Who Pays

A fundamental part of the healthcare system is who pays.

Who is paying has a lot of power.

Placing that control with insurance companies (who own pharma companies) has yielded poor results, to say the least. They deny reasonable claims, and require people to take pharma products that mask symptoms, before treatments that address root causes. It’s a deep rabbit hole of darkness. In the long run, twisted incentives make the legacy health insurance system profit more from chronic disease and increasing prices. And that’s the result we’ve gotten.

But we need some form of insurance - some way to socialize large health expenses when someone gets hit with unexpected illness or injury.

Pooling money with an insurance company and asking them to pay for our treatments is just one way to do it. Many countries have the government do that. And it kind of works, some of the time.

Another way is a crowdfunding network, such as CrowdHealth, which launched in 2021, a few years after the Trump admin repealed the mandate that everyone has to purchase ACA insurance. I wrote about how CrowdHealth works in Solving Healthcare 1 and how it costs so much less. So far, a dozen people have joined CrowdHealth from reading the latter.

Rather than pooling money before bills arise, members request funding after they have a health issue. The money goes straight from contributing members to requesting members, without a middleman taking a cut. The administrator of the crowdfunding network collects a flat monthly fee.

This is a more natural way.

It removes the bureaucracy between health providers and patients, resulting in lower prices. It also incentivizes better health. The company facilitating the crowdfunding network has a clear incentive to keep bills low, but not at the expense of a member’s health.

Crowdfunding networks aren’t a good fit for everyone in America. Some people have exceptional medical conditions that require long-term intensive care. For those people, it probably makes the most sense for the government to socialize those expenses across the tax base. This is what’s done now via Medicare and Medicaid.

People in a crowdfunding network are incentivized to keep others healthy. In my crowdfunding network, CrowdHealth, we share what we’ve learned in our online community (a telegram channel). We share doctor recommendations, product recommendations, book recommendations, answer each other’s questions, and keep each other company (as well as one can in a digital setting).

What gets paid for

In the insurance model, you either get approved or denied funding, based on the judgments of nameless, faceless insurance administrators.

In the 90s, Lyme disease was running rampant around Lyme, CT, where we lived. My family and others had to petition lawmakers to force insurance companies to pay for my father’s life-saving treatment, IV antibiotics.

Is that the world you want to live in?

A crowdfunding system is different. In mine, a health expense falls in one of four categories:

• Eligible with no initial commitment (deductible): This includes an annual preventative care doctor’s visit, telehealth urgent care, and various preventative care tests.

• Eligible for funding beyond the $500 initial commitment: The member guide outlines what is eligible for funding. Members can go to any doctor, including MDs, OD, and NDs. The emergence of crowdfunding networks is an opportunity to shift the healthcare system from reactive allopathic care (pills and surgeries after symptons emerge) to proactive functional care (preventative, root cause focused). Ultimately, each crowdfunding network needs to decide a process for determing what is eligible for crowdfunding.

• Not eligible: Oh you want a sauna for your house to help your health?

• Variable: Even if something is not technically eligible for CrowdHealth family adopted a child. There were $3,000 of unexpected healthcare bills associated with the adoption. This wasn’t outlined as eligible for funding in the guide, but the CrowdHealth team sent a message to members that there’s an opportunity to contribute to this family. I went to Venmo and sent a contribution. Seeing and reading the messages from other CrowdHealth members on Venmo made me teary-eyed.

To be clear, the crowdfunding is not usually run through Venmo, this was an exceptional

Sometimes people request funding for their health bill, and they actually get MORE than the cost of the bill, because generous members in the network have empathy for and extra capital.

Can you imagine an insurance company paying you more because they know what you’re going through?

The funding facilitator, in my case, CrowdHealth, has outlined what is eligible for crowdfunding in the member guide. But this is an impossible job to ever complete because there are countless medical treatments and new ones are always being invented. So there’s a process for determining what is and isn’t eligible for crowdfunding that involves CrowdHealth management, third-party healthcare providers, and network members.

People won’t want to join a network that doesn’t fund treatments they might need, but also they won’t want to join a network that is funding high-cost, low-efficacy, perhaps unnecessary treatments. America needs a plethora of healthcare crowdfunding networks, so consumers have options. Plus, competition breeds innovation.

New Technologies

I see the crowdfunding model as the bedrock of a new system that integrates things that have been pushed aside in conventional healthcare: preventative care, functional medicine, metabolic therapies, nervous system therapies, and new technologies.

I foresee a user creating a ticket (a health issue—a discrepancy between their experience of life and the one they prefer), and the system doesn’t stop working until that ticket is closed. The incentive structure is such that fewer tickets means more profits. That’s the foundation of my preferred future.

Beyond new ways of paying for healthcare, other game changer include AI and lower cost testing, which could enable much more personalized medicine. The usefulness of AI is increasing. Naturally, more and more people will continue adopting AI systems to help with their health.

These two these things: new crowdfunding systems and AI-native personal health systems are poised to change the lives of millions of Americans, making healthcare lower cost, and more effective and enjoyable.

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Unlike some people, I actually do stuff.

I’m doing IRL shit.

Making music

Building trails

Building a startup

Playing sports

Working on my health

Watching Christopher Nolan movies

Traveling, exploring

Mountain biking

Dating

My life is like desire triage right now.

All these things feel more important to me than editing, polishing, and publishing stories on Substack. I’m actually writing as much as ever, and will share when I feel called to share, like today. After 6 weeks off substack, I opened her up and got it done.

In the past two months, I’ve slept in twelve different places. In the next month, I’ll sleep in another five or more.

I woke up this morning in a former Catholic church that my friend rents. I checked my messages. Anu is interested in doing a Substack live stream to talk about Christianity with me.

My roommates left for work. I put a rake and chainsaw in my car and drove to a mountain where I’m building a new mountain biking trail from top to bottom. I did an hour and a half of scouting and marking. It got hot and I drove to a nearby mountain lake where I conveniently found my snorkel mask in the back of the car and used it to easily swim to a small island. I sat on the bank and thought about all the emails I need to send. Follow-ups to people I’m building a healthcare system with.

Google calendar dinged me, telling me it’s time to depart.

Now I’m at Walmart, drinking a remedy organic berry immunity smoothie in the parking lot while they put new tires on my car. I’ll try to get my emails done and drive back to my house before my calls at one o’clock and two o’clock. Then cook lunch and see if I can move the ball forward on some AI projects, then my friend is coming over to record music.

Tomorrow night is date night, Saturday is a hike to a lake in the White Mountains, Sunday I’m co-hosting a brunch with 16 people coming, and after that I’ll go to a watch party for the NBA finals.

My smoothie has a Lion’s Mane mushroom in it. At least that’s what it says. I’m on a mushroom kick right now. I started growing them when I lived in Oregon five years ago. I’m planning a trip back to Oregon, where psilocybin mushrooms are now legal for medicinal consumption, no prescription necessary. There’s a lot to learn, a lot of evolution to be found, with mushrooms. I’ll be in Oregon next month, researching and experimenting.

I have a missed call from a doctor’s office requesting I fill out more forms. I have unread messages from a Canadian girl I was hanging out with in Portugal last month. We’re planning a retreat in New Hampshire. Walmart texts me my car is ready.

My life feels crazier than it is. It’s a weird time to be alive. It simultaneously feels like I’m doing too much and not doing enough.

I’m happy with my life. I recognize it can feel like I’m drowning in an ocean storm, but really I’m in a jacuzzi and the jets are on a smidge too high.

It would be dumb if I drowned in this jacuzzi. But whatever, all outcomes are acceptable.

Thanks for reading, and have a great rest of your day. If you like this, read the sample of my book, All Outcomes Are Acceptable, of that combines memoir, sci-fi, and poetry. To my surprise, it’s only received five-star reviews.

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I could just sit in still, lukewarm water, but the evidence suggests I like it HOT with jets blasting from all directions.

Song

My friend Ken is often anxious. Every time I see him, he’s talking about the impending “AI-pocalyse”. He’s chronically on his phone and never has enough time. He says he’s worked for years to feel “less autistic.”

