#165: Two Unconventional Options to Traditional Healthcare Insurance: What My Listeners Have to Say

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia, and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. Just a quick reminder that you can find detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com forward/episode 165 and those notes include a summary of our discussion. In fact, in this case, it's a very detailed summary of our discussion as well as any links to resources we mentioned during the show. Alright, so last November, November 2017, I dedicated a podcast episode to the topic of unconventional options to traditional health care insurance for freelancers. And the two types of alternatives we discussed in that episode were medical cost sharing and health indemnity plans. In this episode I wanted to circle back to the topic as the open enrollment period for 2019 health insurance runs from November 1st. So it's already started and it closes December 15th of this year. So it's kind of the same window that we had last year. And what I wanted to do is I wanted to use the fact that this enrollment period is now here upon us is an opportunity to solicit feedback from my listeners to see whether any of them had ventured into either one of these two alternative coverage options and if so, to learn more about this experience. So I put out a call for feedback out on Facebook and we had some great responses. And what I've done is basically consolidate some of these. A lot of people were in a situation where they really had gone this route but hadn't put it to use at all. So I didn't really use much of that because I was looking for people who would actually put it to the test. And yeah, so great feedback from our listeners who explored these options, signed up for them, and like I said, have put them to use. Now, before we get started, a few reminders and a few points I wanted to make. And the first one should be kind of the elephant in the room. I sound a little bit different today, if you've noticed. That is, I caught a cold over the weekend and man, it's just, it kicked my butt. I'm actually a lot better today, but there's no rest for the weary when you have a podcast. So I had to record today and I had to just run with what I got. So bear with me. I'm going to be A little bit stuffed up, possibly taking some pauses and so forth. But, you know, just hopefully the content here is solid enough that you'll. You'll stick around if you live outside the U.S. look, let me just tell you right now, there's no need for you to listen to this episode. This doesn't really apply to you. Also, I'm not a financial advisor or insurance professional. You need to do your own due diligence and investigate these and other options on your own while consulting with your financial advisor before making any final decisions. The other thing I should mention is these options are not for everyone. Okay? I realize that I'm not here saying, hey, this is what you guys should check out. Everyone should look at these options. For a lot of people, these options just aren't going to work. But here's the thing. There's no perfect solution out there. Our health care system in this country is broken. If you'll allow me a little bit of editorial, I find that I really believe we could do a lot better. We could do so much better. I mean, we've sent people out to the moon, we've sent satellites on the outer space and beyond capsules outside of the solar system. Okay, I know we can do much better, but it is what it is. In the meantime, you know, we're. We're. We need to take care of ourselves. We need to take care of our families. We need to protect our finances. So you need to really do your homework and do whatever it takes to take personal responsibility. I will say this is not just the politician's fault, okay? I think Washington is to blame for a lot of this. I do believe that we all need to take some ownership in this area as well. Many people have no choice in the matter, but many of us can do simple things to improve our health, become smarter consumers of health care. You know, so not pointing the finger at anybody, just saying, look, I think we've grown up in an environment where we just expected insurance companies to take care of everything. And it's gotten to a point where that's unsustainable. And now it's up to us to take more ownership of the situation, which is something that many of us are not used to. But, you know, we can either fight it or. Or we can protect ourselves and our families and our finances. You have a choice. I would say, look, don't send me hate mail because you don't like these options because you disagree with one of these options or both of them. I'm simply trying to share what I find is Good information. And also to that point, please don't send me emails or private messages asking me questions about these and other alternatives. Again, I'm not a financial insurance professional. I will not respond with, with additional questions. I just, I just can't. This is not my area of expertise. I'm simply reporting here today. You should know that I do not profit in any way by informing you of these options. I'm not affiliated with any of these companies or have any kind of personal financial interest in any of them. And by the way, if this should ever happen, like if one of these companies ever awarded, send me a gift for just mentioning them