Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E152: How His Little Girl's Life Sparked A Mission w/ Andy Schoonover

Transcript

E152: How His Little Girl's Life Sparked A Mission w/ Andy Schoonover · The Lila Rose Show

0:00
And then the doctor came in and said, I hate to tell you this,
0:03
but your daughter has a fatal condition.
0:04
It will take her life. She lived for 10 1/2 hours
0:07
before she passed away. She reached up and grabbed
0:11
Steph's finger and just squeezed.
0:15
I had a dream that night where I was Grace looking up at me and
0:18
staff and just filled with the most beautiful feeling of love
0:22
that I've ever felt. I started doing some research.
0:24
I found out what health insurance was paying for.
0:26
I realized that 200,000 families every year go bankrupt due to a
0:31
medical event even though they have health insurance.
0:33
Wow, 200,000 families every year go bankrupt.
0:36
And so I always tell people, if you don't have enough money in
0:38
your bank account to cover your deductible, you don't actually
0:42
have health insurance. You think you do, but you don't.
0:44
There's got to be a different way of doing this.
0:46
And so I quit health insurance and became uninsured.
0:49
Can we do something different here?
0:51
Where where people aren't going to go bankrupt.
0:53
And so I think you've got to step outside of this health
0:56
insurance racket and get into an alternative so you don't pay for
1:01
some of these things that you and your conscience don't really
1:04
want to be paying for. Andy Schoonover, welcome to the
1:10
podcast. Thanks for having me.
1:11
Thanks for joining. So you just flew in this
1:13
morning. I did.
1:14
Where from? Austin, early 6:00 AM flight
1:17
out, taking the 7:00 flight back.
1:20
So back in a day there and back in a day.
1:23
Excellent. Well, I'm excited to have you on
1:24
Live Action Actually did a feature.
1:27
Well, you did a feature that we got to post which 10s of
1:30
millions of people watched about you and your wife Steph and your
1:33
daughter. Can't wait for the podcast to
1:35
hear about that because it's an incredible and beautiful story
1:38
and has a lot of implications. I think that the show would care
1:41
about about healthcare and caring for babies.
1:44
And you're also an interesting guy because you're an
1:45
entrepreneur and we have a little bit in common because
1:48
you're you've spent some time in the Bay Area.
1:50
Tell me, tell me about that. Interesting place to to spend
1:53
time. Yeah, I was out there for a
1:55
couple years at Stanford, at Business School.
1:57
This is 2004 to 2006, which was a kind of a crazy time because
2:00
the tech boom was alive and well.
2:04
I think I saw Steve Jobs walking up University Avenue 3 or 4
2:07
times. Turtleneck.
2:08
Yeah, turtleneck, black turtleneck it.
2:10
Works. Been hot.
2:11
It gets hot up there. It it does, it does.
2:14
But you know, Stanford was, is a wild place to to go to school.
2:17
It is not the friendliest to to believers, but, and I saw that
2:24
first hand. In fact, I wrote a pro-life
2:28
article my first year of Business School and you know, I
2:32
was blacklisted probably from, from the the dating scene
2:36
thereafter. So it was, it was a wild
2:38
experience being out there for a couple years.
2:40
So you wrote a pearlife article Well well at Stanford Business
2:43
School defending the pearlife position.
2:45
Where? Where was that posted?
2:46
Yeah, it was in the Stanford Business School newspaper.
2:49
And so actually the editor reached out to the entire school
2:53
and said we're doing this debate.
2:56
I'm, I'm pro-choice. I'd like somebody who's pro-life
2:58
to debate me in the newspaper. And I was compelled to, to do
3:01
that. And so took that on.
3:03
I think it was 10,000 word, you know, 3 or 4 or 5 pages,
3:08
something like that in the newspaper.
3:10
So it was a full, you know, everything from, you know, Roe V
3:14
Wade to the to the current day of, you know, what's going on in
3:18
the pro-life movement and why I think that, you know, people
3:21
should be pro-life. So it's pretty, pretty intense.
3:23
Thanks for the courage in doing that.
3:25
We, we need more of that. And then you, you were sharing
3:27
before the show, you were owning or renting a house that Mark
3:31
Zuckerberg ended up starting Facebook out of.
3:34
Yeah. You got to just hear that story.
3:35
It's it's so funny. So there's a, a, a movie called
3:38
The Social Network. And through that there's a
3:40
subplot where Eduardo, who is Mark Zuckerberg's Co founder,
3:44
had to go to his dad to get, I forget, it was 16 or $18,000 to
3:47
pay for this house because they're moving their company
3:50
from Boston to Silicon Valley. Well, the house that they moved
3:54
to was my house during the summer between my first year and
3:58
second year of a Business School.
4:00
My, my roommates, we all went all over the country doing our
4:03
internships for that summer and Zuckerberg stayed there.
4:06
We always kind of joke that it was probably our worst financial
4:09
decision ever because if we had taken that 16 or $18,000 in
4:14
Facebook equity, it would be worth something like $100
4:17
million like today. So you live and learn I guess.
4:22
Did he keep the house clean? You know what he didn't, man?
4:25
You know, we came back the next summer and there was business.
4:29
The tech Bros. Business plans from Facebook and
4:31
again, this is. In the house, in the house, it's
4:33
strewn about, it's. Strewn about and so I should
4:36
have kept those because they're. Pretty interesting.
4:38
Yeah, he had. He had a Ritz, a receipt to the
4:41
Ritz Carlton in New York that said Mark Zuckerberg on it.