Doctors put him on medications, and he sees a talk therapist. He doesn’t seem to credit these two things for helping him. In fact, he’s frustrated that he can’t find a doctor to help him safely taper off the psych meds he was put on years ago. So he’s just kinda stuck on them, despite not needing them for the original thing he started them for.

I suspect variations of Ken’s story are common. More common than anyone other than demonic profiteers would like.

A mutual friend of ours, Lizzie, asked me to go hiking. I suggested we swim in the cold river by the waterfall. She thought it was a joke. I’ve been swimming in cold water since 2019, so I forgot that regular people don’t do that, and are unaware of what that feels like. They just assume it’s crazy.

Ken decided to join us.

As we hiked through the lush, early spring forest, Ken fired off text messages, mumbling about not having enough time and his chronic anxiety.

“You want less anxiety?” I pulled his phone out of his hands and put it in my backpack, where my phone was also quarantined.

“Thank you,” he said.

I took off my shirt to go to the waterfall. Lizzie noticed the continuous glucose monitor on the back of my bicep.

“Chris, do you have diabetes??” she asked, bewildered.

“No,” I said, “These are like $50 and over the counter now, so I put one on to see what spikes my blood sugar.”

“Wow, I might try that because I feel like my blood sugar is linked to my anxiety.”

It’s all connected — the gut, nervous system, hormones, neurotransmitters.

We hiked around in bare feet and found a hole to swim in. I went first. It was colder than I thought it would be, in the high 50s.

I held my nose and dunked myself, emerging born again.

Lizzie and Ken both took a dip, yelping like the primates we truly are.

We stood around admiring the river, basking in lucidity and presence. Not a fucking notification to speak of.

“Isn’t it wild,” I said, “that this would be a totally novel experience for like half the country.”

“And seventy years ago,” Lizzie said, “This was like all there was to do.”

Walking back to the car, his phone still in my pack, Ken said calmly, “I think I need a digital detox.”

I’ve noticed.

I drove us through hilly, forested, southern New Hampshire, listening to Stick Figure and Sturgill Simpson. I slammed the brakes. Someone is selling sourdough in front of their house. We ate chunks of spongy sourdough, warm from the midday sun, and headed to a chilly mountain lake for more swimming. I could argue that breaking bread with friends is a nervous system therapy.

Afterward, back at my house, I showed Ken the new vagus nerve stimulator I’d been telling him about.

He put it on and instantly felt the calm.

“You said this thing is $150?” he said.

“More like $250”

“I feel a sense of calm.”

We’d already been doing vagus nerve stimulation via our cold water swims, which I’d wager amplified the effect of the Pulsetto’s electrical current through both sides of Ken’s neck.

I told him about Wim Hof, whose story inspired me to experiment with cold water and breathwork. Wim’s wife, suffering from psychiatric disorder, died by suicide. Wim learned to use breathwork and cold exposure to become a master of his mindbody, to the point where he can control his autonomic nervous system, including his body temperature, and even his immune system. In a scientific study, he trained others to do the same.

Over the past six years, I’ve been experimenting with nervous system therapies to create a more preferable experience of life. Cold therapy, breathwork, yoga, VNS, Somatic Experiencing, cranial sacral, sound therapy, photobiomodulation, psilocybin, neurofeedback, dancing, Christianity. Each warrants an entire essay or an entire book.

My definition of a nervous system therapy is anything that deliberately works with the flow of electricity in the nerves and neurons to create a more preferable experience of life. Many things can be a nervous system therapy if approached with that lens.

The nervous system refers to our neurons and nerves. The three big neural networks are in the head, heart, and gut. The largest, most critical nerves are the spinal nerves and the vagus nerve. Neurons communicate with chemical messengers called neurotransmitters, many of which are made in the gut (serotonin, GABA, histamine, dopamine) and the endocrine system.

I’ve come to view psychiatric disorders/mental illness as nervous system disorders. Anyone in America knows how widespread nervous system disorder has become: anxiety, depression, sleep problems, gut problems, autism, migraines, are tragically rampant.

It’s woeful how slow establishment conventional medicine has been to implement modalities beyond drugs and talk therapy for treating root causes of America’s health problems. Very few doctors will prescribe cold therapy, VNS, dancing, neurofeedback, breath work, or yoga. Dr. Navaz Habib is one of the few, who pointed me toward VNS.

Pathological anxiety is the number 1 nervous system disorder in America, affecting tens of millions. The results are in, and the standard drugs and talk therapy approach has not resulted overall in less anxiety in America.

It’s the early days of nervous system therapies, and I’m excited where it goes, after decades of the myopic view of medicine as patented pharma chemicals—daily perpetual drugging.

Anxiety is being trapped in your head, in a tornado of thoughts, pulled a million ways at the same time. And of course, running out of time!

How do we get out of the head and into the body? Put awareness into the body. Right now, if you'd like, shift awareness into your feet and see what happens.

It's impossible to have your life force over-indexed on your head when you’re submerged in fifty-degree water. This I know.

There’s no quick fix for modernity-induced nervous system dysfunction. It’s an ecology of practices over months and years that can evolve a nervous system from torment to bliss.

True wealth is nervous system health.

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Thanks for reading, and have a great rest of your day. Check out my experimental book of that combines memoir, sci-fi, and poetry. To my surprise, it’s only received five star reviews.

Thank you to , , and David for the feedback on the draft.

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I got an email that Joe Hudson was hosting a live rapid coaching session. I clicked the link and joined, Just for a little bit I told myself. Of course, I was there for the full 90 minutes, as I was when I first watched Joe rapidly bring the Zoom call question askers to the reality of the situation and feel the emotions of it.

One year ago, I shared a review of Joe’s Great Decisions Course - a five-week program I embarked on. Readers loved the review, and so did Joe. One reader told me he revisits it every few months, which blew my mind. Since then, 500 more people have joined this email list, so I’m resharing an updated version with additional insights. (see below)

I often listen to the Art of Accomplishment podcast, co-hosted by Joe and Brett. On a drive through New Hampshire, I listened to them talk about death, as Brett’s brother was terminally ill. In the middle of the podcast, Joe shared a poem that he wrote and shared at a friend’s funeral.

This was part of it:

I fall to my knees in gratitude of this illusion of me

It is what allowed me to laugh and cry and with you

My friend

It’s what allows me to feel, the endless depth of missing you now

I recall these lines off the top of my head, which speaks to how much it resonated with me. There’s a wisdom in there that few people I’ve ever met have come to know, let alone articulate in such an elegant few lines.

In another podcast episode, Joe told a story about his daughter’s “billion-dollar idea.” Not something that would make a billion dollars—something she wouldn’t sell for a billion dollars.

Wow. That resonated. I posted on Notes: I’m not trying to build a billion-dollar business, I’m trying to build something I wouldn’t sell for a billion dollars.

I messaged Joe a copy of his poem, and said:

In AoA world, making someone cry is among the nicest things you can do.

I was watching Joe do a coaching session, and the participant said something like, “I’m gonna cry.”

Joe said, “I’m already crying.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I was crying as we were talking.”

It struck me that crying doesn’t necessitate tears streaming down the face, or an inability to speak. My intuition is that crying during a conversation without anyone even noticing is downstream of deep emotional fluidity.

The revelations per minute with this guy is second to nobody else I know of.

I’d wager Joe Hudson is one of the top active psychologists in the world, although he does not identify as one. What makes him such a good psychologist is that he’s not one—he’s not in an ivory tower writing papers, or behind closed doors helping a few wealthy clients. He’s in the trenches helping people in public.

Originally posted April 1, 2024, updated April 2025

Joe Hudson's Great Behavior Course

Freedom lies in the space between stimuli and response.

“Joe Hudson made me disappear.”

“I’m on the bleeding edge of existence.”

“Is this real change? I think this is real change.”

These were comments from participants in Art of Accomplishment’s Great Decisions Course. 

In January 2024, I saw Joe Hudson, founder of Art of Accomplishment (AoA) on ’s Pathless Path Podcast. Inspired, I joined the info session for Joe’s Great Decisions course. It blew my mind. My eyeballs were pinned to the screen for 90 minutes. I cried.

