When you look out at the world that has been built on the Fiat Standard over the last five decades it's hard not to notice that many areas of our economy are either systemically fragile or outrageously mispriced. The combination of capital misallocation and price distortion that has become the norm since Nixon ripped the US clean off the gold standard has made many things significantly worse off. One of the sectors of the economy where this is very obvious is the healthcare industry. Particularly health insurance, which experienced a massive market distortion with the passing of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Passed in 2010, the ACA created a system of perverse incentives that have led to a more expensive and less reliable healthcare system in the United States. Health insurance plans are notoriously opaque, confusing, expensive and laughable in terms of what and how much they will actually cover if you ever need to go to the hospital. Premiums have exploded alongside deductibles and the sticker prices of even the most rudimentary medical procedures simply don't make sense. There has to be a better way. A way that allows you to opt out of the madness of a healthcare system corrupted by perverse incentives in the same way that bitcoin enables you to opt out of a monetary system running on perverse incentives.

Luckily for me, I found that opt out option with CrowdHealth almost two years ago. And since me and my family are coming up on the two-year anniversary of opting out of the health insurance scam, I'd thought it'd be a fitting time to share our story and encourage anyone who is feeling overwhelmed by their medical expenses to consider CrowdHealth.

My family joined CrowdHealth in the Summer of 2022 about six months after I left the bitcoin mining company I helped build to focus on a media company I had been growing for five years and raise a venture fund. This was a big career move for me and my family, and the move came with some risk. One of the biggest risks being the fact that my family would no longer be able to depend on the health insurance benefits provided by the company I had left.

Three months after branching out on my own I transitioned from my company’s health insurance coverage to COBRA, which added significantly to our monthly healthcare coverage expenses. For a family of four with the plan we were on COBRA cost us $1,800 per month. This provided us “good” coverage, which included a $5,000 deductible. Meaning we wouldn’t experience the benefits of the “coverage” until we spent $5,000 out of pocket. This was a steep price to pay month in and month out as I was juggling the stresses that come with running my own company.

After a few months of stomaching the COBRA expenses and doing some research, my wife and I decided it would make more economic sense to drop our health insurance and become members of the CrowdHealth community with our two year old and newborn sons. Becoming part of the CrowdHealth community would drop our monthly health care costs from $1,800 per month to ~$675 per month.

Little did we know, the transition from health insurance to CrowdHealth would provide more than the immediate improvement to our family’s expenses. The many health insurance plans that we had been on throughout the years were always confusing to us and never provided the full coverage that we expected when we signed up. On top of this, the whole process of paying for our health care expenses while on health insurance felt like a black box. We were never really sure whether or not the prices we were paying were fair. We would go to the doctors, get what needed to be taken care of addresses, accept the bill when it was handed to us, and then pass it to the health insurance company that would let us know what we owed after they had dealt with the hospital or doctor’s office.

The experience we’ve had with CrowdHealth is a night-and-day comparison. Before joining CrowdHealth we weren’t even aware of the fact that the prices for check ups, medical procedures, pregnancies, or emergency room visits were negotiable. We learned that the health insurance industry had lulled most people into believing that as a consumer you were simply forced to pay whatever you were told to pay. Since joining we’ve had multiple multi-thousand dollar medical bills negotiated lower to hundreds of dollars. Of which we were only on the hook for $500 while others in the CrowdHealth community filled in the rest.

The lower costs for health care is only the tip of the ice berg when it comes to the added benefits of joining the CrowdHealth community. Having a personal health care advocate that we can call whenever we have questions about particular medical events or want to explore preventative health consultations has made us better decision makers. The knowledge that we are a part of a community of people who have made the decision to take sovereignty over their health care costs instead of allowing the health insurance companies to rob people blind while providing terrible customer service gives us a great sense of pride.

Overall, we couldn’t be happier with the decision we made two years ago to ditch health insurance for CrowdHealth. We spend way less money on health care while having a better, more pleasant experience. Going to the doctors isn’t as stressful as it used to be. The lingering thoughts about how much a medical event would cost don’t exist for us anymore. We don’t question whether or not we are being ripped off because we know CrowdHealth has our back and will fight to make sure we get the fairest prices possible. We have more control over our health care costs and more autonomy over what doctors we see.

We are extremely thankful to be a part of the CrowdHealth community and we’d recommend it to anyone else who is considering ditching their health insurance plan.

Try to opt-out of systems that have been corrupted by centralization anywhere you can.

Disclaimer: This post includes an affiliate link. If you decide to sign up for CrowdHealth via the link we benefit financially at no cost to you.