the show, I would send it back. It has not happened. But just as a matter of policy, if that ever were to happen, I would not accept any kind of compensation or consideration. Again, I can't say this enough. I'm not a financial advisor or insurance professional. Do your homework, do your due diligence, make your own decision. And I would also suggest finally to download the resource guide on this page that you see in the show Notes here for the additional links and resources, including a list of medical cost sharing organizations, comparison charts and detail articles on these unconventional options. Okay, so longer introduction than normal and I hope you understand why I want to make sure that we're all on the same page here. Well, so let's, let's talk about these two options. There are medical cost sharing plans and health indemnity plans, as you might recall from our previous episode. By the way, I'm linking to it in the show Notes, medical cost sharing is based on principles of mutual aid and assistance. So the way it works is each month members set aside a share amount into a secure account. And then your share amount is matched to another member who has expenses that month and vice versa. Okay? So it's a very straightforward. They don't use the same language, insurance companies, they don't call it premiums, they don't use the word deductibles because they can't. So they have to use different terminology because these are not insurance companies. With health indemnity plan coverage you have, that's really. That is an insurance policy. Okay, It's a different type of insurance policy, but the way it works. And again, this is just lay terminology. I'm just giving it to you the way I understand it, okay? You have a menu of healthcare services with a fixed dollar amount that the insurance company will cover for each service. So think about in healthcare, there could be hundreds and hundreds of different things that could be done and each of Them has a medical code and the government has a published fee, a published number that they will pay the doctor or whatever provider you're going to for that service for that medical code. If the cost of your healthcare service is less than what the insurance company is going to pay out, you keep the difference. Okay? That is a very unique thing about this, where in traditional health insurance, if the cost is less than what they normally pay, that's fine. They just pay the doctor or the provider that amount and that's it. Right? So if it's $100 that they would normally pay, but the doctor billed 80, well, they'll pay the doctor 80 and that's it. Nobody gets the other 20. Now here's the others. It cuts both ways. If it's more, they're not going to pay more. You have to pay the difference. Okay? For more on these types of plans, I just urge you to check back to our earlier episode from last year, which describes in more detail. I have Mark Done from New Air Life Insurance, who explained this stuff in a lot more detail and more eloquently than I am right now. Okay. And I also had the president of Liberty Health Share talk about medical cost sharing in more detail and way better explained than the quick synopsis I just gave you. So let's start with medical cost sharing plans in terms of the feedback I got back. Now, I will say that a person's medical history and experience is obviously a very sensitive topic. So I want to assure you that before I publish this information, I got permission to share this information from the individuals that you're going to hear from. So a big, big thanks to all of you who wrote back with feedback and who contributed to this episode. Now, having said that, I'm still and I've decided I'm going to anonymize all the feedback that I'm about to share, except for my own, and you'll hear from me at the end. But I decided that even though everyone was okay with this and a couple had some exceptions they wanted me to take out, I just think it's safest if I anonymize everybody just in case things change in the future, you know, you might be okay with it now, but what if in a year, you know, you don't want that information floating out there. I'd rather. It's just so much easier if we don't share everyone's information here. And that way there's no future problems. So every name you hear is not the name of the person. Okay. This is these. I'VE just changed the names to protect the innocent. All right, so the first one is Sharon in Sharon. And again here we're going to start with medical cost sharing plans and feedback on those. So, Sharon, and I'm going to read you exactly what everyone shared with me because I don't want to change any of this and I want it to come straight from these individuals. Okay, so I'll start reading here. And by the way, all this is in the show notes. Okay, so we have a longer than usual set of show notes for this episode that includes all this information. So Sharon says, I went with a medical cost sharing plan. I never heard from your guy who did the indemnity plans. I paid $2,200 per year for the medical sharing plan. I've got the top level plus the add on for unlimited sharing. I didn't have any expenses. They were at the level to share this year, meaning over $500. So I can't speak to their promptness at reimbursing for expenses. I also switched to a primary care doctor who charges a flat monthly fee of $60 a month. And then all office visits are at no additional