There were 100 people on the call. Joe selected volunteers for coaching sessions in front of the audience. They call it Rapid Coaching. I’d never seen anything else like it. For each session, things were emotional within 15 minutes. It was clear to me that Joe was fluent in the language of emotions, and I was not. 

At the end of every value delivery chain is desired feelings. Improving our ability to feel emotions expands our ability to receive value. Savoring all emotions, looking forward to them, and flowing with them, to me, sounded like the ultimate skill. The man who loves all emotions can’t lose.

Joe calls it emotional fluidity. When I first heard the phrase, I knew I didn’t have it but would like to experience it. Many times in my life, I have felt emotionally illiterate. I might be too emotionally retarded to take this course, I thought. Then I realized, that is the reason I need to take this course. 

The 5-week course began while I was both sick and traveling but they only run it once a year so I bit off more than I could chew. There were partner sessions, small group sessions, large group sessions, and solo work. I can talk about the intellectual lessons, but most of what I learned is nontransmissible because it was at the emotional level in the form of somatic experience. 

Overall, the course was high quality, impactful, and useful. It’s the first course I’d buy for my children. Our decisions, which is the same as our behavior, determine a large part of our life experience.

Here are my highlights from the course:

Simplicity is powerful

Exercise:

“I feel _____ and that’s okay.”

Partner: “You feel _____ and that’s okay.”

Everything powerful is simple. And that’s okay has echoed in my thoughts for weeks. 

I feel love and that’s okay. 

I feel scared and that’s okay. 

I feel helpless and that’s okay. 

I feel confused and that’s okay. 

I feel stupid and that’s okay. 

I feel wonder and that’s okay.

I feel desire and that’s okay.

This activity validates feelings as acceptable and helps to neutralize resistance/self-conflict.

I didn’t think this is what we’d be doing in the Great Decisions Course. I thought we’d learn a formula for decision-making. But the key insight is that our decisions, our behavior, is driven by the emotional part of our system. By working with emotions, welcoming emotions, we can improve our decision-making. 

Head Heart Gut

A revelation for me was that my neural network is more than just my brain. I knew this at an intellectual level but the course helped me tune into my heart and gut, which are also important neural networks. My gut especially was being neglected. I had no idea how much I was clenching my gut. 

We did an exercise where we spoke from each neural network. What does your head say about that? What does the heart say? And what does the gut say? I learned my gut doesn’t speak good English. Some people spoke from their gut with animal noises.

At the beginning of each of the many course exercises, Joe states the purpose of the exercise. An aim of the head-heart-gut exercises is “to access many forms of our intelligence and integrate them together.”

VIEW

Vulnerability 

Impartiality

Empathy 

Wonder 

This framework is the foundation that AoA is built on; and for me, VIEW is a good answer to the question, What is love?

The AoA podcast is part of the course content. Here’s Joe in episode 70:

“Meeting emotions with VIEW: Vulnerability, allowing it. Impartiality, being neutral. Empathy, keeping yourself company. Wonder, looking at the emotion as if you’re kid finding a turtle for the first time.”

“Emotional expression and moving emotions is great, but the most important thing is, how do I look at this with some curiosity, wonder, vulnerability, impartiality.”

Emotional Inquiry

This is the backbone of the course and a potent source of transformation. 

Emotional Inquiry (EI) is like an audio-guided meditation where you conjure an emotional experience, listen to the audio, and see what happens. 

From AoA podcast #96, which I highly recommend:

“[EI] is a tool for when you resist an emotional experience. It’s basically looking at the emotional experiences through the eyes of VIEW. It’s vulnerable, you’re actually feeling it, it’s impartial, you’re not trying to change it, you’re full of wonder, and having empathy for yourself. You’re not lost in the emotional experience but you’re not dismissing it. We teach it as a guided meditation but it can soon become automatic.”

“This is one of the most powerful tools if it’s applied. Most people will slow down on the application of it or find distraction because it can create so much transformation so quickly”

This was my experience. Lots of sadness came up. And one time, an anger, fear, sadness sandwich. It helped me to speak about things that were previously avoided.

Says Joe:

The typical question: Why would I ever want to invite anxiety, welcome anxiety? I’ve spent my whole life trying to fucking get rid of that. And that’s the answer. You’ve spent your whole life trying to get rid of it and it hasn’t fucking worked. That’s the reason you go to welcome it. Because each one of these emotions was a rejected part of you

From podcast episode 70:

Emotional inquiry: it’s an undoing not a doing. Doing is in the resistance to the emotions. That’s what takes energy, effort. Not resisting and welcoming takes less effort. It might take a little activation energy. I have more energy if I experience an emotion unresisted. How to drop a hot frying? It’s an undoing.

“3 Major mechanisms that transform our lives because we’re embracing, welcoming emotions:

• Decision making

• Stopping the patterns

• Increase of connection”

A note on trauma:

“When we experience a trauma, we weren’t allowed or didn’t feel something because it was too intense at the moment, so we keep repeating patterns to get back to homeostasis and feel it.”

“If a mouse is being shocked and can’t run away, it will numb itself.”

Emotion Inquiry Audio on SoundCloud

The Ironic Algorithm

Joe calls this the Golden Algorithm—I call it the ironic algorithm:

We create the feeling we’re trying to avoid in the way we’re trying to avoid it. 

To know what emotion you’re trying to avoid, look at the one you’re inadvertently creating.

I was scared to feel like a failure so I didn’t try, then felt like a failure. 

I tried to avoid feeling lonely by traveling, then felt lonely while traveling. 

I didn’t want to feel angry so I suppressed my anger, then acted passive-aggressive.

I didn’t want to feel out of control so I flailed and felt out of control. 

This one is a classic:

I didn’t want to feel like shit (disconnected, anxious, pain) so I drank and did drugs…then felt like shit

It can be horrifying to see the matrix that’s been driving your behavior for decades. 

Update: The trick here is to allow the emotions, in VIEW, to stop inadverantly creating it. One way or another we experience the emotion we’re avoiding, either resisted or unresisted. Emotions feel different unresisted. For example, when I coached mountain biking, clients would get scared (rightfully so)—we would allow that emotional stimulation and suddenly it was no longer fear, it was excitement. The Great Decisions course is that on a larger that on a larger scale—clarity through emotional fluidity and admitting to the reality of the situation.

Principles

Behaving from principles automates decision-making. What are the five principles that would ensure success and make decision-making easier?

Principles I’m experimenting with:

• Go outside 

• Embrace intensity 

• Think long term 

• Be in my power (breathe)

• Don’t do what I don’t actually want to do 

• Set my frequency

If I live by these principles am I guaranteed success? The only way to know for sure is to go find out and adjust accordingly.

Update: Reflecting on this one year later, I’ve crossed out two that I don’t feel serve me as much as the others.

Clarity Hacks for Decision-Making

“Find the right problem statement: the right question to make the decision around. Then find the criteria to let you know you’ve found the solution”

Exercises:

“What’s the next most obvious thing?” … “Then what’s the next most obvious thing?”

“What do you know about this decision?”... “What don’t you know about this decision?”

“What’s the next thing you need to know?” … “And after that?”

Joe says, “When you’re in a decision, you’re already in fear.” When I’m not feeling good about a decision, it’s usually becuase there’s more I need to know. What are the details, what is the plan? I ask the right questions, get some answers, and the decision gets made on it’s one.

There’s a speaking from empowerment exercise to “access the part of you that’s not afraid” and “understand the somatic state that has an increased likelihood to make good decisions”. It’s a guided audio meditation which is available to people who have purchased the Decisions Course.

Wisdom Nuggets from Joe

“How" or “What” questions are more useful than “Why” questions—which often sound accusatory.

Why did you do that? → How did that benefit you?

Aren’t I right? → How much does that feel true?

Update: This has been such a hack for me over the past year—simply replacing “Why” with How or What.

Why don’t you… → How much would you enjoy, or, What be the reasons to, or, How much sense would it make to…

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Joe once suggested that when you’re talking to someone, keep fifty percent of your attention one inch below your belly button. I tried it. It helped reduce the friction I’ve felt in interacting with other humans. It helps you stay grounded in your body.

Joe also said that keeping 10% of your attention in your body at all times yields profound change. I tried that too. Keeping some attention on my body lets me see when I’m clenching my gut. It helps me breathe deeper and relax into the moment. 