4:44
And so I took it to class. On.
4:46
EBay, Yeah, I should have sold it to eBay.
4:48
I took it to class and the guy, one of my guys in class was the
4:51
first investor in Facebook. He worked for the company that
4:53
was the first investor. And he looked at me and he was
4:55
kind of like, I was like, Can you believe they're spending
4:58
your money on the Ritz Carlton? And he's like, it's going to be
5:02
OK, you know? He believed in it.
5:05
He believed in it big time. And you know, back then they had
5:07
to havea.edu e-mail address just to do Facebook.
5:10
So we just thought college, cool college thing to do, never
5:15
knowing that was going to be one of the largest companies in the
5:17
planet. So you had the entrepreneurial
5:19
bug, obviously you're at Stanford Business School.
5:21
Tell me about the trajectory of going, you end up in Austin, but
5:25
you kind of first found your wife Steph in another state.
5:29
Tell me about that trajectory and then getting to Austin.
5:32
Yeah, I've always kind of marched the beat of my own drum.
5:35
And so all my my Stanford Business School classmates were
5:38
doing Google and Facebook and all these cool technology
5:41
companies. I bought a little company in
5:43
Dayton, OH of all places. It was a medical alert system
5:47
provider. So you've seen the commercial.
5:49
I'm sure if I've fallen and I can't get up, the old lady on
5:52
the ground. Well, I bought a competitor the
5:55
theirs and then grew that for about 10 years.
5:58
And you know, while I was there, I met my wife, staff.
6:01
And so, you know, while people ragged on me for going to Ohio,
6:06
I ragged on them and say, hey, look, I got a beautiful wife and
6:09
a bunch of cute girls now. So it all worked out.
6:11
What was it that gave you your pro-life conviction You.
6:14
Know, I think it was just growing up in a family that that
6:17
was a conviction of theirs. So my mom is took me to I
6:21
actually grew up in Washington, DC and I went to those marches
6:24
since ever since I can remember, probably I think it was at one
6:28
point, like 15 years in a row, we would go down to the mall and
6:31
do that, that March. And you know, I remember the
6:34
days where it was like 16° because that March always
6:37
happens in I think January, the the third week of January.
6:41
And I just remember doing it. So just used to it was a part of
6:44
the core growing up and, you know, didn't know that it was
6:48
going to be, you know, kind of a key component of our life, you
6:53
know, 30 years later, but it it ended up being that.
6:57
And how many brothers and sisters?
6:59
I'm one of five. One of five, so probably family
7:01
just by nature. That's beautiful.
7:04
So you meet Steph, you're in Ohio, you meet Steph.
7:07
What drew you guys together? You know, it's interesting.
7:12
I had kind of left the church for a while and I met a cute
7:16
girl and she was going to church.
7:18
And so I was like, you know what, I'll go to church with
7:21
you. And that's kind of how it
7:23
happened. And I think that, you know,
7:25
through that, I, I kind of fell in love with the Lord and kind
7:29
of went from, you know, a rules based approach to, to my faith
7:33
to more of a heart based approach to, to my faith.
7:36
And, you know, that really captured me.
7:39
And so I got baptized once when I was born, but again, when I
7:44
was in my mid 30s, just because I wanted to own it for myself
7:47
and not having it might have my parents decision.
7:49
And, you know, best thing that I've I've ever done.
7:52
So, you know, again, my faith has played a, such a huge role
7:56
in my life, especially since, you know, my, my early to mid
8:00
30s. And yeah, I'm just so, so
8:04
thankful for that day that I met Steph.
8:06
So tell me about you. We're just sharing.
8:09
You moved to Austin with Steph. You're starting a new life
8:11
there. You get pregnant.
8:13
Talk to me about, share with me about the circumstances of that
8:16
pregnancy and your daughter. Yeah.
8:19
So we, you know, just moved to Austin, new new place, new
8:23
house, new church, new everything, no community really
8:28
and stuff. Got pregnant, like I said right
8:31
away. And then during our ultrasound,
8:33
we see Grace there. She was gorgeous, beautiful, you
8:38
know, 10 fingers, 10 toes, you know, she's squirming around.
8:42
We actually have video and I don't know why they allow us to
8:45
have video because typically when you go into those, they
8:48
don't let you take video. But I have the whole video of
8:50
that. And I said something like she's
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she's twirling around like a little ballerina.
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And then the, the person doing the ultrasound kind of stopped
8:57
and said, Hey, I have to leave. I'll be right back.
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We're just like, OK, we're this is our first time.
9:01
We don't know. And then the doctor came in and
9:04
said, you know, I'm, I hate to tell you this, but your daughter
9:07
has a fatal condition. It's called anencephaly.
9:11
It will take her life. And so sorry, it went from this
9:15
joyous occasion to just being devastated.
9:20
Yeah, devastated at that news and thought it was just going to
9:23
break us. And then they sent us to the the
9:26
perinatal doc who said, hey, terminate and try again.
9:31
No big deal, you can have another one.
9:34
And I was like, wait, hold on a second.
9:35
Like, we just saw her, you know, she's perfect in our eyes.
9:40
And is there anything we can do? No, there's nothing you can do.
9:44
So we thought we were going to lose her at some point during
9:46
the pregnancy and you know, and she, she made it.
9:52
She made it so she lived for 10 1/2 hours before she passed
9:55
away. So we got the hell, hold her and
9:59
really connect. Sorry.
10:02
What was it like when you first held Grace?