charge. Appointments are 30 to 60 minutes, as opposed to seven minutes for a typical medical insurance doctor's appointment, which is all that Blue Cross and Blue Shield allows. And of course, in this case, that's what she had before Blue Cross and Blue Shield just a little bit. And by the way, let me just take a quick break here just to introduce an idea that somebody else had in here, and it's something that I've been meaning to look into, which is this idea of primary care doctors and facilities that have gone to a different model. So the standard model of, you know, they bill your insurance company and it goes through all that and then finally at the end, it kind of trickles down to you and maybe you have something due or whatever. That's become such a nightmare for so many healthcare providers, especially people like primary care doctors, that many of them are starting to opt out of that system. And this is my understanding the way this works now is a lot of primary care doctors have gone to a membership model where they say, you know what, Forget insurance. We're going to just work with people directly on a cash basis. And in fact, to make it easier, we're just going to charge a monthly amount. Now you can come see us once, you can come see us, you know, a dozen times doesn't really matter, but you'll be covered. So we'll see you. And of course, I don't know the particulars here, but that's kind of the gist of the model. Okay. In insurance case, $60 a month, and all office visits are no additional charge. So that $60 a month covers the. The huge benefit that a lot of people, from what I've seen, the huge benefit they're experiencing is a regular doctor is only budgeted to spend seven minutes with you. Okay. And if you've ever been in that situation, you know how frustrating that can be. You know, you have several questions. You got an issue that they're giving you kind of standard answers for, but you need. You need to feel understood, and you want the doctor to think through this, like maybe you have. You've done some research or whatever. And seven minutes flies by. In this model that I'm describing, Doctors are budgeted 30 to 60 minutes per patient because they don't have this massive overhead of having to deal with insurance companies, and they're going straight to you. So it's very close relationships with their patients. They're getting paid cash every month, so they have this fixed income coming in. They can take on fewer patients. Okay. And work directly on a cash basis and afford to spend more time with each patient. So this is something I've heard several people have gone to in terms of just kind of their basic health coverage, their primary care doctor. It's something that I'm going to be looking into for our family and at least for my wife and I. And it's something that I think holds a ton of promise. Okay. So continuing with Sharon's feedback, she says, just eliminating my endocrinologist and getting my prescriptions. Through my new doctor, I've saved enough to cover his monthly fee for 10 months. I'm able to call, text, or message him anytime and get a response. Lab work by my primary care doctor is about 80% less than what I used to pay with insurance. I mean, I think it's remarkable. That's crazy. She continues, I've discovered the discount you get for paying cash for a doctor visit is usually less than what my cost would have been with insurance. I had a high deductible plan previously, so most of my cost was out of pocket anyway. Barring any unexpected health issues, I'll end the year with less than $3,500 in total medical expenditures and a much more positive experience with my care. Had I stayed with Blue Cross and Blue Shield, my expenses would have been closer to $14,000 for premiums and costs this year under the deductible. Okay, so significant difference My interpretation of what Sharon has done is she has the $60 a month that she pays to be part of her primary care doctor to be able to spend more time with them, get better feedback, get better care, and then she's using the medical cost sharing plan for bigger expenses, things that could come up, big expenses, outlays. That course would not be covered under that plan with a primary care doctor. All right, next. I heard back from Helen, and Helen's feedback is as follows. She says, I'm one self employed person who does not by choice have an individual health insurance plan. Earlier this year, I signed up for a Christian health care ministry. The way I see it, it's not much different for me than a high deductible health plan, but it's $45 a month instead of $500 a month for my other insurance. I also set aside a little bit each month into a health savings account. Although I read that you're not supposed to do this, I couldn't find any information as to why or any information about any consequences. So I do it my way. I pay for occasional chiropractor visits, an annual visit to my primary care doctor, and an annual OBGYN visit out of the health savings account. Most people think I'm stupid or crazy because I can afford health insurance, but I just don't see spending $6,000 a year or more on health insurance that I'll never use. I'd rather invest that money. I have a lot of reasons for going this route, but as far as the basics. First, I'm single, healthy, no chronic conditions, and no real family history of chronic conditions like cancer or heart disease. I take one