A “should” is two desires in competition. “I want to follow my passion and I want to please my parents” becomes “I should become an accountant.” 

“I should get out of bed” is “I want to stay in bed and I want to get up.” It feels good to acknowledge reality.

Joe said on an coaching call: “Just admit to the reality of the situation.” That line still echos in my head. “Admitting to Reality” could be a book or blog.

Anger Pop-Ups

This is one of the crazier parts of the course. People gather in a small group on a zoom call and take turns screaming while the others observe. The rules are no hitting and no directing anger toward someone on the call other than the facilitator. The facilitator’s job is to help the participant be angry in a safe way. 

The lesson for the mindbody system is that anger can be safe. 

There was a person in my group who had done this before. He went first, moving his anger. He began screaming. Almost immediately, my hands covered my face. Someone else on the call did the same. 

I felt even more uncomfortable around an angry female. I know the reasons why. How much of my behavior has been driven by avoidance of this discomfort? The way to change is to embrace the discomfort. 

I took my turn. It was difficult. In the past, I’ve been afraid of my own anger. Afraid of my rage. It was a new experience for me to experience it safely with others. The lesson for my system was that anger can be safe. It’s difficult to know how much it changed me. I do know I’d like to do it again.

Conclusuion

People will take the same AoA course multiple times because the course is less about data/algorithms and more about experiencing emotions and participating in exercises that teach something new each time.

It’s an emotions gym.

Every now and then I feel like My life just changed. I got that feeling when I committed to doing this course. I was right. Sometimes I think of my life as pre-AoA and post-AoA. It feels like jumped from one branch to a larger one, in the tree of possible outcomes.

$300 off the AoA’s Connection Course with code CCOUTCOMES (no affiliate kickback).

Congratulations! You made it to the end (:

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An new version of my book, All Outcome Are Acceptable is on Amazon. It includes the best stories from my life. One reader described it as “Absurd. Blatant. Truth 1 millimeter from your face. I feel like I’ve been slapped around a bit.”

Links

All Outcomes Are Acceptable - My first book on Amazon

CrowdHealth - alternative to health insurance (Affiliate link) Discount code BIGWIN

Pathless Path online community

Joe Hudson’s Connection Course $300 discount Code: CCOUTCOMES

Videos and podcasts on YouTube.

Song

Bonus - Notes on the April 1 Rapid Coaching Call

I machine gunned 1700 notes into my Notes app as Joe Hudson coached people on the zoom call. It felt like damn near everything he said I had to write down.

“It doesn’t matter what I stay

It matters what experiment s can you run”

“My path was deconstruct every narrative and be in the unsettling place you are now

Most nondual traditions speak to that

Every narrative has some truth and some untruth”

“How much of OCD was trying to maintain control in an environment with someone abusive?”

As you relieve the OCD you confront the fighting in your head

Can’t win a war in your head

How do you stop fighting? Stop resisting

In that lack of fighting, there’s this tremendous amount of freedom and energy.

On Shoulding

“You’re not feeling, you’re spacing out

You’ve been avoiding aimlessness with “shoulds,” which reinforces aimlessness

The trick is to fall in love with aimlessness

I am dedicated to building this business, being of service

I occupy my life with this

You occupy your life with shoulds

Both are probably as inconsequential as the other

I love aimlessness

I’ll drive around instead of drive to work all day long

You're talking, not feeling the aimlessness

“It makes me panic a bit”

What’s that core panic really about?

Let’s assume there’s no point. What makes that not freedom?

The panic is there, the depression is there, clearly, because there’s an idea that life has no meaning.

What’s wrong with seeing this existential fear as your freedom

What if it gets too bad and kill myself or something?

That seems to be what you’re doing. What if the purposelessness is actually freedom?

shoulds are repression of emotions

Without going to the past or the future what’s wrong with this right now?

You’re killing yourself

Alternatively you could just be yourself

Every time your pissed, your beating yourself up

If you move anger every day for a month, everything would change

I’ll make you a deal

I’ll make decisions course free if you move anger every day for a month

It’s gotta be out loud visceral anger

Move anger

Oh - and can’t make it a should

On Procrastination

How I get to the root of procrastination?

What are you procrastinating on?

[personal projects that make money, including a website]

Confluence of something like taking care of self, and money

Taking care of someone else?

Not a problem

What makes you not want to take care of yourself?

What’s the real fear?

Fear of success is fear of failure

But Working for someone else, all that shits not going through your head

Doing it for yourself, how does it feel?

If it was for your kid, how would it feel?

You procrastinate on things that make you feel like shit

If you had to do it perfectly, you’d stop doing it.

Great websites connect; they’re not perfect.

Perfectionism stops you from doing it, even starting

The only thing making it not fun is you think it’s important

Prove to all of us it’s important

If I don’t do it, I’ll be working for someone else and my income will be limited. Won’t have the income and lifestyle I want. I’ll be stuck

You are stuck

I know. For a long time

It’s so important that it makes you stuck

Which is worse - work for someone else or being under the yoke of a perfectionist

Ya wanna work for yourself? You gotta be a good boss

I gotta take the pressure off myself

That’s a way of putting pressure on yourself

Imagine how horrible I’d be if I needed to get a result

How do you just enjoy?

This moment right now?

You just did

I just appreciated I’m here, on this call

Make your work something lovely for you to do and you won’t procrastinate

Photos - April 2025

Thanks for reading, and have a great rest of your day.

You may have heard of CrowdHealth. It’s one of the fastest-growing startups in healthcare. In Solving Healthcare Part 1, I wrote about how it works and how the incentives differ from health insurance.

I was lucky enough to join CrowdHealth as a member in 2022. It entirely replaced health insurance for me. On average, I pay $155 / month. Insurance would be more than double that just for the premium. Then there would be a high deductible and a co-pay. With CrowdHealth, my average annual expenditure is 65-75% less, and I get services that I wouldn’t get with legacy insurance plans, like find-a-doctor and unlimited telehealth.

How the heck is this even possible?

I’ve been thinking about this for over a year, and talking with Andy, the CEO and founder. He told me about a member in Montana who accidentally shot himself and how they handled the bills—more on this incident later.

Three main things allow my CrowdHealth membership to be so much lighter on my wallet:

1. Health of our members (the crowd)

2. Self-pay, cash-pay pricing

3. Professional shopping and negotiating

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1: Health of the Crowd

CrowdHealth strives to make members healthy and keep them healthy because they are financially incentivized to do so—and also because they are good people. I’ve talked with a bunch of CrowdHealth employees over the years, and many members in the community telegram channel. Andy and the leadership have created a culture of actually caring about people’s wellbeing.

We are paying each other's healthcare bills. Healthier members means we all pay less because healthier people have less healthcare bills on average.

In Solving Healthcare Part 1, I discussed how America stumbled into a disastrous situation where health insurance companies are financially incentivized to cultivate a chronically ill population and exorbitant healthcare pricing.

Nobody in the CrowdHealth crowd is obese or a chronic smoker. It’s not allowed. 1 Unfortunately, the American health insurance system is loaded with fat people. Most of America is fat and sick. It’s crazy. It weighs heavily on the wallets of people paying into the insurance system.

I take care of myself. I don’t smoke or eat like crap. I’d rather not pay for people’s insane medical bills because they’re doing that stuff. I want to support people who are mindful of their health and do what they can to avoid preventable chronic illness.

I’m optimistic that removing out-in-the-open corruption from regulatory bodies, and re-aligning healthcare incentives will end the 50-year health decline, and actually reverse it, returning America to our former health greatness.

Insurance, sadly, doesn’t really care about the health of customers. One reason is because for them, there’s no money in it. The average policyholder switches insurance companies every 3-5 years. And in the end, it’s the federal government footing the bill when people go on Medicare fat, sick, and loaded with pricey prescription pills. Meanwhile, the insurance companies made a fortune from premiums and pill sales. It’s the big insurance companies who own the pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) who set the inflated drug prices. It’s dark stuff.

CrowdHealth emailed me a discount code for a DEXA scan - Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry. It’s fully crowd-fundable as a preventative care “quarterly special”. I went and did it and I was blown away. It was a 2-minute, full body scan that showed my distribution of fat and muscle, plus bone density.

