of that health event, and then anything after that is eligible for funding. So that's the way that it works. So a a health event is any series of medical procedures or prescriptions or imaging or surgery that all has to do with one health event. And that's not per year.
It's over the entire health event. So Ryan is probably gonna be battling this cancer for multiple over multiple years. He only has to pay that first 500 of the health event before they we we send the rest to the community to to fund.
So that's the way that that works.
Let's see. Do we know what the our community would be? Everybody's in the same community. So we have 35,000 people in our our community currently.
And so that's the the the entire communities can can chip in for for these health bills. And so we don't break those communities up into to multiple communities. We did have a a set alone community at one point, but we decided that one community is much better, more efficient. It does remind me one quick thing, though, that if you are metabolically healthy, we're coming up here in October.
First starts our kind of metabolic health panel quarter where you can go and get a fasting insulin test and a high sensitivity c reactive protein test and a DEXA scan to get your visceral fat. If you show us that you're metabolically healthy, all the numbers on the crowdfunding component that we showed you in the past, you actually get a 20% discount if you can show us that you're metabolically healthy. And so we do want to incentivize people to get metabolically healthy. And we've had many, many, many examples of people who took these tests, weren't metabolically healthy, worked on them over a year, came back, and became metabolically healthy as a result of that.
And so it's really good to have your baseline. And all of those tests are eligible for funding by by the community. So we're we're very much focused on, you know, prevention.
I always tell my people that I want our crew our crowd to be 80 or 90 years old playing soccer in the bass backyard with their grandkids. That to me is thriving. So we we pour a lot of of effort into into preventative.
I read that you may have to travel far for anything big. No. I mean, ultimately, if you live in a a big city, you won't have to travel far.
You know, if you live in a tiny community and there's no place, you know, close to you that's reasonable for for the procedure, we will ask you to to travel to the local big city to to go and do that, but that doesn't happen very often. I think it probably has happened 10 times in the last, you know, 60,000 bills or something like that. So it's it's abnormal and and and more likely if you live in a very small town that may or may not have access to some of the procedures. As Ryan just mentioned, you know, he was he might have had to travel to MD Anderson in Houston.
He lives in Oklahoma. And so there are cases in which we had a guy in, I believe, Nashville who was gonna head to to MD Anderson for his cancer. He had colon cancer. And so there are times in which you just have to travel for some of these procedures.
Cindy is asking what percentage of members have health insurance also. We think it's about fifteen to twenty percent based upon what people tell us when they join CrowdHealth. These people are typically ones in which they are testing the waters. They're just this is a new way of doing things.
I don't trust it quite yet. And so they are yeah. They they they are just kinda testing. And I think that most of the people who do that ditch their health insurance after they've tested the waters.
And so, that's that's the way that that to the best of our knowledge, fifteen to twenty percent. We don't love it when you have health insurance. And the reason is, and I just saw this today, literally, when you have health insurance, you go in, you slap down your card, and therefore, you're gonna get insurance rates. And so those rates tend to be significantly higher.
And the one I saw today, this afternoon, was about two x what our member would have paid if he didn't have health insurance. And so we'd prefer people not have health insurance because you're gonna get much, much better rates, and the crowd benefits from that.
Alright. Megan is asking, I'm not understanding the additional one forty. CrowdHealth asked members for help for one person. Is CrowdHealth only selecting one person to help, or does that help build a bigger pot? It's a great question. So we're gonna be asking you once or twice a month to help somebody else directly in the community. So if you think about it, we have 3,000 bills, and I think it's 4,000 or something like that this month.
And so we have 4,000 bills. And so for each one of those bills, we're gonna go ask somebody in the community to help fund that specific bill. So we're not coming to you 4,000 times to ask you to fund bills. So it's not like each bill is divided by 35,000.
It's no. We're asking you for a specific bill this month. And then that money goes directly to that person to help them with that bill. So you will only be asked once, sometimes twice a month to help somebody else in in the community.
And so that's the way that that works. So, hopefully, that clears it up.
But, yeah, it's it's super simple, and it's great that you know exactly who you're giving that money to, but we're not we're only asking you once and maybe twice a month. And if it's twice a month, they're back to back. It's because we have a weird bill. Where if I'm asking you for a $100 this month and we have a bill for 50, then we actually just give you two $50 bills instead of one $100 bill. So that's probably too much detail. But, it's once or twice a month that we'll ask you to help, and it's going to individuals.
Let's see. What happens when you choose the $85 option? Yeah. Michael, it's a great point.
What I focused on tonight is our, what we call the CrowdHealth OG, the original. And that's for you pay the first $500 of every month. And then we will ask you, you know, to help somebody else in the community for up to that $1.40 if you're single.
We also have a second option, which is we call it the black swan product, which is basically, instead of that $500 per health event, it's $15,000 per per health event. So you're responsible for the first 15,000 before the rest is eligible. And that's significantly less because you're paying more upfront. In essence, this is for people who just don't wanna mess with anything.
They just wanna pay all the little bills. But if something really big comes up, they'd love the community to help them out. So that's called the Black Swan product. So, hopefully, that answers your question.
Is Jody asked, is the 500 per event for each event like, if I go to the physical and it's 300, do I just pay that whole 300? Yeah. Anything that's under 300, what we do is you pay anything under 300. And so if if you go to, you know, the I've got kids.
So my kids, if they get, you know, strep throat or something like that and we go to the pediatrician and that's a $150, I just pay $150. Now let's just say that strep throat turns into something more significant that requires, you know, prescriptions or maybe even a hospitalization. I'm paying $500 of that health event. So the $1.50
for the pediatric visit, maybe it's $1.50 for prescriptions and something else. And then anything above that in that health event would be eligible. So if your kid has sniffles and you go to the pediatrician and it's a $150, you just pay that.
You don't even have to submit it to CrowdHealth. But if that then turns into something bigger above 500, then that's when you can submit it to to the community. Hope that helps.
Home births, Cody and Emily Barnhart, who I think were the OHIO people and who for whoever was here before we started.
Yeah. We we we do a lot of home births. The last numbers I checked were that we our our second largest expense for the community is births. I think there's 800 or something like that that are gonna babies that are gonna be born in the crowd this this year. And, again, the last numbers I looked were about sixty percent of them were outside of the hospital.
Forty percent of them were at home. You can do a doula. You can do a midwife. You can do the supplies and things that you need to have them at home.
Twenty percent were at birthing centers, and 40% were at hospitals. And so you can you know, ultimately, what we're talking about is health care freedom You can you can get health care whatever way that you wanna get your health care. This is between you and your your doctor. And, you know, so we don't get in the way of that.
And so we want you to have any as many options as as as you'd like.
You know, we have people who have injuries who are going to do acupuncture and chiropractic and, you know, functional and naturopathic, and that's fine with us. You should go in and get whatever care you need to address your your health event. So hopefully that answers your question.
Is this available in all 50 states? Gail is asking. Yes. It is available in all 50 states.
And so, yeah, wherever you live, we actually have people in Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands and I think even Guam. And so and we actually have people in 15, I think, about 15 different countries.
So as long as you're able to get a a US bank account, then you are able to be a member of of CrowdHealth. Also, if you're traveling internationally and something happens, that is also eligible for funding. So it doesn't need to be in The United States. We had a member go to Japan and go into a coma in Japan of all places.
You know, fortunately, he's fine, but that bill was eligible and was funded by the community.
How many members are in the crowd? Betsy asks. 35,000 members are in the crowd currently. We believe we'll have about 50,000 by the end of of the year, and we're targeting about a 100,000 for for next year.
Let's see here. Can you discuss the the solvency and profitability of the plan? How are members assured that this isn't a Ponzi scheme? Yeah. I mean, I think that, ultimately, you know, we we don't touch the money that goes in between members that is member to member. The $60 that comes to us is what pays our bills.
So, you know, we are profitable. We got profitable last summer, so two summers ago. So we're a profitable company. We did raise capital early on with CrowdHealth, but that we haven't raised since 2022.