10:05
It was the most beautiful thing because we didn't know she was
10:08
going to make it out alive because a lot of those babies,
10:11
they, they come out stillborn. And she gave the most beautiful
10:14
cry. And we, we have it on, on tape.
10:18
And so it was just a, a sweet thing.
10:20
And, you know, and, and given her condition, there wasn't a
10:24
ton of interaction, but she reached up and grabbed Steph's
10:30
finger and just squeezed. And yeah, it was just, it was
10:37
just, we knew, you know, we knew.
10:39
And so we hung out with her for 10 1/2 hours.
10:42
She ended up passing away. And, you know, we, her spirit
10:47
was gone, but her body was still there.
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So we, we hung out with her for a little longer.
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And then, you know, the most difficult thing is handing her
10:54
over to a nurse, knowing that you're not going to see her
10:56
again. And so we did that.
10:59
And, you know, we, we went home, you know, went out, went home
11:04
without a baby, which is the most difficult thing ever.
11:07
And, you know, we went home in our neighborhood, super sweet.
11:13
It was pouring rain, pouring rain.
11:16
And they put candles out on the street and the candles are still
11:20
lit. It's pouring rain and the
11:22
candles are still lit. I'm like, this is the strangest
11:25
thing ever. And so we we went home.
11:28
And of course, at that moment is when the enemy really started
11:31
like hammering us. We started this conversation
11:34
around, did we tell Grace that we loved her enough?
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You know, we only had 10 1/2 hours.
11:39
And so it was like, did she know that we loved her?
11:42
Which is just the dumbest question.
11:44
But again, like, you're in the state of being where you just
11:47
don't get it right. You just are totally lost in
11:50
those moments. And I had a dream that night
11:53
where I was Grace looking up at me and staff and just filled
11:57
with the most beautiful feeling of love that I've ever felt.
12:03
I was like, I bet that's what heaven kind of feels like, you
12:07
know? And so I was like, OK, Lord,
12:09
like, thank you, you know, for that little, you know, reminder
12:11
that that you love us. We loved her.
12:15
She loved us. It was really sweet.
12:18
And then we had, sorry, I'm keep rambling on my story.
12:23
But then we had this stupid pastor tell us that he doesn't
12:28
know if babies actually go to heaven.
12:30
So you have two grieving parents and a pastor says something that
12:35
ridiculous. And so and that was just the one
12:39
thing we're holding onto. Like at least grace is in
12:43
heaven. And so Steph had a dream that
12:47
night, whereas A reflecting mirror and she was on the non
12:52
reflective side and grace was on the reflective side in a
12:56
beautiful place, totally healed and looked like a little stuff,
13:02
you know, So again, it was like the Lord's way of being like I
13:06
got her, I got her. So you know, and, and, and
13:10
through that, I think, you know, you, you either go one way or
13:14
the other with your faith. You either say, OK, Lord, like,
13:17
how can you possibly let this happen?
13:20
Or you can go the other way, which is I need you now more
13:24
than ever. And through that we, we had, you
13:30
know, we're new and married. We didn't know how to
13:31
communicate during grief. You know, there was very close
13:36
point of time where we almost called it a day in our marriage.
13:41
And so we've kind of got this renewed sense of being married
13:45
in marriage ministry and helping other couples.
13:47
And so it's a way, it's amazing the way that the Lord works
13:50
through really difficult periods of time.
13:53
And I appreciate the challenges in life now and that the way
13:58
that the Lord uses that to create perseverance and so many
14:03
verses around that, you know, rejoice and affliction.
14:07
My powers made perfect in your weakness, which is just hits
14:11
home for us because we did see his power through our weakness.
14:15
So as a result of that stuff was like, I want to do something
14:20
about this because most of these babies are aborted.
14:23
It's 95% plus when we went to the perinatologist, they are
14:28
trained to say terminate and try again. 95% of babies with the
14:33
anencephaly condition are aborted.
14:36
Did you the, the fact that that was the first advice you were
14:41
given, terminate and try again? And that's not just you, that's
14:44
so many couples everyday in America, their baby has some
14:47
disability, whether it's fatal or just a a very significant
14:51
disability, they're given that advice.
14:53
What did that? How did that feel when you were
14:56
told that? You know, just seeing your.
14:58
Your baby on ultrasound. Yeah, honestly, it kind of went
15:01
in one ear out the other. We were so convicted about what
15:05
ultimately we we were going to do.
15:07
And actually Steph and I didn't even talk about it.
15:09
We'd never even talked about are we going to do this or not?
15:11
Like it was just a of course we're going to have this baby,
15:15
right. Like we kind of laugh at it to
15:18
this day. Like we never had once had that
15:20
conversation about whether or not, you know, stuff was going
15:23
to carry. So yeah, it didn't even, didn't
15:27
even. And it was only later that we
15:29
kind of look back and was like, do you remember that time when
15:31
that perinatologist sat and she's like, Oh yeah, she did
15:33
tell us to do that. Didn't like, like how do we
15:35
change that conversation? These are some pretty crass, you
15:40
know, conversation with not a lot of options.
15:43
So, and that's that's why, you know, stuff started a a, a
15:47
nonprofit called caring to term, which is to change that
15:49
conversation to say, Hey, you may not be able to withhold the
15:53
terminate and try again, but at least give them another option.
15:56
Give them an option of saying, but if you want to carry here
15:59
some resources, and I think doctors don't really have the
16:02
resources to give people if they want to carry because that's
16:04
like a what nobody carries. How do we even manage this?