prescription that costs $12 every three months. I don't get sick, I don't have kids, and at 47 years old, I, I don't think I'll ever need maternity coverage. When I find an association health plan that suits my needs and is affordable, I'll consider it. I'm pretty darn liberal and I know a lot of Democrats don't like them, but the concept makes sense to me. All that being said, I'm probably an odd case. Okay, so with, with Helen, we have a situation where she's, she's healthy, she's young, and she has, you know, no history of any kind of illnesses herself or her family. And she was paying a lot of money out of pocket for coverage that she really didn't need. However, she realized, you know what? I don't want to be without anything because an emergency could happen to anyone. So just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean that it wouldn't. So she's covering herself for that, but drastically reducing her monthly outlay. All right, next I heard from Linda, who also has feedback on medical cost sharing plan. Now she's got a this is cool because she gave me a lot of detail about something that happened to her this year. It's a pretty scary thing. And so she really put her plan through the test and fortunately it's it all looks like it's working out well for her. A few bumps in the road, but let me share exactly what she sent me. She says I've just ended a six month plan with Aliera Healthcare, which is a cost sharing plan, by the way. I'll include that link in the show notes she says it cost me $320 a month and it was to bridge between an international health plan I had with Cigna that had ended and then Medicare, which I became eligible for this month, which is, as she says, the only good thing about getting older. I got that. And she's referring to her cost sharing plan. I got that because I'm totally healthy and just wanted major medical coverage. But as fate would have it, I had a horrible flu virus in May, one month after the plan started, which may or may not have caused what presented itself as a stroke. For about 15 hours I lost most of my words, actually nouns and names of everyone, including my kids. I couldn't complete a sentence. This started while on a business call and I chalked it up to being exhausted from having a horrible cough. But after two hours of lying down, I couldn't make sense of some text on my phone and I had a tingling numb sensation run down the right side of my body. I managed to get to my neighbor who drove me to the er. By the time I got there, I was so confused I couldn't check myself in. They decided I was having a stroke and gave me a seat, gave me CT scans and gave me TPA treatment to break any potential blood clot. The Then they sent me to the icu where I had an individual nurse watch over me for the next six hours. By morning my vocabulary was back and an MRI showed no signs of a stroke. I stayed in ICU one more night. I have absolutely no risk factors for a stroke, so the cause of the symptoms remains a mystery. Maybe it was viral or caused by a migraine. She says I had a headache a few days prior, but never in my life had a migraine. The whole ordeal cost about $137,000 and, and I'm still waiting for resolution on the claim. I'm supposed to have a $10,000 deductible. The plan says it covers all life threatening emergencies that happen within the first six months of the policy. Otherwise, hospitalization and specialists aren't covered until after six months. By the way, let me just insert here. She's referring to a $10,000 deductible, just to be clear. So medical cost sharing plans don't use that terminology. She's using it because that's what we're all used to using. But they're very careful in not calling these amounts deductibles. I forget what everyone uses kind of a different term, but that's kind of like your share. I think it's what they call it. Your share for anything that happens is, you know, $10,000 and after that, then we'll go ahead and pay. So kind of the same concept, but because they're not insurance companies, they can't call it that. At least that's my understanding. All right. Continuing on with Linda's example or feedback, she says the first claim submission go around. The first person who reviewed the claim was a trainee from another department who rejected the claim. She thought it was for something elective. Then I worked it out with a woman who sold me the policy and she and her managers were totally apologetic and said my claim would be covered. But here it is months later and still no resolution. I think it's not uncommon even with major medical insurance companies. I did compute that if I had a policy through aca, Affordable Health Care act, by the way, just which has covered California in her case, which would have cost me $750 a month. With a $6,400 deductible and $9,200 out of pocket, my total cost would have been about the same. So the only way I'd end up with a better settlement would be if I'd paid over $1,000 a month in premiums. The annual cost may still have been as high. So she says the jury is out on coverage. But if Aliera covers the costs, leaving me a $10,000 deductible, I'd say that the plan was worthwhile. The people were very kind. They're a Christian organization, which I think has to do with making the plan eligible within the ACA without tax penalty. So you have to verbally agree to their philosophy, which is no problem for me. And you have to use