And so we are a profitable company, and so, you know, hopefully, that gives you some some comfort there. And in terms of of the kind of viability of the community, you know, we've got this sliding scale. So going back to, you know, a family of of four more is is $420. We only asked we're asking this month, let's see, I think, like, $2.70 or $2.80 or something like that.
And so what happens is is when we get you know, let's just say we have a bunch of large bills all at the same time. We're gonna go to the community and say, hey. You've been paying $2.80. You paid $2.80
in September, but, you know, we had a bunch of huge massive bills come in. So we have to bump you up to 300 or $3.20 or 400 this month. We'll get those bills paid, and then that goes back down again.
So the way I look at it is the best indicator of crowd health, the actual crowd's health, is looking at what is is the crowd being asked for this month. And right now, it's something like 30% or 40% lower than our max. And so there's a lot of runway to get up to. And so, again, I go I would ask you to go back to to www.joincrowdhealth.com.
I believe it is I'm gonna pull it up here just so I I I get everybody the right information. If you go to yeah. You go to resources, and then you can go to I'm excuse me. If you go to results, there is a section there that says monthly cost insights.
And that will tell you what the community has been asked for over I think it's two or three years worth of data. And what you'll see is that it has always been significantly lower than a $140. Or the vast majority of time, it's been lower than a $140. And so that to me is the best indicator of of of crowd health of the health of of the crowd.
I will say that the only caveat to that is that we have the bills get a little bit higher at the end of the year and a bit lower in the beginning of the year. I think everybody kinda waits till the end of the year to get some of these procedures. I think they're conditioned based upon, you know, the the health the the deductible thing that they think about with health insurance, but it does rise a little bit here at the end of the year and then drops back down at the beginning of the year, and that's just kind of a normal seasonality of of the business. So please go to our website and take a look at that.
And in terms of Ponzi scheme, like, Ponzi scheme basically means that the people in the future have to pay for the current people.
We could shut down CrowdHealth right now and add zero people over open enrollment.
Open enrollment starts in about a month or so, and we'll be totally fine. As a result of that, that definitionally is not, you know, a Ponzi scheme. So, yeah, I mean, we've been doing this for five and a half years, six years now, and we've gotten these bills paid. So, you know, this is is, you know, a viable way of of doing it from our perspective.
Can I sign up to begin January 2027? Yes. You can sign up today for 01/01/2027. We will not bill you until 01/01/2027.
And so you can do that now, and you don't have to worry about it until then. You will get some communications from us between now and then. But, yeah, we won't we won't bill you until you you start date. You can you can choose any day, I think, six months into the future as your start date. So won't bill you until then. It's a great question.
Yeah. So on the website, you can schedule a free call with an expert to get your questions answered one on one. Yes. You can do that.
So go to our website. It's it's a good statement, I guess. And if you go to talk to an expert, if I didn't get your answers answered your questions answered today, book a call with us. You can schedule a call with one of our our people internally.
About half of our members really wanna have a phone call with one of our our member advisers. About half don't, and so it's about half and half. And so you can ask any follow-up questions that you all have to to answer those those questions that you have.
Not FSA or HSA eligible. Not yet. We're working on it. There's a couple bills in congress right now that we we think would alleviate that, but not HSA or FSA. What we consider is, you know, that's a there's a tax break to that. We think you're gonna save more with CrowdHealth and the tax break that you get. So definitely do the math on that, but we think that CrowdHealth is still, you know, a great opportunity for those people who even wanna, you you know, put money into their HSA.
For your health events, you can use your HSA for that $500 or anything under $500 component. You can use your HSA towards that. So you can actually utilize your HSA while while with with CrowdHealth.
And see, what if I need physical therapy? Yeah. Physical therapy is the question Vicky is asking. Physical therapy associated with a health event that you you have on CrowdHealth is eligible. So for example, if you need knee surgery, you tore your ACL, whatever that ends up being, you can go to physical therapy. That's absolutely, you know, eligible as as a part of that. And so physical therapy is is is definitely an ineligible procedure.
We got a question. Brett said a question came in from email. Will the university my son or daughter attends accept CrowdHealth as a qualifying coverage to meet their student health insurance?
Some do and some don't. So, you know, if you have a question on that, I would I would reach out. You can actually reach out to hey@joincrowdhealth.com. Let us know what university is. We can do some work for you to figure that out. But, yeah, hey, hey,likeinhey,@joincrowdhealth.com, and we can we can do some work to see if that that university will accept it.
Valerie asked, can I enroll at any time? Yeah. You can enroll at any time. So it's not just during open enrollment. It's any time.
You can quit at any time. So this is not like you're in a contractual agreement with us for a year or whatever. You can you can start. You can end whenever you you'd like. And what I would say is that about it takes about ten minutes to get signed up.
And so, you know, it's it's a pretty quick process. It's it's kind of the basics that we're we're ask asking you for. And so it's a it's a very quick sign up. We do ask you to read the member guide just to know what what you know, how we work and things like that.
But once you do that, it's somewhere between five and ten minutes. Someone someone told me the other day it took them three minutes. So maybe I'm being conservative on the five or ten minutes. Probably depends upon whether you have a a big family.
If we Chris c asked, if we join, how soon are we eligible for a health event to be funded tomorrow? I mean, in reality, we you you know, today and, god forbid, you know, something happens within your sleep tonight, you would that would be eligible. So it is eligible immediately. We do not have a wait period or anything like that. So, you know, it's it's eligible, yeah, immediately.
Marsha is asking, can you explain the $99 a month for three months? Yeah. It's basically, multiply the number of people in your family by 99, and that's how much your crowd health will be for the first three months. So if you have one person, it'll be, you know, 99.
If you have two people, it will be, if my math is right, one ninety eight. Three people would be two ninety seven a month. And so, like I said, that's significantly lower than than what it is, you know, kind of when you're kind of a member after three months. And so it does save you some some money for the the first three months.
Let's see. Tara asked, so I pay $60 a month. Yep. That comes to us. That comes to CrowdHealth. And on top of that, I pay up to 140 a month per person.
And then that's it, Tara. There's no no no on top of that that we're asking for more. So it's just $60 to CrowdHealth and then up to $1.40 to another person.
So max that you'll pay for CrowdHealth is $200 a month. There's nothing on on top of that. So, hopefully, that makes sense. Your max for two people is $400.
That's correct. That's the max.
This month for a a part a family of two would be about $300 a month, plus or minus a little bit. So a little bit lower than that if you are a member here in September.
What do we have to do to provide to see if we qualify? Yeah. We don't have any, like, application forms or anything like that. So there's really not a lot.
You just go through the enrollment form. It's gonna ask you for, you know, the basics of you. You are starting a bank account when you join CrowdHealth. If you remember, you know, before when I said that that there's money transferred between bank accounts, you actually start a bank account when you join CrowdHealth.
You will submit money into your bank account, and then that bank account automatically sends money to the receiver. And so the receiver then has that money in the bank account. If you remember a few slides back where in our app, it shows how much you have in that bank account, and then lets you withdraw that. That basically withdrawal button tells the bank that we're working with to send money from your bank account that you started with CrowdHealth to your personal bank account.
And so that's how it works. It's super easy. I promise.
It's just a lot different than health insurance. So it sounds pretty pretty complex, but it's it's super easy once you once you get the hangout. Alright. Last question.
Can I sign up myself and our two kids now and then add my husband when his coverage ends at the end of the year? Yes. You can you can sign them up, you know, today. And then whenever your husband is is ready, you know, we'd we'd love for him to to join us.
So I'm over time. Two minutes. I almost made an hour.
Go to joincrowdhealth.com. If you wanna sign up, make sure you use the code or the person who sent you their code. That's actually better. It's better for the person who sent you.
And then if you have any other questions, there's something at the top of our website that says ask an expert. Click on that, and you can there's time slots available. You just pick a time slot, and then they will send you an invite to have a phone call. It's a fifteen minute phone call. You can ask any questions that you want, and I promise the people on the other end are super, super kind, sweet people.