16:07
And so caring to term.org is an organization that stuff put
16:12
together and, and it's helping those doctors direct women to
16:18
say, hey, there's another option here if you want to hear about
16:20
it. So the thing I would say to
16:23
people out there, if you have somebody, if you're dealing with
16:25
this or somebody in your family is dealing with this, like it is
16:28
a really hard thing, but is the most beautiful thing that we've
16:31
ever experienced. And so we would do not look back
16:35
with any regrets. Every year on our birthday.
16:38
We have two more girls since then and you know, they remember
16:43
her sister, their sister to do what extent they can.
16:47
We go to the hospital every year on Grace's birthday, we give the
16:51
nurses, you know, cookies and just say thank you for loving
16:55
us. Well through that and until the
16:58
last couple years, the nurse that actually helped me with
17:01
Grace that we handed Grace to when, you know, the last time we
17:05
saw her was she was there. And so we and she remembers us.
17:09
She's like, oh, you guys, the schoonoverse, you're back, you
17:12
have, you have cookies. So it was, it was a sweet thing.
17:16
And I think, you know, hopefully we ministered to them through
17:19
that, that opportunity to do that.
17:21
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There was a couple years ago, Doctor Phil, this was right
19:09
after Roe V Wade was overturned, wanted to do a feature on
19:12
abortion. And he chose a sort of the
19:15
protagonist of his feature for his show, a woman who was
19:19
carrying a baby with disabilities that might be
19:22
terminal. And she was told she couldn't
19:26
have an abortion at this point, would have been a late term
19:27
abortion, by the way. And so the whole slogan of the
19:31
show was. Carry to bury.
19:33
So it was basically a whole show around why you need to do an
19:36
abortion if the baby has a terminal illness, because
19:39
otherwise you have to carry the baby, deliver a baby, and then
19:42
deal with the death of your baby.
19:44
What do you think about that? What it what is?
19:46
What is your? What was your?
19:47
What was your response to that? I think we as a society have
19:50
gotten very good. I use that in the most broadest
19:53
terms of getting rid of things that inconvenience us right,
19:59
Getting rid of things that are hard.
20:01
And there we four, we have been softened.
20:04
You know, there's there's that slogan, I think that says like,
20:09
you know, great times produce soft men, soft men create bad
20:13
times, bad times create good times or something like that.
20:16
But in essence, what you're saying is basically, if you try
20:20
to eliminate all the hard things in your life, you become
20:24
softened. And we are as a society have
20:28
become that. And so I'm, I'm all about like,
20:31
no, no, no, we need to do hard things.
20:32
Like physiologically, if I go to the gym tomorrow morning, I, it
20:36
has to it, it's going to hurt. And because it hurts, I grow.
20:41
I think biblically it says that I just gave you a quote on that.
20:44
And so I think it's, man, it's a tragedy to me that we dispense
20:49
with all the hard stuff in life to try to live in comfort, but
20:52
in essence, it actually makes life much, much harder by doing
20:55
that. So I think it's a, it's a, it's
20:57
a tragedy. That's that's the way that that
20:59
our society, our culture operates.
21:01
I think that's a really powerful observation, Andy, because it is
21:04
true. I think we're afraid of
21:05
suffering and having to sit with suffering and deal with
21:08
suffering. And I think there is, you know,
21:11
the the narrative as well. I'm actually eliminating
21:13
suffering and it's helping people because I'm eliminating
21:16
the suffering. But that doesn't work when
21:19
you're actually not just eliminating the suffering,
21:20
you're eliminating the sufferer. You're ending the life of a
21:24
human being. Absolutely.
21:27
I mean, I, I, I say that through this journey stuff did do some
21:34
stuff on on Instagram and it wasn't to glorify herself, but
21:37
more to say like, hey, there's another way of doing this.
21:40
And we met so many people who would we have, we have one
21:45
family actually not too far from here in LA who said we had a an
21:51
appointment at Planned Parenthood.
21:53
And I saw what you're going through and I decided to cancel
21:57
it. And we exchange Christmas cards
22:00
with that family every year. And that boy is the same age as
22:06
what my daughter would have been.
22:08
He's alive. And he's alive, and so we know.
22:11
We joked that 10 1/2 hours of life that Grace had outside of
22:16
staff obviously was more impactful than my 45 years
22:20
because we know that there are hundreds, maybe even thousands
22:23
of babies that are alive as a result of her 10 1/2 hours and,
22:29
and, and, and much thanks to, you know, live action.
22:32
You all put that up on, on Facebook and it went viral.
22:35
And I think a lot of people, you read through those comments and
22:37
people are like, Oh my gosh, like I would never even thought,
22:40
you know, to, to consider this. So it's a beautiful thing.
22:43
It's the power of your example because it's one thing to talk
22:46
theoretically about life is valuable.
22:47
Don't end the life. Give the life care in any
22:50
suffering that the life may have.
22:51
But it's never right to take a life.
22:53
We can make that case. And I think, you know, it
22:55
resonates with some people, of course, but when people are in
22:57
the suffering, having an image as story like yours to look to
23:03
for encouragement, it's an incredible gift.
23:06
Thank you. It was a challenging couple of
23:09
years, but we got, we came out of it stronger than we went into
23:12
it. So that's really important and
23:14
we have, you know, we have a daughter in heaven, which, you
23:17
know, which is great. Like I said, we have two more
23:18
daughters and so we're we're one for three.
23:21
So it's. Amazing.
23:23
It's amazing thing to kind of look back at and say, hey, when
23:25
we go to heaven, then we get to see grace again.
