2/27/26 Andy Schoonover on Fixing the Healthcare System Without Waiting for Politicians

·27 min·2 clips

Eight thousand dollars for a 15-minute procedure — then his insurer called it 'medically unnecessary' and refused to pay.

1. This is a sponsor-interview episode of the Scott Horton Show introducing CrowdHealth, a health-cost-sharing company, as the show's new advertiser. 2. Host Scott Horton interviews Andy Schoonover, CrowdHealth's co-founder, who says this is his second healthcare company after selling his first. 3. The episode's core question is whether CrowdHealth functions like real health insurance and why it can pay bills that traditional insurers deny. 4. Schoonover recounts how he lost employer coverage after selling his first company and paid $1,200 a month for an Affordable Care Act plan for his family of four. 5. When his one-year-old daughter needed a 15-minute ear-tube procedure for a perforated eardrum, the bill came to $8,000. 6. His ACA insurer rejected the claim as 'medically unnecessary,' and two rounds of appeals failed to overturn the denial. 7. Schoonover says he and his wife decided to go uninsured and pay providers directly, discovering that cash-pay patients receive steep discounts compared with insured patients. 8. That experience led him to found CrowdHealth roughly five years ago, now with 25,000 members who have funded 35,000 medical bills. 9. He walks through a real case: a woman in Austin tore her ACL, and an in-network hospital surgeon quoted $24,000 for the repair. 10. CrowdHealth found a University of Texas athletics orthopedic surgeon willing to do the surgery for $12,000 if paid directly at the point of care, then raised the money by asking 120 community members for $100 each. 11. Schoonover says members are asked for money only once a month, capped at $150, and that 99.9% of the 35,000 submitted bills have been fully funded. 12. He argues insurance-company and hospital incentives both push prices upward because government rules cap insurer profit as a percentage of premiums, so raising premiums is the only way to grow profit in dollar terms. 13. He cites United Healthcare's stock rising roughly tenfold in the 15 years since Obamacare, arguing the industry helped write the law that benefits it. 14. Schoonover mentions journalist Stephen Brill's reporting on hidden hospital price menus that show real, negotiable cash prices far below the billed 'insurance' rates. 15. He describes a Montana case where a man's revolver discharged during a fishing trip, causing a million-dollar medevac and trauma bill that CrowdHealth's community fully funded. 16. Horton and Schoonover frame the model in libertarian terms, comparing it to pre-1970s mutual-aid insurance and contrasting it with government-created 'regulatory capture' and cost-plus incentives. 17. The tone is a casual, friendly advertiser interview rather than the show's usual foreign-policy format, with Horton sharing his own recent enrollment experience. 18. Schoonover closes with CrowdHealth's signup offer, a $99-per-month promo rate for the first three months using code 'Horton.' 19. Listeners curious about direct-pay healthcare alternatives or libertarian critiques of the ACA and insurance economics would enjoy this episode. 20. Regular listeners tuning in specifically for the show's usual war-and-foreign-policy interviews might want to skip this sponsor segment.

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