So you'll enjoy the phone call. So thank you all. Really, truly, thank you for joining us. Really, really appreciate it, and we hope that you come and join us. So have a good night, everybody. See you.
CrowdHealth CEO Andy Schoonover hosts a webinar explaining the company's alternative approach to traditional health insurance. Schoonover shares his personal experience with high medical costs and denied claims to illustrate the necessity of their model. The presentation details the CrowdHealth mechanics, which include a monthly subscription fee, a community-based crowdfunding component where members help pay each other's medical bills, and access to personal care advocates and negotiation services. The session features a member testimonial from Ryan Jacob, who describes navigating significant health events like his son's NICU stay and his own brain cancer treatments using the platform. The webinar also includes a Q&A session covering topics such as eligibility, pre-existing conditions, pregnancy coverage, and the distinction between the platform and a Ponzi scheme.
Hey, everybody. My name is Andy Schoonover. I'm the CEO of CrowdHealth. Just wanted to welcome everybody. We had, I think, almost 3,000 people register to to be at this, and so I'm just honored that y'all would take an hour out of your your day to come in and join us. I'm assuming that you're here because you're as frustrated with health insurance as I am, whether it be the the networks or the con continued rising costs or, the denied claims or or whatever it may be. We're just happy that you've joined us to talk a little bit about an alternative.
I am really excited to to tell you a little bit about CrowdHealth, what we do, how we do it. But like I said, I was frustrated with health insurance just like many of you were or are back about seven years ago.
I had health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, and I kinda joke it it worked until I had to use it.
My little one, who's pictured here, was one at the time, and she was having recurring ear infections. And so we went to the ear, nose, and throat doctor who told us that she had a hole in her eardrum. And so we did everything right. We had health insurance.
We went in network. We got the procedure done, and it was a fifteen minute procedure. I got a bill in the mail, and it was $8,000 for a fifteen minute procedure. And I was just blown away by the cost of that.
But I thought, hey. This is what health insurance is for. This is the whole point of us having health insurance. And so I didn't worry too much about it until I got a note via snail mail, from my health insurance plan that it was said it was not medically necessary, and so they weren't gonna pay the bills.
And so I was like, hold on a second. My daughter has a hole in her eardrum. The day before we got the procedure, she was screaming bloody murder day and night because she was having so much pain. And the day after, she was totally fine.
And so I knew this was medically necessary.
And we appealed that twice, and they said, nope. We're not paying for it. So I had to stroke an $8,000 check to get my daughter's ears fixed. It was at that point where I called my health insurance plan, and I said, I'm I'm done.
If you're not gonna pay my bills, I'm not gonna pay your bills. And so I quit health insurance. And as I started doing research, I realized that two hundred and fifty thousand families every year go bankrupt due to a medical event even though they have health insurance. And that's because of denied claims.
It's because of really, really high deductibles.
And that saddened me, and it was at that point where I said, I'm gonna do something about this. So I started paying in cash for me and my family's bills. And what I found was is that by paying in cash, paying directly as opposed to through a health insurance company, we were getting way better rates than insurance companies. And so I thought, well, what if we get a community together, a group of people together to help with some of these big bills?
You know, I was fine paying the pediatrician bill or the primary care bill or whatever that may be. But what happens if we have cancer or a car accident or something big like that? If we had a community of people who could band together, eliminate the health insurance companies, and pay direct, we found that or my theory was that, this would go way, way better. And what I found is that it actually has been successful.
So we started CrowdHealth about six and a half years ago, and we've had 40,000 members since then join us. We have 35,000 members as of today, and we've had 60,000 bills that have been processed through CrowdHealth. 99.9% of the bills submitted to the community have been funded, which is significantly better than health insurance.
And we've saved our members about a $100,000,000 over the last six years. So it has gone to plan. It's actually gone way better to plan. And so I'm so excited to tell you a little bit more about that tonight.
And in fact, here's our growth numbers. You can see on the chart on the left, we've been skyrocketing. I think that's as a result of the health insurance getting so, so expensive. In fact, next year, what we have heard is that the Affordable Care Act is going to increase by, on average, about 15%.
Commercial health plans are gonna be increasing by about 12%. And we are actually down about 5% this year versus last year for our members and what they're they're paying. So we've we've done an an incredible job of getting these bills, negotiated and and and paid for, and we're gonna talk to you a bit more about the mechanics here in a minute.
The thing I'm most proud of is our customers love CrowdHealth. We have a 4.9, rating. That's over almost 1,200 reviews. I think we hit 1,200 reviews today. So if you go look at some of the other insurance companies, I think you'll see the the ratings for those, the reviews for those aren't quite as pleasant.
And so if anybody is is really considering CrowdHealth after this, we hope you will. Go and just Google CrowdHealth reviews and read through them. I think you're gonna see some, you know, incredible stories of of how we've backed people and helped them get some of these big bills paid.
We also were on the Inc. 5,000 list. We came in at 270, so we're the two hundred and seventieth fastest growing company in The United States according to Inc. And so we're really, really excited about the results and and more excited to tell you about exactly how this works.
So the agenda for today, we're gonna keep it to an hour, I promise. If you have questions at the end, I'll give you a link so you can schedule a call with one of our folks internally to ask any follow-up questions. I'm gonna try to get as many questions today as possible, but we're first gonna go through the crowd health mechanics. How this works, it's a little bit different from health insurance, and so we're just gonna walk through the mechanics of that.
We're gonna have a member testimonial. Ryan Jacob, who's been through two very, very large health events with CrowdHealth, is gonna give a little bit of an overview of what it's been like with CrowdHealth going through really big health events. He's gone through cancer, and he's gone through, having a NICU baby. And so he's gonna walk through that.
Then And we're gonna have plenty of time for for questions and answers. So excited about that. Just one disclaimer because I don't wanna have somebody go all the way to the end and not be eligible. There's there's really two things in which, that CrowdHealth is it doesn't work for.
Unfortunately, if you are 65, we can't currently engage with Medicare members, Medicare eligible members due to some regulatory rules. So if you're 65 and over, keep a lookout. We're trying to develop a 65 program, but we don't have that yet. So look out for that in 2027, hopefully.
And, also, if you're a current or a former smoker, and that's basically if you smoked every day for at least a year straight, then you wouldn't be eligible for crowd health. Let's jump into the mechanics.
You pay us a subscription fee. One of the things that I realized with health insurance is that insurance companies actually make more money when your bills go up, and so we call that a perverse incentive. That's an incentive that is against the members or the patients of that health insurance plan. And so we are just charge you a $60 per month per person per month fee.
So if you have one person, it's 60. If you have four, it's $240. And what you get for that is you get a personal care advocate. One of the things I hated about health insurance is when I had something big go on in life, like the thing I talked about with my daughter, I would call somebody.
I'd be on hold for twenty minutes. I would have to tell them, you know, the most intimate details of my health care. That wouldn't be the right person. They would punt me to somebody else.
I'd have to wait in line. If I had hair, I'd probably have would have ripped it out. And so with CrowdHealth, you have actually a personal care advocate. So when you reach out to us, you can call us.
You can text us. You can email us. The same person will, respond every time. They get to know you.
You get to know them. And so it's really a much more kind of an intimate relationship that we feel like is is one of the best things about CrowdHealth is having somebody, a guide to walk you through some of these complex situations.
This also includes negotiation services. So we have a group of people who are on your seat team, who are on your side to help you negotiate some of these bills. And so you can see some on the right where we've gotten significant discounts by our team, which includes attorneys to help you negotiate these bills. One of the most frustrating things is when you get a bill in the mail, you have no idea what it is or what it's about.
With CrowdHealth, all you have to do is upload it. We take a look at it. We go through it. We have experts look at those bills to make sure there aren't any errors on it, and then we'll go and negotiate those bills on your behalf with the hospital or the doctor, whoever it may be.