their video or phone telemedicine conference when you're sick before they'll approve an in person doctor visit. Doctors in my area were limited, but they all had really great backgrounds. I used the telemedicine option with a flu and got very responsive care. Then she continues, my story is a good warning that anything can happen to you out of the blue and you need some form of insurance. Also, these cost sharing major medical plans seem to be national and cost a lot less than plans through the ACA when you can't qualify for subsidies, which is hard, she says, when you've taken your, when you've taken your classes and started to succeed. So just a quick side note, Linda was coaching client of mine. She's done extremely well since our work together. And you know, she says, hey, that's one of the downsides, unfortunately, when you start earning more. In her case, she didn't qualify for subsidies. She says, I'm still a fan of the aca, but not the limit amounts they use for providing subsidies. It was okay when I still had a dependent and wasn't making that much money, but I lost the subsidies when I became a single taxpayer and started making more. So, you know, bottom line, and I think this is a. Just a great piece of feedback is, look, it doesn't really matter how old you are, what your medical history is. Medical emergency can happen to anyone. So you need to be careful. You know, you want to insure against big, big risk. And even though in her case, medical cost sharing plan is not technically insurance, you're covering yourself in a way by having being tied to a network of people who will help cover your costs if something happened in a very systematic way. But all right, next is Sean. And Sean went with Liberty Health Share as his medical cost sharing plan for his family. Sean happens to be a good friend of mine. Married, two kids, he's my same age. And he says the following. He says they aren't the most organized company in the world, but they aren't bad. Rates are fair and it isn't too much of a hassle. They covered my wife's hysterectomy in the spring. We have to get pre approval for major costs, pay for them upfront, and then we get reimbursed. Now, he did say we eventually get reimbursed. It takes a long time. So reimbursement is not, you know, next week kind of thing. That's an important point to make here is many times you have to pay for these things upfront. With medical cost sharing plans, you have to pay for the provider, the provider upfront, and then you have to submit a Reimbursement form, which could take. It could take a while. Okay, so in Sean's case, what he had, he has a savings account which he uses for these things. And I'm assuming. And he didn't say this, but when he does get reimbursed, he goes ahead and reimburses or puts that money back in that savings account. All right. He continues. There were some miscommunications from their end early on in our relationship. That was frustrating. But we eventually found a customer service rep that volunteered to be our personal contact for questions, and that was a great help. We always need to get detailed receipts with codes, and doctors often scoff at this request, which is ridiculous. It's amazing that people generally do not ask a doctor for billing details. It's still confusing at times and not really the perfect solution. We spend a lot of time managing and following up with healthcare providers, and that can be stressful at times. Our monthly bills, if you want to call them that, actually has those under quotation marks, are lower than they would be on the Affordable Health Care act if we were on a standard ACA plan. But we have not been able to evaluate a true value based on the amount of time we have to spend managing it. This is a less expensive model than many other options, but it comes at a cost of time. So. Great point there. It's. Now, what I love about Sean's story is that, I mean, he really put it through the test in that, just like Linda, in that his wife got a hysterectomy. I mean, that has major surgery. Right. This would be a big, big cost. And that's what I wanted to find out is like, okay, I understand that, you know, you got something minor, broken a leg or something like that. Yeah, that's expensive. But nothing like a hysterectomy or In Linda's case, $137,000 hospital bill. You know, how do these organizations react? You know, how do they come through when there's something really big like that? And Sean's point here is, look, it's. It's gone well. It's a bit of a hassle sometimes. You have to go back and forth. You have to spend more time tracking this stuff. And he didn't say this, but again, to my earlier point, many of us are just used to the insurance companies and doctors just taking care of all that stuff. Hey, you guys. You guys figure this out. You guys settle it. Just let me know at the end. What do I owe you of anything? And when we get that final bill, at the end, you know, we tend to pay it, you know, but in this case, it's really more up to you, and you have to take greater ownership of the situation, which is not a lot of fun. I know. That's not something that I really enjoy. In fact, I hate it. All right, so let's switch gears a little bit and talk about health and identity plans. I got feedback from Simon, one of my listeners, and then I wanted to share feedback of my own because I went with that option as well. So let's get to Simon's