My DEXA score was an A-.

A minus sign… I could hardly believe it.

Andy, the CEO, told me that CrowdHealth is working on implementing a system where members can submit health test results and receive discounts for having excellent health. I learned about DEXA scans, got a near-perfect score, and I’ll soon be saving money for it. That’s a triple win.

2: Self-Pay Cash-Pay Pricing

There’s a weird thing in healthcare (doctor visits, surgeries, pharma) where they charge different prices to different people. The main variable is whether or not you have insurance.

A friend of mine, who works in healthcare, thought people get better prices from providers by having insurance. The exact opposite is true. People get way worse prices because they have insurance. The industry standard to attempt charge insurance companies an absurd price for the healthcare they are buying for the policyholder. After I tell the provider, “I don’t have insurance,” the price is lowered substantially—every time. This is crazy.

But it makes sense…

I talked to a dietician whose team uses therapeutic ketogenic diets to treat a range of conditions, mainly psychiatric disorders—something the legacy health system is largely failing to help with. She told me that if they were to accept insurance, their small business would have to hire four additional people just to do the paperwork and deal with insurance companies.

Businesses want you to pay cash. They get the money immediately and there’s less work on their end. Self-pay cash-pay gets substantially lower prices.

Weirdly, insurance companies make more money from prices being high. I detail this in Part 1. The system is convoluted on purpose—“the margin is made in the mystery”.

With CrowdHealth, members get the self-pay cash-pay price, upload the receipt to the app, and get reimbursed by the crowd within weeks. If it’s a huge bill that is too big for a wallet or credit card, it can be funded before the bill is due, and sent directly to providers.

Unlike insurance, neither the crowd nor CrowdHealth makes more money if we pay more. CrowdHealth’s compensation is a monthly flat rate from members, to grow a healthy crowd and facilitate funding of legitimate, fair-market bills.

3: Professional Shopping and Negotiating

A big part of Crowd’s job is sourcing healthcare for members and negotiating big bills on our behalf.

One member, David, posted in Telegram that he got the discounted self-pay cash-pay price for an MRI. Then CrowdHealth got it EVEN LOWER by $700.

Boo yah, baby.

That’s less money out of my pocket. And ya know what that means? More 1 on 1 swing dancing lessons!

If there’s a big bill or an upcoming surgery, CrowdHealth sends in their pro negotiators.

They post their wins on their socials:

It’s messed up that the industry norm is for the healthcare business people to attempt to charge exorbitant prices. These huge numbers get thrown around and contribute to the perception that health insurance is reasonably priced, and an absolute necessity, because if anything substantial happens it’ll be a million-dollar bill!

The guy who shot himself

A CrowdHealth member was fly-fishing in Montana (boo yah, baby). He got a big fish on the line. During the battle, his revolver fell from his holster, landed on a rock and shot him!

The bullet bounced around inside him, destroying his organs.

Green stuff oozed from his chest.

“Dude, I’m dead,” he said.

Sad!

But no, he didn’t die!

The helicopter got him out.

He woke up from a three-day coma, and they handed him a $1 million bill.

“Holy f*ck,” he said.

Just kidding, CrowdHealth handled it. The negotiating team got the bill down to $250,000.

You know what that means?

More swing dance, baby! Let’s goo!!!

Like everyone else in the crowd, the guy who shot himself paid the first $500 for his medical bills, and the crowd covered the rest.

I tell a lot of people about CrowdHealth. The most common question I get is, Can it cover a huge bill?

The answer is yes, easily.

The Crowd team estimated the man’s approximate total bill and collected the funding over multiple months. The money was ready to go before the bill even arrived.

Boo yah, baby.

The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed

CrowdHealth is obviously the future. It’s a better service at a way better price.

I’ve been investing in businesses for a decade, constantly looking for incredible, underappreciated products and services. This is one of those ultra-rare, once-in-a-decade companies, where an entire industry that’s been failing us for fifty bloody years is beginning to dwindle, as a superior parallel healthcare system emerges.

Realigning incentives so that regular people have more capital and options is critical for solving the healthcare problem, and increasing swing dancing per capita.

Thanks for reading, and have a great rest of your day. Join CrowdHealth (affiliate link). My referral code is BIGWIN.

Subscribe now

Related Readings

a wrote a story of how people in the health insurance system did their damndest to scam her. She’s fighting back, as we must, to end this nonsense and criminality.

Time Magazine Story about Crowdhealth: They Hated Health Insurance. So They Started Paying For Each Other’s Care

Podcast: Ex-Pharma Rep: It's Way More Corrupt Than You Think - Brigham Buhler Chris and Brigham suggest that healthcare would be better if it wasn’t for-profit. But if the incentives are aligned, then for-profit is no longer a concern, it’s a benefit, as we see with the CrowdHealth crowdfunding model.

Links

My book All Outcomes Are Acceptable on Amazon

Join CrowdHealth (Affiliate link) Discount code BIGWIN

Join Pathless Path

Free writing gym

Songs

I’m a big fan of his startup, which offers a replacement for health insurance. I haven’t felt this way about a young company since I found Tesla, 9 years ago. It feels like the Tesla of healthcare. A fundamentally different, superior product (at least for me), at a superior price. Growing fast. Changing the game.

“When I saw Tesla,” I told Andy, “I saw how disruptive it would be. I thought they’d kill Elon.”

“Dude, the UnitedHealthcare guy got taken out. Did you see that?”

“No, I didn’t see that.”

“You didn’t see that?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“The CEO of UnitedHealthcare got gunned down in New York, like assassination style.”

“Wow,” I said. “They’re not going after you, I hope.”

Allegedly, Luigi Mangione murdered Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, an insurance company notorious for denying health insurance claims. Mangione is innocent until proven guilty.

I’ve never met anyone happy with the American health insurance system. I don’t think Luigi is, either.

But the bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity.

I’ve never purchased health insurance, and I don’t think I ever will. It looks awful. Sky-high monthly fees, huge deductible, “co-pay”, and they often don’t want to pay for what you want or need to survive. Insurance companies deny 10-20% of claims.

I had insurance through Tesla, as an employee. Then I went self-employed and had nothing for a while. I called it the preventative care plan. In 2022, I heard about CrowdHealth when they sponsored ’s podcast. I talked on the phone with them for 45 minutes, and signed up.

18 months later, I was in a mountain biking accident and they funded my healthcare bills. Then again when I had a triple stomach infection. They connected me with amazing doctors [Shoutout to Boston Holistic]. I made friends with Andy, the CEO, and Taryn, my care advocate. And perhaps most importantly, I’m actually excited about the future of healthcare in America.

Luigi Mangione and I are the same age, born a month apart. We both went to top-rated schools, worked in tech, and traveled the world. Now, unfortunately, he is in jail. I am in a beautiful private library, writing about ways of paying for healthcare. Meeting with CEOs, instead of murdering them.

A new way to pay for healthcare

Ways to pay for healthcare include self-pay, government insurance, private insurance, Health Care Sharing Ministries, and now, a crowdfunding membership.

The latter was brought to market by Andy and CrowdHealth the team in 2021. I joined the following year.

As a member, I go to any doctor or healthcare provider and pay the cash-pay price. I upload the bill to the app. CrowdHealth gets funding from other members and reimburses me. There is a $500 initial commitment (deductible), per health issue. I pay a $55 monthly membership fee to CrowdHealth, and a variable monthly contribution toward other members’ healthcare bills, up to $135. If the crowd is healthy, bills are low, and my monthly payment is low.

An illustration of the CrowdHealth system, by

CrowdHealth boasts that 99.8% of bills have been fully funded. Which is amazing. Insurance companies are around 85%. But what CrowdHealth doesn’t say is that the .2% of bills that didn’t get fully funded came from members with “generosity scores” under 90%. Those few members are denying funding requests, then asking for funding, and not getting fully funded. That’s how it should be. The system is working.

Every month I get an email like this one:

This month it’s a bit higher than usual at $119. I don’t always check the email; I have it set so if I don’t do anything, it automatically approves the request.