So that's that's a part of the $60 a month.
We also have a bill analyzer, which can analyze that bill, make sure that that bill's fairly priced. As I as I mentioned, if there are any errors on it, I heard one just last week where, a hospital billed two codes that they're not actually legal to bill legal to bill at the same time. And so our people internally found that and and let the the member know, and so we were able to wipe that off their bill immediately.
We also have a doctor quality database. So if you live in a city where you're looking for a knee replacement, for example, all you have to do is go into our app and say, I'm looking for a knee replacement in Tampa, Florida, and you will pull up a list of all of the the people in Tampa, Florida that our members have gone to that we've evaluated. You'll see what their error rate is on those knee knee replacements. If you're looking for an OBGYN, we can tell you if that OBGYN does too many C sections when compared to others.
So we're giving you all of this data right in your app.
And then we provide the crowdfunding platform, which is the platform that we use to enable people to pay their bills directly as opposed to going through health insurance. And so we're gonna talk a little bit more about that now.
The cool thing about CrowdHealth is that you're actually helping other members. You're not sending your money directly to a health insurance company. You will get an email once a month with a specific person that needs help in the community. The email, for example, is on the right. I know that's a little bit small, but it's but here, it says we have a member in in Colorado that needs help.
Looks like a ear infection. And so they're asking me I think this was actually mine from two two months ago. And so if you you can say yes or no to that. And if you say yes, then your money is gonna go directly to another person in the community.
And so that's a really cool thing. Your your money is going directly to them. It's not going to a health insurance company.
It's not going to, you know, buy the CEO's plane or anything like that. So, you know, it's a really cool thing. I was actually at a dinner last night with a CrowdHealth member.
And let's see here. Apparently, I'm getting a little bit of feedback. What I'm what I'm hearing is a little bit of an echo. So hold on one second. Sorry for that. Let's see if we can can change that up and see if we can do this a little bit better. Team, is that any better?
Sorry for the the feedback y'all.
I'm gonna I'm gonna keep going and see if we can correct this along the way.
But we're gonna ask you if you are age zero to 54 up to a $140 a month to help somebody else out in the community. If your age is 55 to 64, it's up to $280 a month. Or if you're a family of four plus, it's $420 a month. And so this money, like I said, is going directly to another person in the community to help them with their their health care needs.
So good. I think we got feedback figured out. So that's a really cool part of what we do. And so you're helping another person directly.
It's not going through a health insurance plan. And so, you know, the guy last night said, it's the first time ever that I've actually paid for my health care and felt really, really good about because they knew that they're helping somebody else out in the community. So there's two components to this. There's that subscription fee, and then there is a crowdfunding component.
So if you're age 50 to four, you're $60 of membership and then up to a $140. So 60 plus one forty is $200. And so that's the maximum you will pay at with CrowdHealth in any one month.
No other things associated with that, so we're not asking you for anything else.
There is, like, a point 5% transaction fee. But other than that, that's how much is maxed for your your CrowdHealth membership. And in the same way, you're maxed at $3.40 if you're 55 to 64.
Or if you're a family four plus, it's $660. Now I keep saying it's the max. So why is that? Well, we only ask you in that crowdfund component that up to 2 $1.40
for a single. We only ask you for what the community needs. So if the community is doing really, really well, we don't ask you for all one forty. If you remember the previous slide, I think in that slide a couple months ago, we only asked for 80 of the one forty.
And so we don't ask the entire thing every single month. And in fact, we've only asked for the maximum three times in the last six years. I think the last time was two years ago. So it's been a long time since we've we've done that. And so that hopefully under helps you all understand the the way that crowd that CrowdHealth works.
So I'm waiting for my file to come back up here. Sorry about that, y'all.
Here we go. And so this is the way it looks like. So on average, for a single human or a single person, it's been a $145 total for a single person 55 over the last twelve months. That's an average.
And so it's it's has trended significantly below 200. For a family of four, it has been on average about $486. You can actually go on our website and go to resources, and you can show in results. It's right up there.
We show what we've asked from our members for every month for the last, I think, two or three years. And so you can go and check that out on our website.
So what happens when you have a health event? How does that work? Well, you can choose any doctor you want. We do not have networks. So go to wherever you'd like. So you won't lose your doctor. We promise.
For the big ones, all we ask is that you call us because what we will probably be able to do is find you a really high quality, fairly priced doctor in your area to do any of these big procedures, or we can negotiate on your behalf with the doctor that you would like to go to if there is one you'd like to go to. Most members who are going to get a big procedure, they'll call us first. They're like, hey. I need to go and get my ACL fixed.
You know, what do I do? And then we can find them a really great orthopedic surgeon within their area to help them that we know is is fairly priced. And then you go and you submit your bills in the app. You'll get a bill from the doctor or a good faith estimate.
You'll take a picture of that bill in our app, and that uploads it to us.
And then what we do is we then send it out to a community the community to get that funded. And so let's just say, for example, it's a $4,000 bill.
You pay the first $500 of that bill. So for any health event, you pay the first $500. We don't have deductibles. And then we will go to the crowd and ask, which is, say, 35 people for a $100.
They will send that money directly to you. You will see that arrive in the app. You can see a picture of that on the right. This is our product manager, Jennifer, who has $300 in her account that she got crowdfunded from the community.
And then you can withdraw that money directly into your private bank account, your own bank account, and then go pay that bill. And so that's how it works. It's super, super easy. I know it's different than health insurance.
But in essence, what our what we're trying to do is to enable our members to pay their doctor directly and therefore get much, much better rates. Our whole system is built upon you get better rates if you can pay your doctor directly. Why is that? Well, doctors spend on average between twelve and sixteen hours a week just fighting with health insurance plans to get paid.
So can you imagine if, you know, you're employed and you're getting a paycheck, you have to fight for two of the five days to get just to get your paycheck? That's super inefficient. And so if you go and pay the doctor directly, they don't have to fight with health insurance plans or anything like that. They get the money immediately.
They don't have to fight, and so they are giving willing to give significant discounts. Over the 60,000 bills that we've processed through CrowdHealth, we have found that our members are getting about 50% better rates than health insurance plans for the exact same procedure. And so that's really what makes this work. So if you have any questions on that, ask them in the comments section on the right hand side, and I will promise I'll get them to them at the end.
Just really quickly here before we go into talking to to Ryan, if you would like like to sign up for CrowdHealth, use the code webinar 23, and you will get the first three months for $99 a month per person. And so that's a significant reduction versus what it is normally, which is what we just saw in the previous couple slides. Or if somebody told you about this webinar, please use their code. Because what happens then is you get the same $99 a month, but we will send that member who sent you $250.
One of the cool things about CrowdHealth is we hate spending money on Meta and Google and all those. We love giving money back to our members. And in fact, we've given almost $2,000,000 away to our members. I think the number one person was like a 100 or a $120,000 last year just by telling their friends, their family, their social media followers, whoever it is.
And we give you $250 for any anybody who signs up with CrowdHealth and continues on beyond three months. So please use this code.
You can use that at joincrowdhealth.com.
We're gonna welcome Ryan to the little live webinar here. Brother, how are you?
Hey.
I'm doing Bald Head Guides Unite.
To and Greg. To and Greg.
Ryan, I've known Ryan for several years now. Ryan, how long have you been a member?
It's been five years, I believe.
Five years. Okay. Ryan started out as a member. I consider him a friend. We've we've been through some battles together, you know, with with some of these health events, which, you know, I'm excited for you, Ryan, to to tell us a little bit about you know, one of the biggest concerns with crowd health is what happens when something big happens.
You know? Is this is this is the crowd able to to support you both, you know, in terms of helping you through that journey, but also getting these bills paid? So we'd love for you to to take it away and just tell us a little bit about your journey with CrowdHealth.
Sure. Yeah. I'd be happy to do so. I know I started with CrowdHealth, I think, at the time because I was working with a private company.