23:28
And my daughters ask, I wonder what grace is doing in heaven
23:32
today. And I was like, not dealing with
23:34
all the craziness down here, you know?
23:36
And so it's it's help increase their faith too.
23:39
You know, we have a six and an 8 year old Grace would have been 9
23:43
1/2. And they are looking to her,
23:46
their sister that they never met.
23:48
But as an example of, you know, how to live life, which is a
23:53
cool, cool thing that we get to talk about her all the time.
23:56
How did you pick the name Grace? It was.
23:59
It was a name that you know it it comes back from to faith.
24:04
I mean, Grace is some of them is the most beautiful thing and we
24:08
had picked Grace before we knew that she had a condition.
24:12
And so, you know, it was just one of those things where it's
24:15
like, man, Lord, like you work in mysterious ways that we chose
24:18
the name Grace and you use Grace in such powerful ways even
24:23
through this, this story. So is a is and then our 2 girls
24:27
have grace is their middle names.
24:29
So they they hold a little bit of their sister and their names.
24:33
Beautiful. So the whole experience you had
24:37
of Grace's life and then being with her and her death and
24:41
sharing that story of the beauty of her life, I know it inspired
24:45
you later on, not just your wife to start her nonprofit, Caring
24:48
to Term, but also the business that you are leading right now.
24:53
And I want to get into that because healthcare today in this
24:55
country is increasingly chaotic. I think people are not happy
24:59
with their healthcare. And so much of our Healthcare is
25:03
weaponized against the weak. And you experience that first
25:05
hand when you're told, oh, just just terminate.
25:08
That's the message. And by the way, that's not just
25:10
a message for families that have children with a disability that
25:14
are unborn. That's the message.
25:15
If there's any kind of complication with pregnancy,
25:17
just do away with the baby. Just end the life of the baby.
25:20
The baby is like a commodity that can be tossed in the trash.
25:23
It's not a sacred human life. And so healthcare just again and
25:28
again goes to abortion. And then there's a lot of other
25:30
things happening in our healthcare world that we, you
25:32
know, we were talking about before the show, like
25:34
transgender reassignment surgeries for kids and hormone
25:36
puberty blockers. And there's a whole of the whole
25:39
world of, you know, reproductive technologies.
25:41
There's a lot that has happened in that world that is very
25:43
damaging to human life. You know, the frozen embryos, a
25:45
million frozen embryos. So we could go on and on about
25:48
all of that. But I know you see that and you
25:51
also have a lot of strong opinions about not just where
25:54
Healthcare is today, but how it needs to change.
25:57
So I'd love to hear you share what your journey has been like.
26:00
Yeah, sure. And you know, it's incredible
26:03
how my girls have had such an impact on my, on my life.
26:06
I'm a girl dad. But you know, I not too long
26:11
after Grace passed away and we had another, another girl.
26:15
And then we had one more after that.
26:16
And, and that one, the youngest actually, you know, this is just
26:20
parental stuff, you know, has recurring, you know, ear
26:23
infections. And so we took her to the ear,
26:25
nose and throat doctor and he's like, she needs to get tubes and
26:28
rears. This is a pretty common thing.
26:30
So we went and did that and, and little did we know it was going
26:36
to, it was $8000 for a 15 minute procedure.
26:39
And I got that bill. I was like, Oh my goodness.
26:43
They didn't tell you beforehand. No, they didn't tell us
26:45
beforehand. We had my, my ear, nose and
26:47
throat doctor actually pre authorized it with the the
26:50
health plan to say, are we sure this is OK?
26:52
Yes, it's OK. So we went and did it.
26:53
We got the $8000 bill. We're like, OK, this is what
26:56
health insurance is supposed to be for.
26:58
Great. And we got another note a few
27:00
weeks later that's from the health insurance plan that said
27:05
medically unnecessary. So we're not going to pay for
27:08
it. So I had to stroke an $8000
27:10
check to the local hospital because my health insurance plan
27:13
refused to pay for it. And that was what set me on this
27:16
journey of really doing some research as like what is going
27:19
on with health insurance? And, you know, and, and some of
27:23
the things we had talked about, like what are they paying for In
27:26
some states, I think there's six or seven states in the United
27:28
States where they are forced to pay for abortions.
27:34
Most health insurance plans are forced to pay for transgender
27:39
reassignment surgeries and things like that.
27:41
I was like, you know what, between me not wanting, you
27:45
know, getting rejected for something my daughter clearly
27:48
needed, she had a hole in her eardrum, plus all this other
27:51
garbage like I'm not doing this anymore.
27:54
There's got to be a different way of doing this.
27:56
And so I I quit health insurance and became uninsured just.
28:01
Because you were mad. Because I was mad.
28:04
Yeah, I was mad. No, no backup plan yet.
28:06
No, no backup plan. I mean a lot.
28:08
It was like, if I'm going to be paying 8000 out of pocket, I
28:10
might as well just go with A. Loan, I mean, I was basically
28:13
like, if you're not going to pay my bills, I'm not paying your
28:15
bills, so I'm out. And if you quit in the middle of
28:19
a year, you can't start again until you know, the next year
28:22
and. What year was this, Andy?
28:24
This was 2019 20/19/2019. So this is obviously during the
28:28
Obamacare years. I mean, that's been, I don't
28:30
know what is that the last over a decade now.
28:32
We've had it, I think 20, 10 or 20. 11 So when you went, when
28:37
you were kind of doing this investigation of health care in
28:39
2019, when you went off of it, was that in, were you putting
28:42
yourself in a state of being penalized?