My favorite thing to see that I’m funding a pregnancy. Unfortunately, this month, it’s for stage 4 melanoma.

Instead of nameless, faceless, insurance company algorithms, approving funding, it’s me. It’s the members in tandem with CrowdHealth employees, who make sure the bill is fair-legitimate, fair-market price, and eligible for funding based on the member guide.

The dual payment model is the key. A flat rate to CrowdHealth, and a variable rate straight to healthcare bills. It’s a win-win system. When we are healthy, we pay less, and Crowd makes more money, because more people are keen to join and stay.

I don’t think I’d be be a member if it wasn’t effectively a 100% chance that I receive full funding for my eligible healthcare bills.

When I submit a bill, I know it will be fully funded because my generosity score is 98%. In three years, I denied one funding request. And that was just to see what would happen. When a member denies a request, it goes to another member, and that bill can still get fully funded. I won’t deny any more requests.

Origin story

Ironically, the US healthcare system got so twisted and painful that it catalyzed the creation of new way.

After selling his first company, Andy moved from Ohio to Texas. “I thought I was going to play a lot of golf and eat a lot of tacos,” he said on a podcast with Bridget Phetasy.

“Because I sold my company, I didn’t have health insurance. I went on Obamacare thinking that was my only option. I joke, It worked until I had to use it. My little one, who was 1 at the time, was having recurring ear infections and needed tubes in her ears. She had a hole in her eardrum. The ENT said go get tubes in her ears, it will correct it. So we went and got tubes. We got the bill, and it was $8,000. For a 15-minute procedure.

I was like Holy crap, 8 grand for 15 minutes? That's nuts! And then I got a note later from the insurance company that said they weren't going to pay for it. It was “medically unnecessary”.

On the CrowdHealth website, Andy writes:

I realized the system was broken and decided to create CrowdHealth, a more compassionate and reliable alternative to pay for healthcare.

Traditional health insurance is often impersonal and unreliable, with twisted incentives. At CrowdHealth, we're changing the narrative. We treat our members like family, assisting them on their health journey, and managing their bills at an affordable cost. We're creating a system where the focus is on keeping our members healthy, rather than profiting from their illnesses.

Price gauging, double-billing, and deceptive business practices have become commonplace in the healthcare sector. Somehow, business people in the legacy healthcare system have the audacity to not tell customers the prices, then make up an insane number just to see if we will pay it. It happens in every state in America, every day. Taking advantage of people when they are at their weakest.

I didn’t understand how the healthcare system got so messed up until I hosted a podcast with Andy. He explained that:

In the private insurance model: the buyer of healthcare (insurance) and the seller (hospitals) both want a high prices. Higher and higher, every year.

How that happened:

1. Insurance corporations legally must make more and more profits for shareholders. This is the “fiduciary duty” of the executives and board of directors.

2. The Unaffordable Care Act mandates that insurance companies spend 85% of premiums on healthcare, effectively capping their profits at 15%.

The only way for profits for shareholders to keep going up (which legally they must do) is for healthcare prices and doctor visits to keep going up. More and more. Every year. As required.

The United States stumbled into a system of regulations and warped incentives where we have artificial insurance prices increasingly deviating from the self-pay market price. For example, in 2022, I went to a pharmacy for prescription pills. They said it would be $225. But that was the “insurance” price. I didn’t have insurance, so they told me the actual market price: $10.

There is a “gag clause” in the contract between pharmacists, pharmacy benefit managers, and insurance companies, preventing pharmacists from telling customers that the self-pay price is substantially less. In some cases, the market-price is less than the customer’s co-pay. Only after a customer says that they don’t have insurance, can the pharmacist reveal the self-pay price. This is to protect the profits of insurance companies and PBMs.

“Insurance is the crux of the problem”

Brigham Buhler, founder of Ways2Well, is a former pharma salesman and former pharmacy owner. He explained the system to Joe Rogan. This is an incredible clip.

There's the insurance company, then there's the pharmacy benefit manager. Pharmacy benefit managers are a middleman between the insurance companies and big pharma. They were put in place to negotiate the price of pharmaceutical drugs for the average American because so many drugs were coming into the marketplace the government couldn't decipher what drugs make sense, what should we cover, what should we not cover. So they allowed Pharmacy Benefit Managers to do that. Within a decade the big insurance companies went out and acquired Pharmacy benefit managers. Within a decade from that date, the PBMs began to negotiate rebates to themselves, not discounts to the patient.

The margins are made in the mystery.

The more confusing the insurance companies can make it and the more convoluted they can make it, the more profits they can make.

My buddy [an employee] who has MS, his treatment is $14,000 a month. I have 260 employees across both organizations. We met with the insurance company. They're raising our rates because they claim they paid $14,000 a month for his drug. He had a huge out- of-pocket burden on that drug but was happy because he thought, Well hey man, it was going to be 14k and I only had to pay X. And then they never paid the 14k because they negotiated a rebate on the back end. And then they turn around and they mark up my insurance plan for all my employees every year, year after year.

It is a profit driven system, not a patient outcome driven system. That's all I'm trying to hammer home with patients, who say, Why don't you take insurance? Because insurance is the crux of the problem. You cannot operate in that ecosystem and provide quality care. You can't. Everything's controlled, everything's dictated. It’s terrible.

A lot clinicians don’t know about PBMs. The only reason I know is because I’ve been in every aspect of this business. I would get into it and go, now I get the magic trick. I understand what your doing here, how your moving and shifting profits, monetizing disease states.

If I can monetize your diabetes. Why would I cure or prevent your diabetes?

The insurance system incentivizes exorbitant prices and chronic illness, and that’s the result we got, and what we will keep getting until a new system supplants it.

The dual payment crowdfunding model (flat rate to CrowdHealth, variable rate to health expenses) is the best new system I know of, for getting better patient outcomes, at lower prices. The healthier we are, the less it is per month, per member. The better of a job CrowdHealth does, the healthier we are, the less we way pay, the more people join and stay, and the more money CrowdHealth makes. They are financially incentivized to keep members healthy. This is important. Incentives drive results. Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the results.

CrowdHealth has 10,000+ satisfied members and it’s only four years old. It’s just a matter of time before a competitor comes along, and I hope that they do soon. Competition is a good thing. If I were an audacious entrepreneur looking for what to work on, I’d consider working on healthcare.

The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity.

Similar to how Tesla can’t convert the entire world to EVs, CrowdHealth can’t serve the entire market. Other people can do this and innovate. There might be an even better way that we haven’t discovered yet. In fact, there almost certainly is.

CrowdHealth is not legally classified as insurance, which means it can exclude metabolically unhealthy people: Fat people and smokers. If you’re over 260 pounds, you can’t join. You have to lose the weight to get in. And people do it. There’s a clear-cut massive financial benefit to losing the weight because CrowdHealth is so much less expensive than an insurance policy. If the person drops from 280 to 260 lbs, and they aren’t a smoker, they can save thousands of dollars every year, and get a better healthcare service.

Building a new ship

America’s health has been in decline for fifty years. Reports from the failing CDC are tragic. People are dying prematurely. People are going bankrupt unnecessarily. The legacy system is irreparable, and that’s okay. We are building a new ship, and taking it to the moon.

America will once again live among the healthiest countries in the world. We are seeing to it.

As Tesla was the catalyst for the electric vehicle market, CrowdHealth could be the catalyst for draining the insurance swamp, and putting power and capital back in the hands of patients and providers.

The crowdfunding model, or something even better, is essential for the future of amazing healthcare. This model motivates placing preventative, functional, and naturopathic medicines before allopathic medicine (surgeries and pills). As opposed to shunning the former and going straight to the latter.

There are dozens of emerging health technologies and healing modalities, from digital super-intelligence to OTC CGMs. I will write and publish about them here.

But applying new tools to a system with misaligned incentives is adding fuel to a fire that isn’t cooking what we want. Like upgrading the hardware of a system that lacks software to do what we want it to do: keep us healthy, and make us healthy when we aren’t, efficiently. The current dominant system is not optimized for that.

Changing the underlying software is the key.

I tell a lot of people about CrowdHealth. The number concern: would this work for large bills?

At the cafe in Austin, Andy said, “Did I tell you about the guy in Montana who shot himself?”