It was pretty small. And so they offered an insurance option that was, I mean, awful. And then we saw CrowdHealth, and I said, oh, that's pretty interesting. Let me check it out.
And at the time, you know, a super healthy guy. It's like, this is probably a way to save some money. I'll try it out. You know, fast forward a few years later and, you know, the first event and I remember actually talking to the CrowdHealth team whenever my son was born.
Son my son is named Judah. He was born with Down syndrome.
He had a heart defect, which is pretty common for Down syndrome when he was born, and then he was also deaf. And so I remember we're literally in the NICU, and I go out, I think, to get some clothes or something for my wife and I. And I called CrowdHealth, and I said, hey. This is what's going on.
Like, am I in trouble? Like, have I messed up now? Because, you know, big things are happening, and the team was spectacular. They just said, you're perfectly fine.
You're covered. This is what the kind of stuff was made for, and let's guide this and figure this out together. And so they asked me some really good questions.
I was able to get information that we needed to share so that we can start working on, you know, savings and finding like, all the detailed bills that need to be sent over. I was able to fill out that information, get that done, and it just was a different experience. I feel like most of the time I don't if you guys feel this way, but anytime we've had insurance in the past, it's like everything's a fight. They wanna, you know, shut us off.
They wanna say, oh, sorry. This is a technicality. You can't you can't cover that. And it felt like CrowdHealth was more on our team and still is on our team, through this process.
And, I mean, the last thing you wanna worry about when your son has a major heart issue and was just born with Down syndrome, his death, is the bills. You know, you wanna take care of your family, and I feel like we were actually put in a position where we could do that because of the team that was around us. And, to share everything about it, because we just wanna be the details. Right?
When Judah was born, we kind of broke CrowdHealth.
I don't think they were ever really set up initially to have all these ways to upload and different things. And and so I I shared that with the team. And instead of saying, oh, you know, sorry. This is how it is or, you know, now figure this out.
They were said, you know, this is a really good point. This is you know, we have are gonna have other people on the crowd like Judah, and we wanna work to do this better. And I can't remember the technical name of the individual. I think it was, like, the head of experience or director of experience or something, but I got on a phone call and literally was able to share, hey.
This is what's working really well. Here are some frustrations that we have.
And they actually took that information, and some of the updates that have come since, in the app and everything was actually some of that same information that was shared, and that just blew my mind, that that was even an option. So that's how that's how it started. We you know, I I can say that we were able to navigate, Judah in the NICU stay. I think it was, like, eighteen days or nineteen days.
I know with, open heart surgery and cochlear, you know, crowd crowd health was the right way with us every step of the way for anything that we needed. I think they even send over, like, some toys or some things to the kid to our little kiddos on birthdays. Like, little stuff. Like, who does those things that really makes it different to everybody?
And then so after after the experience with Judah, which, again, with CrowdHealth did great, everything was taken care of. We you know, everything was paid for and done. We negotiated some things. There were some bigger bills.
And I we actually had a situation where the crowd actually gave back money to some of us because we were able to negotiate some of the additional bills even more. And Andy, I was really shocked by this too, but they came up and said, hey. Like, we were able to do a better discount than we even thought we could do. And so it actually gave a percentage back of some of that savings that we were able to negotiate because we were actively negotiating as part of this process.
So that was Judah. And by itself, guys, that would be enough to say, hey. You guys should be using CrowdHealth for forever, in my opinion. But it actually gets a little crazier.
So about June, I was with my daughter just driving, getting some groceries, and I had just a moment where I couldn't think of words for about a minute.
And so that's kinda weird, but I called my my wife who's also a nurse and said, hey. It's probably no big deal. Probably sugar or something. No big deal.
Two weeks later, I was at lunch with a mentor, and it happened again. And when it happened the second time, my wife said, okay. Yeah. You need to go to the ER and get a scan.
And so I went to the ER. Everything looked great. They're about to cut me out, and then they did a scan, and that's where they saw the mass in my brain.
And so it turns out that I, you know, had a tumor in my brain, and I was immediately taken to from e from the ER to the hospital.
That was a Friday afternoon. And by Monday morning, I was having a crane a craniotomy surgery. I know in that process too, I mean, there's a lot of things that was going through my mind, but the thing that was really neat too is I know Andy specifically, I had a conversation with you about what's upcoming and, you know, praying together about, everything that we're do we since we share faith, like, what we're being afraid like, for. And the biggest thing too is the CrowdHill team saying, hey. Like, focus on getting well. We will take care of these other things. Tell us what you need.
And they were just part of that process. And then, unfortunately, I actually had to get a second craniotomy in July because the first one didn't really get done the way we needed to get done. And so we were actually able to change doctor groups and actually found a an option. I think we actually were looking some out of state options, Andy, if I remember right, and CrowdHealth was onboard. They said, hey. If you need to go, like, let us know.
But it turns out we actually were able fund Anderson, I think, where Yeah.
MD Anderson.
Yeah. MD Anderson is said they were recommending, but then that would be in Houston, and we'd have to basically, you know, move to do those things. But, you know, CrowdHealth said, sure. If that's what we had to do to get it done, we will. But, we actually go to OU now at Stevenson here in Oklahoma, and they actually are, I don't know if it's called sister, community groups. But, essentially, my craniotomy that was done by the other doctor, he was he trained in MD Anderson. He fellowships there, and he actually went to France because he my second craniotomy was actually awake, which is also kinda weird to get that done.
But, again, both those things were done. There was healing during that time. There was community during that time, and we're actually navigating some of those those bills now together as a team as we're also exploring next steps.
Something else I I wanna share to you is with what I have, it's it's called a glioblastoma is what I was diagnosed with is basically a brain cancer. It's a pretty aggressive one. And so there there isn't, like, a a easy cure. Like, here it is. It's gone. And so one of the things that we were able to do at Crown Hill too is look at different things, not just traditional options, but maybe some nontraditional options and explore those things together. And I know for a fact some of the things that they're covering now or helping with, like vitamin c and hyperbaric, are things that I know for a fact insurance does not ever touch.
And so we're getting taken care of even more than we could have before, and it's, yeah, it's still a process. It's still a journey that I'm in, but it really feels like the team, is with us the whole time. And it's it's a very unique experience. And, you know, in this time, you know, I started working for somebody else. I actually run a company now, and I have about, you know, 10 or 11 employees. And all of us are on CrowdHealth now.
It's it's so much a better a better solution, especially for a small business. And I can, you know, tell everything every single one of them about, hey. This is what happened. Here's how they took care of that. Here's how I can help navigate these things. And it's just been a great experience all over.
Thank you for that. We are wishing you well.
And as you potentially go to Germany to do a genomic test, we're supporting you all the way, and we're gonna have you back here next year doing this. Right?
And Oh, yeah.
And and tell them the same story.
And you're gonna be totally healed of this thing, and it's gonna be awesome.
Yeah. God God is good. He's he's taking care of us, and I'm I already feel so blessed that I I I've had two brain surgeries, and I'm sitting here talking and able to do things, like, normally.
And so, yeah, God is good, and having CrowdHealth in our team is definitely a part of that as well, and we appreciate it.
Thanks for joining us, Will. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Guys, we're gonna move on to q and a. So we've got a bunch of questions here that we're gonna go through. Brett, if you'll pull back up my my slides, there are some that we have kind of started here because these are the ones that have been asked on the previous webinars.
And so, you know, one of the things that people ask is is is this risky? You know, health insurance plans, quote, unquote, guarantee that the bills are paid. So, you know, what happens with with CrowdHealth? With CrowdHealth, ultimately, our members are responsible for their own bills. However, what we have shown is a significantly higher probability of getting your bills paid than than health insurance plans. The latest data has shown that about one in five health insurance plans claims are denied.
And so that's literally tens of millions, maybe even hundreds of millions. I think there was, like, 40,000,000 claims in New York alone were denied. And so if you think, you know, the the the folks at the the state capital are gonna be able to help you 40,000,000 with 40,000,000 claims tonight. It just doesn't happen.