feedback. He says we're about eight months in. We have to wait a couple of months for the product to become available in Florida. We haven't used it at all yet, but probably will before year end. Year end for my wife to have some services. However, I've had a lot of different types of coverage over the years and as a freelancer since 2001. And for me, this is one of the best values we could have, we could have in this current market. If it performs in the ways our insurance rep explained it initially, it should be worth it for us. We're also part of a direct primary care physician relationship, so we pay a monthly subscription for physician services, which we've also only used once. So this is kind of that same model that I talked about a little bit earlier that Sharon subscribes to and that I've been meaning to look into. He says the Health and Dennity plan is a great structure for working with this kind of primary care, too. I can't speak to the claims process because we haven't had any. But from. But for just my wife and I, all our five kids are in their 20s now. So just for his wife and himself, he says we pay less than $1,000 per month for the combination of our health accident plan and direct primary care. So that membership to his primary care doctor, the way it breaks down for him is that membership is $185 a month and then $670 a month for the indemnity plan. So it's less than $1,000 altogether. In a former scenario, he continues, I was paying nearly $1,500 a month for the three of us, which we also almost never used. The couple uses I had were 100% out of pocket because of plan deductibles, while in addition paying about $125 a month for a separate plan for our son, who's now 23, graduated, and has an employer plan while at Florida State. So about sixteen hundred dollars in Total per month is what we are paying. We were paying. I should say so, yeah. Very happy with at least the cost of this new setup. I'm planning to stay with it in 2019. We always hope not to use this stuff much, but if we have to, it seems like the features will work well. All right. And lastly, I wanted to give you guys my experience so far in what I went with. So my wife and I, we ended up going with a health and dennity plan and then we added also as a backup medical cost sharing. So here's kind of a little bit of the background. We went ahead and enrolled in the health and vanity plan and the health medical cost sharing in September 2017, and we dropped a traditional health insurance policy that we'd had for 11 years. Basically since, since I had gone full time on my own. It was an ACA approved plan. It actually had better coverage than the limits or the minimums that ACA had. So it got grandfathered in. And it was a high deductible policy with a health savings account attached to it. I believe our family deductible was about $6,000. And I had a health savings account as a separate component that we'd put money in every month. The problem for us is that premiums had nearly tripled over the 11 years that we had the policy. And most of that increase came the past three or four years or so. Unfortunately, coverage had not improved with that increase. What really tipped the scales for me, what really broke the camel's back, was when my son needed to have oral surgery and they declined it. They wouldn't pay for any of it and it was medically necessary. And I just said, you know, we've been paying into this plan for all this time. This is just not right. So the background for us is that all four of us, I have two kids, we're all healthy, thank goodness. We have no pre existing conditions. None of us really take any prescription medication on a regular basis. I mean, if somebody gets sick and needs an antibiotic or something like that, sure. But we have no prescriptions, recurring prescriptions, no, no health issues. So we're fortunate. We really feel fortunate, we feel blessed. And I'm also willing to take on shared responsibility for healthcare costs. And that's something that I accepted when I went on my own. And so I've been doing that for a while. When I had my high deductible policy, I realized, you know what, this is a different world now. I. My employer is not going to subsidize most of my Premiums. I have to pay the full premium now, and I'm going to have to take on more of the risk with a high deductible policy. So I was already okay with this model where it's more of a shared risk as opposed to the whole thing or most of it being subsidized like it is when you are employed and your employer pays for so much of it. However, I wasn't willing to continue accepting 20% or more annual premium increases year after year after year. So it reached a point where I think it was the new premium went up to over $1,400 a month. I reached out to my accountant to see if he had any ideas, and that's how I learned about health and identity plans. He put me in touch with his guy. He said that's what he had started offering for his employees in his firm, I think the prior year, a couple years prior. And he says, you know, they were happy with it. He says, I think you, you know, you should definitely check it out. And I love what I heard. So we went with that same health and identity insurance company, our total premium, and we added an extra hospital coverage option. I don't know the details, but our total premium a month is a little over $700, or around $700 a month for a family