Part 2 is coming soon.

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You can join CrowdHealth at discount with this link.

Epilogue

I shared a draft with a group of writers in a workshop hosted by . Someone emailed me after: “Just wanted to say thank you for sharing the info about CrowdHealth. This is what I’ve been wanting my whole life.”

I shared a draft with my friend, Emily. She told me her daughter’s prescription medication is $10,000 per month. I blurted out laughter. That’s just so ridiculous.

It’s a fake price. They just make that up. If left unchecked, they’ll make the price $100,000 per month. They pass it along to customers by raising premiums. They need to do that to increase profits.

I wrote about this in my book All Outcomes Are Acceptable:

The premium, the deductible, the co-pay—they want you to pay three times. They want you to pay absurd medical bills.

I went to the pharmacy to get prescription pills. “$225,” they said.

“For some pills?”

“Who’s your insurance?”

“I don’t have insurance.”

“Oh, okay, hold on… It’s $10.”

“What is this insane business you scammers are running?”

I’m not fighting the old system, I’m opting out. Self-pay. The future of crowdfunding large health expenses is crowdfunding large health expenses.

Other Resources:

met Mangione wrote about the him and the murder.

argues it’s the providers screwing us because they are overcharging.

“The actual people charging you an arm and a leg for your care, and putting you at risk of medical bankruptcy, are the providers themselves”

But insurance companies actually need and want higher and higher prices to increase profits shareholders, as they are legally required to do. They like the high prices, which is why they pay them.

Matt points the finger at insurance companies in this article.

“I think it is totally fair for people to identify private insurers as the key bad actor in our current system. They are directly responsible for over half a trillion dollars of administrative waste and (at the very least) indirectly responsible for the provider rents that are bleeding Americans dry. The quicker we nationalize health insurance, the better.”

Much of health insurance is already nationalized via medicare and medicaid. Nationalizing the entire market (if that were even practically possible at this point) would run the risk of gaining the problems that Canada and England struggle with. Large governments are often bad at running things. There is no competition or incentive for greatness. Do you like your DMV experience?

I think, before advocating for total nationalization of insurance, writer Matt Bruenig could consider CrowdHealth’s model as part of the solution.

If I was to point a finger, it would be toward the people wrote and voted for the Unaffordable Care Act, specifically the people who wrote the clause mandating that for-profit insurance companies must spend at least 85% of premiums. I would suggest deleting that part, immediately. And deleting Pharmacy Benefit Managers. And enforce price transparency and no double billing in healthcare, just like any other industry.

Stuff I like

The Pathless Path is my favorite online community. Open gym for writers on Wednesdays.

Writing coaching. I collaborate 1 on 1 with writers, providing input, guidance and energy. I specialize in dialogue, personal stories, and self-publishing.

If you like this story, you might like my book, All Outcomes Are Acceptable. It’s about true wealth, AI drones, Amish people, and wilderness survival. Readers are loving it.

I’m a member of CrowdHealth, a superior version of health insurance, at a better price. Join here.

My work is free to read on Substack. With your support, I will become one of the greatest writers in the world.

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Music

Merry Christmas, happy new year, may God bless you.

And I realize I’m experiencing anxiety.

I feel like calling my parents, which is rare for me. The ole anxiety thing hasn’t visited in a while. But the winds of change are blowing—literally blowing tree pollen, right up my nose. And the whole thing has led to this experience of anxiety.

I admit to the reality of the situation: I am fucking terrified, for no clear reason. 

The funny thing about anxiety is there’s a lot that can be done to ameliorate it — but thinking of those things and executing is exceptionally difficult when you’re experiencing anxiety. 

Some things:

• Alternate Nostril Breathing

• Tapping meditation

• Vagus Nerve Stimulation

• Call a friend

• Going to a restaurant and writing, which is what I’m doing now

I’ve been here many times and the waitress knows me.

“Your hair is getting long,” I say.

“I know. I can’t believe how much willpower I have,” she says. “People piss me off and I don’t go home and shave it.”

I burst out laughing, and write down what she said. 

“Are you in school or writing about your feelings,” she asks. 

“Feelings,” I say, and smile.

“Good for you,” she says, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man do that before.”

I have a lot of feelings. I write what she says, then dive into my drunken noodles with chicken. First, I bless the food to ensure I’m ready to receive it.

Long-form. Anything long form. Whatever you can do that lasts a long time—do that. 

• Writing 

• Breathing

• Walking

• Singing 

• Hugging

• Eating

• Music

The same thing over and over because familiarity communicates safety. So too does rhythm and pattern. Write the anxiety away. Breathe it away. Run it away.

Boredom is the opposite of anxiety. 

Anxiety is being pulled a million ways all at the same time. Too many tabs open and the dag gone thing starts going haywire. Too much short-form task switching, too many loose ends, too much uncertainty. Combined with a chemical catalyst, like tree pollen or THC, you could be in for a vicious cycle, because decisions made from anxiety tend to yield more anxiety. 

I’m getting anxious about this article. It needs to be good! I need to try! I need to do real work that makes money—or else!

Or else what?

There’s a hair in my drunken noodles. 

“I don’t like to complain,” I say. “But is this part of the meal?”

“No, that’s a hair,” says Rage.

I’ve already eaten half of it. She brings me a new one plus a takeout box. 

“Dust in the Wind” by Kansas comes on. “Just a drop of water in the endless sea.” It’s so true.

Before I came to this restaurant, I tried a voice conversation with ChatGPT about anxiety. It made things worse. While walking on main street, I made eye contact with a guy, and he said, “How are you doin,” and that made things a bit better. Optimize for connection. Like, real connection.

Anxiety means you care. 

It means you care a lot about the future. Your life. The world. But sometimes it’s best to optimize for today. Optimize for feeling okay in this moment. Right here, right now. Where are you? Is everything okay? 

Okay.

I’m with the guys who are hitting the gym on a rainy Wednesday afternoon.

I’m listening to one of my mentors, Tommy Rosen, chat with Bruce Lipton. What do they bring up? That so many people are feeling anxiety. More people than ever are coming to Tommy, who’ve never experienced anxiety before, saying they’re experiencing it for the first time in their life. 

“I’ve heard this from countless people,” says Tommy, “I’ve never been like this before. I’m more anxious than I’ve ever been. I’m up at night, worried.

I think they think there’s something wrong with them.”

“You can’t live in threat,” says Bruce. “The system does not support threat. The system will do whatever to get out of threat. How can I get out? Well, not be here. That’s one way.”

Looking at our world, there’s more than enough to cause pathological anxiety. The AI conversation often sounds like a psyop to increase anxiety. There’s this thing that’s coming and it’s going to change everything! It could destroy humanity! It’s very close, and you need to be ahead of everyone to have first mover advantage!

The world is not in your hands. It’s in God’s hands. It’s. In. God’s. Hands. 

What’s in your hands? Probably your phone.

Anxiety might be trying to tell you something. What is it trying to tell you? This might sound ridiculous, but you can ask it. And look where it’s pointing you. Remember the fundamentals. Principles, water, breathing, rest, relationships. One thing at a time.

I woke up this morning and slid into feeling anxious before I even got out of bed. Cloudy thinking, nonsense thoughts, pulled a million ways, racing thoughts, desperation.

Then I said to myself, and there’s no other way to put this, I said:

“Maybe you’re just being a fuckin pussy.”

And that was enough to interrupt the pattern, and start to change the frequency. I got out of bed and started doing, one thing at a time. I started with water and a workout: my favorite stretches, Wim Hof breathing, and pushups. 

Then I reflected on a conversation I had a few days ago with my mom. I said I’m considering moving to a new city and pursuing a new thing. There was uncertainty and confusion in my voice, clearly worried about the future. I was looking for some kind of guidance or reassurance, or just an “I love you.”

She said, “I trust you’ll figure it out.” Which I’m sure was well-intentioned, but just to be clear, that line didn’t help. It says two things: 

1. There’s something wrong to be figured out, and 

2. It’s on you to do it

“Hope you figure it out” is the message our culture sends young people regarding many things: relationships, work, health, spirituality, climate, procreation. The data is in, and the new generation hasn’t figured it out. Let me know if you know a young person who has figured it out. 