So there's really no recourse. What we have shown is we have we can viably get these bills paid over the 60,000 bills. And as as Ryan said, even for the very, very large ones, which he's had, you know, several, you know, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for these these surgeries. And so we believe that actually, I believe that health insurance is more risky than than than CrowdHealth is.
We see the two hundred and fifty thousand people going bankrupt every year even though they have health insurance due to a medical event.
And so we we we truly believe that this is a a viable way of of paying for health care bills that is very different from health insurance, and we think that's a good thing.
What about previously diagnosed conditions? You know, one of the things when we started CrowdHealth and and Ryan's first scenario with Judah was pretty early on in our in our experience. That's why we hadn't gotten everything, you know, buttoned up for some of those big bills, but we do now.
What happened was is we had people jump in and get a knee replacement and then jump back out again. And so what we really wanna build is a community that you can't just jump in and jump out. And for regulatory reasons, we can't have open enrollments and and things like that. So what we had to do is say, hey.
Look. We we want you to be a part of the community before you start submitting bills for health events prior to joining the community. So if you start today and you, god forbid, get in a car accident tomorrow, that would be eligible for funding. If you got a diagnosis last week of you know, that you need your knee replaced and you joined CrowdHealth, that would not be eligible for funding until after you've been a part of the community for two years.
And then after you've been a part of the community for two years, then you can start submitting those bills. Now what is a, you know, pre how do we define previously diagnosed condition? In essence, that's anything that happened five years before you joined CrowdHealth. So if it if you had cancer ten years ago and you joined CrowdHealth and tomorrow you got diagnosed with that same cancer, that would be eligible.
So we only have a five year look back for that.
And so, hopefully, that's helpful in understanding how we we deal with previously diagnosed conditions.
Pregnancies, similar. You know, we don't want somebody to go thirty weeks and then have a baby and then jump out right after the baby is born. And so if you are currently pregnant, that would not be eligible. And so the way that we look at this is pregnancies due dates have to be three hundred days after you start.
And so if you're looking to get pregnant, join today because, you know, we we we look at due dates. And so that's basically a two or three week window of when you can see join and then conceive. And so that's the way we work. And the only reason we did two or three weeks is because we didn't wanna fight you over over when the conception was.
That's an awkward conversation.
So we just say three hundred days from when you start is when you your due date is three hundred days from when you start for eligible pregnancies.
There are probably folks on here that are live in one of the five states or the District Of Columbia that require you to have health insurance.
And if you don't have health insurance, then you are penalized for that. And so we do not meet that insurance requirement for those five states. However, stay tuned because I think there's someone coming out with a product that's a low cost product that will help you meet that insurance requirement. So we hope to have, you know, some some resources and let you know what company that is in in the next couple of weeks.
So stay tuned if you're in Massachusetts, California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, or Vermont or DC because we think that there is a an alternative coming here in the next couple of weeks.
There's always a question about what if my doctor doesn't accept crowd health? Well, we've had 60,000 bills. I have only heard of it two or three times that the doctor won't accept a direct payment. They require you to have health insurance.
And so it does not happen often. And I will tell you that those three two or three times were all in one state. It was Massachusetts.
And so we have members in Massachusetts, but we, you know, have not had many problems with it, just two or three over the over the the years. And so there are not many doctors out there that won't accept the direct payment because it's better for them in so many ways.
A lot of people ask is is kind of alternative health therapies, like functional medicine, all integrative medicine, naturopathic eligible for funding? They are. They are eligible for funding. And so, you know, Ryan is is headed to Germany or he's evaluating, heading heading to Germany for a genomic test to help him, you know, battle his his cancer. The only thing we ask is that any of these alternative therapies have some kind of clinical background that says that this works. So we know a lot of doctors out there that give magic pixie dust and spend you know, charge a bunch for it.
And we just don't think that's fair to submit to the community. And so those would not be eligible. But if there's some clinical background that these are eligible, then then those would be eligible for funding by by the community. The key component here that's really important is CrowdHealth doesn't actually make the decision, whether it's eligible or ineligible.
What we do is we take a look at the bills and says, hey. This doesn't look eligible. We let you know that. And then you have the ability to appeal that to a group of CrowdHealth members who make that ultimate decision.
And so it's not CrowdHealth corporate making that decision. It is a community based decision making process.
And it that those appeals don't happen all that often because it's pretty, you know, black and white. But, you know, ultimately, it is the decision of the community to to do that. With all that said, that might sound scary, but 60,000 bills, 99.9% of them have gotten gotten funded. You know, people ask, well, what about the 1.1%? Like, what is that? You may remember back a little ways when I was saying that you could say yes or no to a a funding request.
Most people have it automated, so it says yes every single time. That's the way that I have it because I don't wanna have to go in there and say yes or no. So it's automated. You just it just tells you who you gave to.
But if you say no, you can do that. And you just have to know that if you do do that and then you submit bills to the community, the community will know that you said no to other people in the community. So that's how that works. And it's worked incredibly well, over the last, you know, five or six years.
So that's how that works. We're gonna go to some, questions now. We got another about twenty minutes.
We how does the crowd help work with families?
So, Meg, thanks for the question. So families, you know, it's $60 a person and then $420 for maximum for what you give on a a monthly basis. I think the average for a family of four has been $4.85. So if you have a family of five, that would be an additional $6 $60.
Excuse me. If you have a family of six, that would be an extra $120 to a $120 total. So that's how that works. If you go to our website, join crowdhealth.com,
there is a calculator about halfway down the page.
So it's about a scroll one scroll and a half down there, and you can actually plug in how many family members you have and how much it costs, and that will give you the the how much it it costs for that. One of the other cool things about CrowdHealth for families especially is you get $300 a year of wellness visits. And so you can use that for pretty much whatever you want for for wellness. If you wanna I use it personally for my kids' dental because pediatric dental is really expensive.
And so we use that for for my kids. My wife uses it for her gynecology appointment. I use it for labs. And so you get $300 per year per person to use on any wellness events that you that you would like.
Anybody who's on direct primary care, that's also eligible. And so that's a cool part of this, especially with with families.
And so see. My my pal is 60 years. She has five years more before Medicare.
Medicare requires continuous coverage. Does Crown Health satisfy this requirement? We believe so. Yeah. I mean, Medicare requires continuous coverage once you get into Medicare from my understanding, so it does not preclude you from jumping on Medicare.
And in fact, we lose, I think, ten members a month or something like that to Medicare, and all of them have been able to transition to Medicare easily. We've not had any feedback that they haven't been able to do that. So it's it's continuous coverage if you are you are in in Medicare. So let's see here.
What would cost be a family of three? So a family of three would be $60 times 3, $1.80, and then up to $4.20. So your maximum would be 600 for a family of three.
Again, we haven't asked for that in a long, long time, but that would be the maximum we would ask you. We've been averaging for a family of four about $4.85. So you'd deduct 60 from that. It'd be about $4.25
on average. So, hopefully, that that works.
Another question is, do you cover prescriptions? Yes. Prescriptions, we are are eligible for a you know, any health event that you have that is eligible for for funding. So let's just say, you know, in Ryan's example, he's going through some serious, you know, issues with with his brain cancer.
There's a number of prescriptions that are associated with that.
And so if you have a health event and you need prescription drugs as a result of that health event, then that is eligible. I do wanna stop and just have people understand what a health event is because I think that's somewhat confusing. A health event, Ryan's brain cancer is all one health event. So his first surgery, his second surgery, his doctor visits, his prescription drugs, his trip to Germany for the genome therapy, and anything else associated with that brain surgery, that's all one health event.
And so you're paying the first 500 of that health event, and then anything after that is eligible for funding. So that's the way that it works. So a a health event is any series of medical procedures or prescriptions or imaging or surgery that all has to do with one health event. And that's not per year.
It's over the entire health event. So Ryan is probably gonna be battling this cancer for multiple over multiple years. He only has to pay that first 500 of the health event before they we we send the rest to the community to to fund.