28:44
I know there's been a certain Obamacare mandate, as they call
28:48
it, or the healthcare mandate. The federal 1 is that if you're
28:50
not enrolled then you get penalized is my understanding.
28:53
I. Believe at that time I was
28:54
penalized one year, OK. And then Trump came in and said
28:59
that you no longer have to have a health insurance on the
29:02
federal level. So I got rid of the penalty in
29:05
my second year. Nice.
29:06
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need. So tell me how we're crowd
30:30
health. We love on the show, We've
30:32
talked about on the show, but this is the origin story.
30:35
You're off of healthcare now. Was that a little nerve racking
30:38
for yourself? OK.
30:40
She was like, what are we doing right now?
30:41
Or to my wife, they're like, trust me, I'm I'm going to do
30:43
something really cool and. I'm going to figure it out.
30:46
You know, a lot of these entrepreneurial ideas come from
30:49
just the hardship again. And so I was like, I'm just,
30:52
we're going to figure this out. We're going to figure out some
30:54
other way of doing this. And I started doing some
30:57
research. I found out what health
30:58
insurance was paying for. I realized that 200,000 families
31:01
every year go bankrupt due to a medical event even though they
31:05
have health insurance. Wow 200,000 families every year
31:08
go bankrupt due to a health health event.
31:11
Even with health. Even with health insurance, like
31:12
the whole point of health insurance is that, you know, if
31:15
something big happens, they don't, you don't go into
31:17
financial distress. What are some examples of that?
31:20
So there's two primary reasons. One is medical claims are denied
31:25
at a much higher rate than what you think.
31:27
I, unfortunately, was one of those.
31:29
So one out of every six medical claims are denied with
31:33
Affordable Care Act plans. About the it's about the same
31:36
with corporate health insurance, too.
31:38
And I was 1. And so I, you know, have had
31:40
been fortunate. I can pay the $8000.
31:43
But the vast majority of Americans, I think it's
31:45
something like 72% of Americans don't have $5000 in their bank
31:49
account. That would put people into
31:51
serious financial distress. And so I was like, that doesn't
31:54
seem right to me. And then the other thing is they
31:56
were getting into plans, people getting into plans that have
31:59
these huge deductibles. And so when I, I looked at it
32:04
this year, I think it was this year, it was $1400 a month for
32:08
me and my family. And I think it was a $16,000
32:11
deductible. So I'm out over $30,000 before
32:15
the health insurance plan pays a dime.
32:18
And that most, again, most people in the United States
32:20
can't afford this. And so I always tell people, if
32:23
you don't have enough money in your bank account to cover your
32:25
deductible, you don't actually have health insurance.
32:28
You think you do, but you don't. You don't have enough money to
32:31
actually use it because the health insurance plan is not
32:33
paying until you pay your deductible.
32:35
So that's a challenge for people.
32:37
And those are the two reason, primary reasons why people are
32:40
going bankrupt due to healthcare expenses.
32:43
And so I was like, can we do something different here where
32:47
people aren't going to go bankrupt?
32:49
And so, you know, crowd health is like you pay the 1st 500
32:53
bucks of any health event and then you can submit the rest to
32:57
a community of people who've raised their hand to say, hey,
33:00
I'll help out if Lila or Andy got got hurt.
33:04
And the cool thing about that is that I'm sending my money
33:08
directly to Lila. And so let's just say you break
33:12
your arm and I ask, I say, hey, there's a woman in California
33:17
that broke her arm. She needs $5000.
33:19
Would you give her 100 bucks to help her out with that?
33:21
I'd ask 50 people. At the end of that, you'd have
33:24
$5000 in your account so you can go and pay for your broken arm.
33:28
The cool thing about this though, is the fact that you're
33:30
paying in cash. You're getting 50% better prices
33:35
than United Healthcare or Blue Cross Blue Shield.
33:39
These the doctors are so irritated with health insurance,
33:43
they spend about a day a week fighting health insurance that
33:46
they're like, please come, I, you know, I'll give you a
33:48
discount if you pay in cash so I don't have to deal with the
33:51
health insurance companies. And you kind of walk us through
33:53
the differences in the model because crowd health is also not
33:55
health insurance per SE. It's a healthcare providing
34:00
network, you know, opportunities for healthcare provision, but
34:03
that's a different model. So walk us through the
34:04
differences. In the model, I'd just say it's
34:06
a, you know, a viable alternative to having health
34:08
insurance and, you know, you get rid of many of the complexities
34:12
of health insurance. So, you know, I don't know about
34:15
you, but my wife always asks when we changed health insurance
34:18
with my job. Well, as my, you know, OBGYN in
34:21
the in network, right? Or is my hospital that I want to
34:23
go to in network or whatever it may be.
34:25
The great thing with crowd health is there's no networks.
34:27
You can go to whoever you want. And so you get rid of the
34:30
complexity of in network or out of network, it is significantly
34:34
cheaper than going to healthcare.gov, the Affordable
34:38
Care Act plans. What's the price difference look
34:40
like? Yeah, the Affordable Care Act
34:43
plan for me and my family was 1400 bucks this this year.
34:45
I didn't buy it, but I just tested it to see what it would
34:48
be and for crowd health it's 600.
34:51
So I'm saving 800 bucks a month. And some healthcare plans will
34:54
go up to be for, depending on the family and their needs,
34:56
thousands of dollars. Oh yeah, for sure.
34:59
I was just with a member right before this and he was paying
35:01
$2000 for his family and he's now paying $600.00.