of four. So two adults, two children, and that's about half of what we're paying with a traditional health insurance policy. Now, this was a little bit confusing because it's so different. Basically, I went with an option and a plan that pays two times what Medicare pays out for, again, hundreds of different treatments and medical codes. Right. Or procedures. So I think they have a one time, two times, and three times Medicare. We went with the middle option. So let me give you an example of how this works. The way I understand it, a doctor's visit and some tests might be $500. That's the payout. So that is what the insurance company will pay out based on those things. Those three or four things, we will pay out a total of $500 according to that two times Medicare table. But if your doctor only charges you $450, see, the insurance company doesn't care where you go or how much the doctor is charging you. Like, they're completely out of that. If your doctor only charges you $450, the insurance company, again, they don't care. What they'll do is they'll pay the Dr. The 450. And guess what? They'll send you the difference $50. Because again, they pay out the full amount. See, that's what makes it so different from traditional insurance in that they don't care. They're going to say, look for these things, we're going to pay this out to somebody, and if you can find a cheaper, great, we'll send you the difference. Um, if it's more, we're just gonna pay out that amount. You gotta find the difference. You know, you gotta. You're responsible for the difference. So that, that's what makes it a little different. And I'm. I'm still trying to get used to that approach. So let me give you another hypothetical example. Cause that one is kind of a low $1. Let's say you need shoulder surgery and it's $20,000. With your. The surgeon that you've been talking to, the insurance company will actually help you. If you ask them, they will help you shop for that, for other options. Like, they will look, research. They will call around and find several surgeons in your area and see if they can find a better option. So here's my understanding of how this works. Let's say that the shoulder surgery, again, so Your surgeon is $20,000. You call the insurance company up and you tell them you need help shopping this around, and they find a local surgeon who could do it for $17,000. Now, I haven't gone through this, but I'm assuming. I know if it were me, I'd obviously want to see this doctor. I want to see how, talk to them. Get, of course, a consultation and all that good stuff. Right? But let's say that it all checks out. So let's also assume that the insurance company only would pay out $19,000. Okay? So again, the surgeon you've been working with, one's 20, they found. The insurance company, found somebody who will do it for 17, and the insurance company will only pay 19. Okay? So you could go with your surgeon and they charge 20. The insurance company pays 19. So you got to come up with $1,000 difference. Or you could go with this other surgeon for $17,000. Again, the insurance company still pays out 19, so you keep the $2,000 difference. Difference. Again, such an odd thing in such a weird different system in. You know, again, that's. That's how I understand this whole thing works. Okay? So that is my understanding. I'm not saying, you know, I guarantee this depends on the policy and depends on a lot of factors and you got to read everything, but that is the way I understand it works. And I think it's. It's brilliant. Now we're a healthy family. As I mentioned, I haven't had to use the plan much, but what we have used it for has worked really, really well. So we've had a coup. Urgent care visits and annual will visits for all of us. And I believe they covered everything. And some cases they were, you know, I had to pay a little bit more out of pocket in a few cases. I've gotten checks for the difference. So I think I got one the other day. My son had a urgent care visit that he went to a couple of months ago. They went ahead and billed the insurance company. The insurance company paid them, and again, there was a difference. So they sent me a check for $20, you know, for the difference. So that was, that was pretty cool. And I can say that they do send out those checks now, they don't send them out immediately. Sometimes it takes, you know, a month, a couple of months. I think it's been about the average, but they sent them out. Now, the unfortunate part about our situation over the past year or so is that the only major medical expense we've had, I mean, I guess you could say fortunately, unfortunately, but for the purposes of what I'm about to explain, it's unfortunately, the only major expense we've had has been chiropractic care. So my wife started seeing a chiropractor in February because of some shoulder pain that just got worse and worse and worse. And she's gotten great care. She loves her chiropractor. She's gotten a lot better. But our plan only covers, I want to say, six up to six chiropractor visits a year at $60 a each. So there's a $360 total benefit there. And I'll just say that we've paid a lot more than that. So at first we were getting these $60 checks, you know, but then because we, we paid the chiropractor directly, okay. And so the insurance company went to the chiropractor and said, oh, wait a minute, you've already gotten paid. Okay, so we'll pay