So that's the way that that works.
Let's see. Do we know what the our community would be? Everybody's in the same community. So we have 35,000 people in our our community currently.
And so that's the the the entire communities can can chip in for for these health bills. And so we don't break those communities up into to multiple communities. We did have a a set alone community at one point, but we decided that one community is much better, more efficient. It does remind me one quick thing, though, that if you are metabolically healthy, we're coming up here in October.
First starts our kind of metabolic health panel quarter where you can go and get a fasting insulin test and a high sensitivity c reactive protein test and a DEXA scan to get your visceral fat. If you show us that you're metabolically healthy, all the numbers on the crowdfunding component that we showed you in the past, you actually get a 20% discount if you can show us that you're metabolically healthy. And so we do want to incentivize people to get metabolically healthy. And we've had many, many, many examples of people who took these tests, weren't metabolically healthy, worked on them over a year, came back, and became metabolically healthy as a result of that.
And so it's really good to have your baseline. And all of those tests are eligible for funding by by the community. So we're we're very much focused on, you know, prevention.
I always tell my people that I want our crew our crowd to be 80 or 90 years old playing soccer in the bass backyard with their grandkids. That to me is thriving. So we we pour a lot of of effort into into preventative.
I read that you may have to travel far for anything big. No. I mean, ultimately, if you live in a a big city, you won't have to travel far.
You know, if you live in a tiny community and there's no place, you know, close to you that's reasonable for for the procedure, we will ask you to to travel to the local big city to to go and do that, but that doesn't happen very often. I think it probably has happened 10 times in the last, you know, 60,000 bills or something like that. So it's it's abnormal and and and more likely if you live in a very small town that may or may not have access to some of the procedures. As Ryan just mentioned, you know, he was he might have had to travel to MD Anderson in Houston.
He lives in Oklahoma. And so there are cases in which we had a guy in, I believe, Nashville who was gonna head to to MD Anderson for his cancer. He had colon cancer. And so there are times in which you just have to travel for some of these procedures.
Cindy is asking what percentage of members have health insurance also. We think it's about fifteen to twenty percent based upon what people tell us when they join CrowdHealth. These people are typically ones in which they are testing the waters. They're just this is a new way of doing things.
I don't trust it quite yet. And so they are yeah. They they they are just kinda testing. And I think that most of the people who do that ditch their health insurance after they've tested the waters.
And so, that's that's the way that that to the best of our knowledge, fifteen to twenty percent. We don't love it when you have health insurance. And the reason is, and I just saw this today, literally, when you have health insurance, you go in, you slap down your card, and therefore, you're gonna get insurance rates. And so those rates tend to be significantly higher.
And the one I saw today, this afternoon, was about two x what our member would have paid if he didn't have health insurance. And so we'd prefer people not have health insurance because you're gonna get much, much better rates, and the crowd benefits from that.
Alright. Megan is asking, I'm not understanding the additional one forty. CrowdHealth asked members for help for one person. Is CrowdHealth only selecting one person to help, or does that help build a bigger pot? It's a great question. So we're gonna be asking you once or twice a month to help somebody else directly in the community. So if you think about it, we have 3,000 bills, and I think it's 4,000 or something like that this month.
And so we have 4,000 bills. And so for each one of those bills, we're gonna go ask somebody in the community to help fund that specific bill. So we're not coming to you 4,000 times to ask you to fund bills. So it's not like each bill is divided by 35,000.
It's no. We're asking you for a specific bill this month. And then that money goes directly to that person to help them with that bill. So you will only be asked once, sometimes twice a month to help somebody else in in the community.
And so that's the way that that works. So, hopefully, that clears it up.
But, yeah, it's it's super simple, and it's great that you know exactly who you're giving that money to, but we're not we're only asking you once and maybe twice a month. And if it's twice a month, they're back to back. It's because we have a weird bill. Where if I'm asking you for a $100 this month and we have a bill for 50, then we actually just give you two $50 bills instead of one $100 bill. So that's probably too much detail. But, it's once or twice a month that we'll ask you to help, and it's going to individuals.
Let's see. What happens when you choose the $85 option? Yeah. Michael, it's a great point.
What I focused on tonight is our, what we call the CrowdHealth OG, the original. And that's for you pay the first $500 of every month. And then we will ask you, you know, to help somebody else in the community for up to that $1.40 if you're single.
We also have a second option, which is we call it the black swan product, which is basically, instead of that $500 per health event, it's $15,000 per per health event. So you're responsible for the first 15,000 before the rest is eligible. And that's significantly less because you're paying more upfront. In essence, this is for people who just don't wanna mess with anything.
They just wanna pay all the little bills. But if something really big comes up, they'd love the community to help them out. So that's called the Black Swan product. So, hopefully, that answers your question.
Is Jody asked, is the 500 per event for each event like, if I go to the physical and it's 300, do I just pay that whole 300? Yeah. Anything that's under 300, what we do is you pay anything under 300. And so if if you go to, you know, the I've got kids.
So my kids, if they get, you know, strep throat or something like that and we go to the pediatrician and that's a $150, I just pay $150. Now let's just say that strep throat turns into something more significant that requires, you know, prescriptions or maybe even a hospitalization. I'm paying $500 of that health event. So the $1.50
for the pediatric visit, maybe it's $1.50 for prescriptions and something else. And then anything above that in that health event would be eligible. So if your kid has sniffles and you go to the pediatrician and it's a $150, you just pay that.
You don't even have to submit it to CrowdHealth. But if that then turns into something bigger above 500, then that's when you can submit it to to the community. Hope that helps.
Home births, Cody and Emily Barnhart, who I think were the OHIO people and who for whoever was here before we started.
Yeah. We we we do a lot of home births. The last numbers I checked were that we our our second largest expense for the community is births. I think there's 800 or something like that that are gonna babies that are gonna be born in the crowd this this year. And, again, the last numbers I looked were about sixty percent of them were outside of the hospital.
Forty percent of them were at home. You can do a doula. You can do a midwife. You can do the supplies and things that you need to have them at home.
Twenty percent were at birthing centers, and 40% were at hospitals. And so you can you know, ultimately, what we're talking about is health care freedom You can you can get health care whatever way that you wanna get your health care. This is between you and your your doctor. And, you know, so we don't get in the way of that.
And so we want you to have any as many options as as as you'd like.
You know, we have people who have injuries who are going to do acupuncture and chiropractic and, you know, functional and naturopathic, and that's fine with us. You should go in and get whatever care you need to address your your health event. So hopefully that answers your question.
Is this available in all 50 states? Gail is asking. Yes. It is available in all 50 states.
And so, yeah, wherever you live, we actually have people in Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands and I think even Guam. And so and we actually have people in 15, I think, about 15 different countries.
So as long as you're able to get a a US bank account, then you are able to be a member of of CrowdHealth. Also, if you're traveling internationally and something happens, that is also eligible for funding. So it doesn't need to be in The United States. We had a member go to Japan and go into a coma in Japan of all places.
You know, fortunately, he's fine, but that bill was eligible and was funded by the community.
How many members are in the crowd? Betsy asks. 35,000 members are in the crowd currently. We believe we'll have about 50,000 by the end of of the year, and we're targeting about a 100,000 for for next year.
Let's see here. Can you discuss the the solvency and profitability of the plan? How are members assured that this isn't a Ponzi scheme? Yeah. I mean, I think that, ultimately, you know, we we don't touch the money that goes in between members that is member to member. The $60 that comes to us is what pays our bills.
So, you know, we are profitable. We got profitable last summer, so two summers ago. So we're a profitable company. We did raise capital early on with CrowdHealth, but that we haven't raised since 2022.
And so we are a profitable company, and so, you know, hopefully, that gives you some some comfort there. And in terms of of the kind of viability of the community, you know, we've got this sliding scale. So going back to, you know, a family of of four more is is $420. We only asked we're asking this month, let's see, I think, like, $2.70 or $2.80 or something like that.