35:05
On top of that, you're paying a big deductible, which as I
35:08
mentioned earlier is another 10. Fourteen $16,000 you have to pay
35:12
before the health insurance plan pays anything.
35:15
For us it's you pay the 1st 500 bucks and then you can submit
35:19
the rest of the community. So God forbid something happens
35:22
and you're going to the ER, the last thing you want to worry
35:25
about is how am I going to pay for this?
35:27
You want to focus on your health.
35:28
And so the great thing with crowd health is if you go to the
35:31
ER, it's you got to put up the 1st 500 bucks before the
35:35
community will help you out. After that, everybody can come
35:38
up with 500 bucks somehow. It's not going to put you in a
35:40
bankruptcy to come up with $500. And I think that's really
35:44
important that we keep people financially, you know, viable
35:50
while, while even if they have a medical event.
35:52
So that's, that's a, a big difference between, you know, us
35:56
and health insurance. So cost is 1.
35:59
No networks that are really low commitment before the community
36:03
will help out as opposed to big deductibles.
36:05
Those are the biggies. And I think one more is when,
36:09
since you're paying the doctor yourself, the doctor now works
36:14
for you. I always say that you are, you
36:16
work for whoever pays you. And right now, if you have
36:20
health insurance, the insurance company is paying the doctor.
36:23
Your doctor works for the insurance company.
36:25
They, they're, they're worried about the insurance company
36:27
thinks, not necessarily you. If you pay the doctor, it
36:32
changes completely. Now you have to, to answer to me
36:35
because I'm the one paying. So if you're not paying for a
36:39
product, then you are the product.
36:41
And in our healthcare system, we are just cogs in a machine that,
36:47
you know, unfortunately takes advantage of people who who, you
36:52
know, have, have health insurance.
36:54
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38:37
I'm going to guess a lot of people listening are like, this
38:39
sounds great. We hate we hate our healthcare
38:41
provider anyways, But maybe there's a doubt in the back of
38:44
their mind that maybe along the lines of, well, if I do this,
38:48
what happens if there is a catastrophic event, God forbid,
38:53
and we go to the platform and it just, it's maybe too big of a
38:58
bill to fund. Maybe there's an ongoing fight
39:00
with cancer that could be years and years or there's some other
39:05
event that requires a tremendous just amount of upfront cash.
39:09
What is your? What is your take on that?
39:11
Yeah, we've had a bunch of them already.
39:14
So we've had colon cancer and breast cancer and cervical
39:18
cancer and all kinds of different cancers that have been
39:21
really big bills. We had a guy accidentally shoot
39:24
himself six holes in his body as a result, and it's probably
39:29
going to be $1,000,000 bill and that one's going to get going to
39:32
get funded by the community. Fully funded by Crowdhouse.
39:34
Yeah. I mean, I think that, yeah.
39:36
And so we've had big bills that we've dealt with.
39:40
How does that work? So if I have a big bill and I'm
39:42
on the platform and it putting it up does is there an e-mail
39:46
that goes out to all the members saying help me out or this is
39:48
not funded yet? How does that work?
39:50
Yeah. So if you go to the ER and have
39:54
a in an accident, you will get bills about a month later.
39:58
You'll take those bills, you'll take a picture of it, you'll
40:00
upload it to our app. We will consolidate all those.
40:04
We'll negotiate them. We actually have attorneys on
40:06
our side. We'll negotiate them for you.
40:09
We'll get that bill down, you know, as low as we can get it.
40:12
Then we'll come back to you and say, hey, we got that $1,000,000
40:14
bill down to $200,000. Can we go now, fund it?
40:18
And you say yes. And then we'll go to, you know,
40:21
a big chunk of the community and say, hey.
40:24
Will you fund this bill for Brian or whoever it was?
40:29
And they'll say yes or no. And that money will, you know,
40:32
come directly to Brian and then Brian will then pay that
40:36
directly to the hospital. And again, we're not in the
40:39
middle of that money flow. We just ask on Brians behalf,
40:42
Lila and Andy and Harris and others to help him with that.
40:46
So that's how that would work. The average generous, I don't
40:49
know if you have this number, but like the average amount of
40:51
generosity that a crowd health member is doing per year, what
40:54
what would you say that number roughly would be?
40:56
Probably. Varies, but.
40:57
Yeah. So they, they say, yes, 97% of
41:00
the time an individual is giving on average 115 bucks a month.
41:04
That's it. Yeah, for, for helping another
41:07
person, it's 100. And we, we say it's a maximum of
41:10
135, but we only ask you for whatever we need this month.
41:14
And so this in October, for example, we're only asking 115
41:18
or the 1:35 because the we don't have enough bills to do the
41:22
entire 135. So you get to keep the extra 20
41:25
bucks and you can do whatever you want with it.
41:27
Whereas health insurance plans by the way, they take that 20
41:31
bucks and they pocket it. So we want you to keep that
41:33
money. So because there's just not
41:35
enough bills out there to pay. And so over the three years that
41:39
we've been around, we've only asked for the maximum twice.
41:43
So we only have asked for that 135 twice.
41:45
Was that during Covad? No, it was during.
41:47
We had a bunch of NICU babies all at the same time and they
41:50
all made it out. So that was they were all good.
41:52
They were all funded, they were all good, and so I.
41:55
Think we had? Four or five NICU babies all hit
41:57
at the same time. And so we popped it up to 135
42:00
and then it, we did that for two months in a row and then it came
42:03
back down. I think it came back down like
42:05
120 or something like that. So it kind of goes up and down
42:08
based upon just the bills that we have.