the, we'll pay ed back, you know, $60 visit. So we quickly went through that benefit. We also decided to add medical cost sharing as a supplement to this policy. And we went with Christian Healthcare Ministries and opted for their lowest cost plan. I believe it's called the bronze plan, which is $135 per month for our entire family. The reason I added this is in case there's ever a situation where our indemnity policy only covers some of the total costs And I'm talking about something major were to happen. I can't foresee that. But if it does, what if we're in a situation where the difference between what they pay and the best cost we can get is significant? I wanted to, in that case, limit our risk exposure and have some kind of safety net to help with the difference. Now, one thing that we're still doing is we're still saving a portion of what we used to pay for a traditional policy every month and putting that into a traditional checking account that's strictly for medical expenses. So, in other words, I told you earlier, I remember, we were paying $1,400 a month. Now, our total cost, including the medical cost sharing plan, is 800 and change. Okay, so we're not putting the entire difference, but we are putting. I was at first. Now we're putting a certain amount or certain percentage of that difference every month into a traditional checking account. And in fact, we got debit cards for this account. And that's what we use when we have a. To pay like a copay. Sometimes the doctor will say, okay, yeah, we got your insurance company on file. However, we are going to require a $30 payment today or whatever. So then we use that debit card, which comes straight out of that checking account, which is strictly for medical expenses. So from budgeting standpoint, that just helps us if we have to buy medicine. When we have to pay the chiropractor, it comes out of that account, et cetera. So if you go this route and you're suddenly saving a ton, I strongly urge you to still build a safety net yourself for a few months. Don't spend the difference, you know, which is very tempting. Suddenly you have $700 extra in your pocket. It's so tempting to just use that for something else. My advice would be, look, build yourself a safety net so you have working capital, if you will, that you can use to pay for medical expenses. I want to talk about. It just happened this week, a recent unexpected benefit of this indemnity health insurance plan. So our little guy, my youngest, had a bad reaction to Halloween makeup. He was a vampire for Halloween. And he was all excited about all this face makeup. And, well, we put makeup on him. And part of it was around his eyes was different color and by his mouth. Mouth. And he was fine. The next morning, he wakes up and he's got this massive rash where I could tell the secondary color was. So whatever that was that was in there reacted. He's got sensitive skin, but, man, it. It was scary. Now what would I have normally done? Okay, so my wife's already out to work. She had left really early, and I'm freaking out now. She's a nurse. My wife is a nurse. So, you know, I'm calling her like she's a nurse hotline. And she wasn't worried. She just said, look, it's probably just a reaction. Just keep an eye on him. Give him some Benadryl. So I followed her instructions, and he was fine. He wasn't sick. He wasn't feeling bad or anything. But it's the sort of thing that, you know, my gosh, this looks so bad. I can't send them to school this way. They're not going to believe me, you know, that it was just a reaction to the makeup. They're going to. I mean, I know if I were the teacher or the principal, I would send the kid back and say, look, we need a note from a doctor because this looks like, you know, it could be contagious, right? So this company, one of their benefits that I hadn't used up until this point is a tele. It's called a Teladoc, and it's a third party. They use, they contract, and it's basically a service where you can reach out to a doctor, you can register online, and if. When things like this happen, you can connect with a doctor and explain the symptoms. And many times you could do a video call or send them pictures of what's going on, and they can tell you what to do. They can. They can send prescriptions out to your pharmacy and do all this other cool stuff without you having to leave the house. Now, in my situation, that was. That was a huge benefit because here's what ended up happening. I went ahead and I had to register online. I'll tell you more about that in a minute. Within 10 minutes, the doctor was. A doctor was calling me. I explained everything. It was very easy to talk with her. And she had me check a couple of things on his face and press on it to make sure that it turned white. She said, no problem. It sounds like it's hives. Is this throat hurt? And she checked a few things. Everything was clear. She said, all right, he's fine. I'm going to give you a doctor. He can definitely go back to school and. But I'm going to prescribe Benadryl because that's the only way the school. If you want to give a medicine school, the school's going to need a prescription anyway. You don't need that detail. The point is, she was able to send a prescription to our pharmacy. She was able to give me a note excusing him from school from being late, and also that he was fine. And I was able to do all that. No charge. No charge.