And so what happens is is when we get you know, let's just say we have a bunch of large bills all at the same time. We're gonna go to the community and say, hey. You've been paying $2.80. You paid $2.80
in September, but, you know, we had a bunch of huge massive bills come in. So we have to bump you up to 300 or $3.20 or 400 this month. We'll get those bills paid, and then that goes back down again.
So the way I look at it is the best indicator of crowd health, the actual crowd's health, is looking at what is is the crowd being asked for this month. And right now, it's something like 30% or 40% lower than our max. And so there's a lot of runway to get up to. And so, again, I go I would ask you to go back to to www.joincrowdhealth.com.
I believe it is I'm gonna pull it up here just so I I I get everybody the right information. If you go to yeah. You go to resources, and then you can go to I'm excuse me. If you go to results, there is a section there that says monthly cost insights.
And that will tell you what the community has been asked for over I think it's two or three years worth of data. And what you'll see is that it has always been significantly lower than a $140. Or the vast majority of time, it's been lower than a $140. And so that to me is the best indicator of of of crowd health of the health of of the crowd.
I will say that the only caveat to that is that we have the bills get a little bit higher at the end of the year and a bit lower in the beginning of the year. I think everybody kinda waits till the end of the year to get some of these procedures. I think they're conditioned based upon, you know, the the health the the deductible thing that they think about with health insurance, but it does rise a little bit here at the end of the year and then drops back down at the beginning of the year, and that's just kind of a normal seasonality of of the business. So please go to our website and take a look at that.
And in terms of Ponzi scheme, like, Ponzi scheme basically means that the people in the future have to pay for the current people.
We could shut down CrowdHealth right now and add zero people over open enrollment.
Open enrollment starts in about a month or so, and we'll be totally fine. As a result of that, that definitionally is not, you know, a Ponzi scheme. So, yeah, I mean, we've been doing this for five and a half years, six years now, and we've gotten these bills paid. So, you know, this is is, you know, a viable way of of doing it from our perspective.
Can I sign up to begin January 2027? Yes. You can sign up today for 01/01/2027. We will not bill you until 01/01/2027.
And so you can do that now, and you don't have to worry about it until then. You will get some communications from us between now and then. But, yeah, we won't we won't bill you until you you start date. You can you can choose any day, I think, six months into the future as your start date. So won't bill you until then. It's a great question.
Yeah. So on the website, you can schedule a free call with an expert to get your questions answered one on one. Yes. You can do that.
So go to our website. It's it's a good statement, I guess. And if you go to talk to an expert, if I didn't get your answers answered your questions answered today, book a call with us. You can schedule a call with one of our our people internally.
About half of our members really wanna have a phone call with one of our our member advisers. About half don't, and so it's about half and half. And so you can ask any follow-up questions that you all have to to answer those those questions that you have.
Not FSA or HSA eligible. Not yet. We're working on it. There's a couple bills in congress right now that we we think would alleviate that, but not HSA or FSA. What we consider is, you know, that's a there's a tax break to that. We think you're gonna save more with CrowdHealth and the tax break that you get. So definitely do the math on that, but we think that CrowdHealth is still, you know, a great opportunity for those people who even wanna, you you know, put money into their HSA.
For your health events, you can use your HSA for that $500 or anything under $500 component. You can use your HSA towards that. So you can actually utilize your HSA while while with with CrowdHealth.
And see, what if I need physical therapy? Yeah. Physical therapy is the question Vicky is asking. Physical therapy associated with a health event that you you have on CrowdHealth is eligible. So for example, if you need knee surgery, you tore your ACL, whatever that ends up being, you can go to physical therapy. That's absolutely, you know, eligible as as a part of that. And so physical therapy is is is definitely an ineligible procedure.
We got a question. Brett said a question came in from email. Will the university my son or daughter attends accept CrowdHealth as a qualifying coverage to meet their student health insurance?
Some do and some don't. So, you know, if you have a question on that, I would I would reach out. You can actually reach out to hey@joincrowdhealth.com. Let us know what university is. We can do some work for you to figure that out. But, yeah, hey, hey,likeinhey,@joincrowdhealth.com, and we can we can do some work to see if that that university will accept it.
Valerie asked, can I enroll at any time? Yeah. You can enroll at any time. So it's not just during open enrollment. It's any time.
You can quit at any time. So this is not like you're in a contractual agreement with us for a year or whatever. You can you can start. You can end whenever you you'd like. And what I would say is that about it takes about ten minutes to get signed up.
And so, you know, it's it's a pretty quick process. It's it's kind of the basics that we're we're ask asking you for. And so it's a it's a very quick sign up. We do ask you to read the member guide just to know what what you know, how we work and things like that.
But once you do that, it's somewhere between five and ten minutes. Someone someone told me the other day it took them three minutes. So maybe I'm being conservative on the five or ten minutes. Probably depends upon whether you have a a big family.
If we Chris c asked, if we join, how soon are we eligible for a health event to be funded tomorrow? I mean, in reality, we you you know, today and, god forbid, you know, something happens within your sleep tonight, you would that would be eligible. So it is eligible immediately. We do not have a wait period or anything like that. So, you know, it's it's eligible, yeah, immediately.
Marsha is asking, can you explain the $99 a month for three months? Yeah. It's basically, multiply the number of people in your family by 99, and that's how much your crowd health will be for the first three months. So if you have one person, it'll be, you know, 99.
If you have two people, it will be, if my math is right, one ninety eight. Three people would be two ninety seven a month. And so, like I said, that's significantly lower than than what it is, you know, kind of when you're kind of a member after three months. And so it does save you some some money for the the first three months.
Let's see. Tara asked, so I pay $60 a month. Yep. That comes to us. That comes to CrowdHealth. And on top of that, I pay up to 140 a month per person.
And then that's it, Tara. There's no no no on top of that that we're asking for more. So it's just $60 to CrowdHealth and then up to $1.40 to another person.
So max that you'll pay for CrowdHealth is $200 a month. There's nothing on on top of that. So, hopefully, that makes sense. Your max for two people is $400.
That's correct. That's the max.
This month for a a part a family of two would be about $300 a month, plus or minus a little bit. So a little bit lower than that if you are a member here in September.
What do we have to do to provide to see if we qualify? Yeah. We don't have any, like, application forms or anything like that. So there's really not a lot.
You just go through the enrollment form. It's gonna ask you for, you know, the basics of you. You are starting a bank account when you join CrowdHealth. If you remember, you know, before when I said that that there's money transferred between bank accounts, you actually start a bank account when you join CrowdHealth.
You will submit money into your bank account, and then that bank account automatically sends money to the receiver. And so the receiver then has that money in the bank account. If you remember a few slides back where in our app, it shows how much you have in that bank account, and then lets you withdraw that. That basically withdrawal button tells the bank that we're working with to send money from your bank account that you started with CrowdHealth to your personal bank account.
And so that's how it works. It's super easy. I promise.
It's just a lot different than health insurance. So it sounds pretty pretty complex, but it's it's super easy once you once you get the hangout. Alright. Last question.
Can I sign up myself and our two kids now and then add my husband when his coverage ends at the end of the year? Yes. You can you can sign them up, you know, today. And then whenever your husband is is ready, you know, we'd we'd love for him to to join us.
So I'm over time. Two minutes. I almost made an hour.
Go to joincrowdhealth.com. If you wanna sign up, make sure you use the code or the person who sent you their code. That's actually better. It's better for the person who sent you.
And then if you have any other questions, there's something at the top of our website that says ask an expert. Click on that, and you can there's time slots available. You just pick a time slot, and then they will send you an invite to have a phone call. It's a fifteen minute phone call. You can ask any questions that you want, and I promise the people on the other end are super, super kind, sweet people.
So you'll enjoy the phone call. So thank you all. Really, truly, thank you for joining us. Really, really appreciate it, and we hope that you come and join us. So have a good night, everybody. See you.