42:10
But it's maxed out at 1:35. You won't pay more than that.
42:13
We won't ask for more than that, nor will we ask for the, you
42:17
know, the 20 bucks that we told you that you could keep.
42:19
We're never going to come back and say, oh, remember that 20
42:21
bucks that you got to keep. We want it now.
42:23
We won't do that. What is the idea ideal?
42:25
Is there an ideal person to do crowd health?
42:28
I mean, would you recommend it for your younger, healthier
42:31
family? Or if you're an elderly person
42:33
where you say actually this is really good for you?
42:34
Do you have an ideal customer? Yeah.
42:36
So we'll go all the way up to 60, five once you hit Medicare.
42:39
We can't do Medicare. So it is, Yeah.
42:42
I mean, it's, it's really anybody who, who is tired of
42:45
health insurance, if you're generally healthy, if you're
42:49
expecting to have a baby in the next, you know, year or two, you
42:53
can't be pregnant when you join and have that funded just
42:55
because we can't have people come in, get their baby funded,
42:58
then leave. So if you come, you have, we
43:01
have actually our number one expense, which I absolutely love
43:05
is babies. So 45.
43:07
As it should be. 45% of our funding goes to babies.
43:11
So we have a lot of people in our in the late 20s to kind of
43:14
early 40s who are having babies. And so 45% goes to babies, about
43:20
25 or 30% goes to active injuries.
43:23
So there's people out being active, something happens, you
43:27
know, they're on their mountain bike and they face plant
43:29
something and then the rest is ill, a little illness and a
43:33
little Wellness. So it's really your funding
43:36
babies and active injuries, which I love funding like, you
43:40
know. Can you use Crowd Health and an
43:42
insurance company at? The same time.
43:44
Yeah, you. Can some people do that?
43:45
And some people, about 20% of our customers do that.
43:47
As an extra backup. Most people because like, I'm
43:49
not really sure about this crowd health thing, Let's try it out.
43:52
Let's try it out, let's see how it works.
43:54
But most of the people will ditch their health insurance
43:56
plan after just a few months with with Crowd Health.
43:59
Andy, what are your long term goals for crowd health and then
44:02
also what are your long term goals with your family, you and
44:05
Steph? Yeah, Yeah.
44:08
So I'll go with Crowd Health first.
44:10
I mean, look, I, I, I, I I don't want this just to be a little
44:14
niche company that does something cool.
44:16
I really think we have the opportunity to change the way
44:18
that Healthcare is paid for. And if we can do that, it's
44:22
going to save people hundreds of millions, if not billions of
44:25
dollars. You know, our our healthcare
44:27
costs $4.6 trillion every year. Wow.
44:30
If it were a country, it'd be the 4th largest country on the
44:33
planet after China, the United States and Japan.
44:37
And so that's how much we spend on healthcare.
44:41
And I think it's bankrupting our country.
44:43
And so I think we need to do a new way.
44:45
And I don't want it to be run by the government because they have
44:48
shown an inability to do that successfully.
44:50
And I know I'm going to be paying for things I don't want
44:52
to be paying for. So I hope it revolutionize the
44:54
way we pay for healthcare. That's my, my end goal, you
44:58
know, and I, I, for my family, I just, I want the, I want my
45:01
girls, the love of the Lord and that's above anything else.
45:04
I, I don't care what they do with their life is that as long
45:07
as they love Jesus, I, you know, I don't care.
45:09
My, my, my eldest is just a really cute story.
45:13
She was trying out for a play at school and I asked her before
45:17
she got her part. I said, Hey, what happens if you
45:18
don't get the part that you want?
45:20
And she looked at me and she's like, well, I guess that's God's
45:22
plan. And I'm like, that's my girl.
45:25
That's my girl. So I just want them to glorify
45:27
God, you know, fine with skill that God has given them and how
45:31
he they can glorify him with that skill.
45:34
It's beautiful. Thank you for the work you're
45:36
doing. It's very exciting and maybe
45:38
we'll check back in a couple years and you'll be from 10,000
45:41
to 1,000,000 and where you, you have a a goal that you're
45:44
looking to reach to get the platform to a certain.
45:47
Number of users 100,000 in the next couple of years is really
45:50
the goal and then you know, let's let's see how we can a
45:52
million it from there. So 10X and A10XA100 XA.
45:56
Pretty big goal, but we can do it.
45:58
Amazing. I believe you can do it.
45:59
Where can people find crowd health and where can people find
46:02
caring to term? Yeah, caring to term.org.
46:04
It's a super cool organization. My wife does.
46:07
I can assure you an awesome job at stewarding at Crowd Health is
46:12
join Crowd health.com. You can use the code Lila Thank.
46:16
You for use the code Lila. It's 99 bucks a month for the
46:19
first three months. So if you're kind of like, I'm
46:21
not really sure about this, but let me check it out.
46:23
It's 99 bucks from three months. You can stop at anytime.
46:27
Come and check us out. And you have to discontinue your
46:29
current health. No, you can.
46:30
Just give it a shot and you can cancel anytime.
46:33
So come and give us a try. We'd love to do that and then
46:36
join Crowd Health on all the social media platforms.
46:38
Awesome. Andy, thanks so much for joining
46:40
the podcast. You're awesome.
46:41
Thank you. They had a staff.
46:42
Will do. Huge thank you to our partner.
46:45
EWTNEWTN is the world's leading Catholic network, reaching
46:50
millions with the truth about the faith, entertainment and
46:53
news. Check them out at ewtn.com.