In the afternoon, an uncle, one of my best friends, calls me.

“What are you up to?” I ask.

“I’m driving to a friend’s house,” he says, “who I met 50 years ago. We went to high school together, then we went to Rutgers, then she went to Harvard and I went to MIT. So we went through college together. Anyway, she’s going off a bunch of addictive medications all at once, X and Y. She’s going through hard times. She’s in reaction mode. She accepts her current emotions as fact and have justification. 

My message is, just be mindful of the situation. You can watch 'em. You can say, I’m feeling extreme anxiety right now because I’m withdrawing. This too shall pass. I’m trying to bring the message of mindfulness. Acknowledge that you are in a specific situation. A biochemical mental emotional state. Take the whole thing into account. Get the bigger picture.”

Then he tells me he recently experienced an anxious period.

“I went through a bout of anxiety, took gabapentin for a few days, stopped, felt weird for a day, then it went away. They call it episodic anxiety. But doctors don’t recognize that. I went to the doctor and said, I have anxiety. They started prescribing all this shit. Some of it's really toxic. Benzos you can kill you. [they killed his brother]

I tried this gabapentin stuff. Some people take thousands of milligrams, I took 100mg and was loopy for days. All I could do is take one eighth of one. I called the doctor and said it’s making me loopy. He said, Yeah, that’s normal, you have to be on it for six weeks. I said, You mean six weeks so I can get addicted to it? I have to come back every six weeks and pay him to get a new prescription. I said screw that and threw it in the trash.”

“So what happened with the anxiety?”

“Ya know, everyone’s on a spectrum of anxiety. It can be a healthy thing to feel anxiety. It makes you make a change. Healthy to so have some, but if you become incapacitated then you have to get something.

My friend Jerry had chronic anxiety off and on. He just realized, during tree pollen season, life’s gonna suck for a month.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I feel that.”

I took a cold shower and it brought me back into my body and righted my ship. It felt so good, I yelled “Oh yeah baby!”

Last week, shared an essay about an episode of anxiety. I commented about my experience, and he found it helpful. I decided to write more about anxiety. Fortunately, I got this three-day bout of anxiety to help write this essay.

Life happens and humans make meaning of it. When life gives you anxiety, make something of it. Raise your sail and let the winds of change float you into connection, breath, and clarity. 

Anxiety nudged me toward Tommy’s Life Beyond Addiction Virtual Conference. 535 people were on one of the Zoom calls. I raised my virtual hand and asked about creating more in-person experiences and helping the younger generation, for whom, the statistics are not good, to say the least.

Tommy, and his teacher, Guruprem, reinforced my conviction to continue co-hosting annual digital detox long weekends in New Hampshire. 

“The fact that you’re even asking this question,” said Tommy, “Indicates that you are a leader, who can hold a frequency for others.”

“I believe, for me, the digital devices are the final frontier of my recovery,” said Guruprem.

“The solution is not AI or VR,” says Tommy. “It’s going out and reconnecting with this planet. The body, the breath, looking in someones eyes.”

On the topic of anxiety, “Who hasn’t gone through that?” said Guruprem. “The valley of that. Oftentimes it comes down to breath and faith. Faith you’ll be okay, then listening and moving with the breath.”

“As the breath, so the mind. And as the mind, so the breath,” said Kia Miller, Tommy’s wife, “Trying to stop the mind with the mind is like blowing into a hurricane. How we can stop the mind, is to shift to the breath, because the mind will follow the breath. What we find when we’re anxious, what we find when we’re caught in repetitive, addictive thoughts, is that we lose connection to our breath, and our whole body tightens, and we start to go into stress mode. If we start to lengthen our breath, particularly our exhales, that starts to shift the way the nervous system is tuned. It slows the brain wave state down. 

The most powerful tools we have to shift our systems is the breath and our attention. Breath and attention working together, deepening the breath, lengthening the exhales, and staying focused on the breath. Just one minute of absolute focus starts to change things. It may not be easy to begin with, you may only get through 1, 2 or 3 breaths and your mind is off. But you can keep bringing it back and in that way you start to re-wire your brain, you start to heal your brain. 

When caught in addictive overthinking, we create a lot of fracturing in the neurology of the brain, and the brain-heart coherence. When we create this continuity of attention, focusing on the breath, lengthening the exhale, it starts to create supportive patterns that help you stay in the present moment.”

Focused slow breathing, even while doing, slows down the thoughts. It reduces quantity of thoughts and increases quality. I’d rather have a few high-quality thoughts than a shit ton of low-quality ones. 

I’m bullish on trading thoughts for breaths.

I have decided I'm going to breathe consciously from the moment I wake up til forever. When I write, talk, eat, scroll my phone, in the shower, at a party.

In the words of Churchill, “We shall breathe in France, we shall breathe on the seas and oceans, we shall breathe on the beaches, we shall breathe on the landing grounds. We shall never surrender.”

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Bonus song

“Names don’t constitute knowledge” . . . “When you know all the names in every language of that bird, you know nothing, absolutely nothing about that bird.” Richard Feynman

Psychiatric labeling is bundling symptoms into a meme that fronts as an underlying pathology. Psychiatric labeling is name-calling that facilitates sanctioned daily drugging and obscures root causes. Psychiatric labels are descriptions of symptoms that get conflated as the cause. This confusion contributes to people overlooking true causes. Who benefits from this other than those who profit?

A person can be autistic, but they cannot "have” autism because it's not something they can have, because autism is not a cause, it's an effect. The word autism, like other labels, describes a wide set of behaviors. What we actually “have” varies a lot. The various pathologies can all be labeled autism because they present as vaguely similar bundles of symptoms.

What do people actually have, it’s said someone say they “have” a psychiatric label such as schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, OCD, ADD, autism or bipolar?

I hypothesize that the explanatory pathologies for autism symptoms, as well as other psychiatric symptoms, are varying degrees and combinations of microbiome dysbiosis, metabolic malfunction, immune system malfunction, toxicity overload, nutrient deficiencies, and, perhaps strong in Asperger’s and trauma, “shards of frozen high-dimensional structure that are unable to be used or metabolized by the lower-dimensional networks they’re embedded.” The situation is exacerbated by a collapsing psychosocial landscape, causing insecurity and memetic confusion. 

Causes can act synergistically to present health conditions that are complex and confusing. Name-calling, psychiatric labeling, can be counter helpful to figuring out a cure.

An example of multiple pathologies acting synergistically would be glyphosate exposure entering the blood through a damaged gut lining, then chelating aluminum into the brain. Then a compromised immune system overreacts to a pathogen and causes encephalitis in the brain, presenting as psychiatric symptoms. Pesticide and aluminum exposures, gut health and immune health all play a role in the example. The MD will suggest drugging to mask the symptoms and talk therapy. An MD is required to write down a fancy label in order to sell the drugs.

When a bunch of symptoms are packaged into a label, that meme can masquerade as an underlying dis-ease pathology. The symptoms get mistaken as the cause. A runny nose is not caused by sneezing. Sadness and low energy are not caused by depression. Attention deficit is not caused by ADD. Not thinking clearly is not caused by schizophrenia — that’s the definition of schizophrenia.

Google presents this information and sources MayoClinic. They claim, “this condition can’t be cured,” but don’t say what the condition is other than "a disorder that affects a person's ability to think, feel and behave clearly.” That sounds like the definition of "disorder." Is the definition of schizophrenia a disorder that can't be cured?

They say the condition is “chronic: can last for years or be lifelong.” How can it only last for years if “this condition can’t be cured”?

For causes they write “a combination of genetics, environment,” which applies to all illnesses. They say genetics and environment “may play a role.” Genetics and environment play a role in everything. In fact, they are the play. They also list “altered brain chemistry” as a cause. That’s the effect. Schizophrenia is altered brain chemistry. They wrote Schizophrenia causes Schizophrenia. It debunks itself.

For the diagnosis to exist, it “requires a medical diagnosis.”

They said it themselves, it’s made up. It exists in the realm of memes. 

Schizophrenia is the boogeyman. The word doesn’t reference an underlying pathology. It’s a catch-all term for situations that mainstream medicine doesn’t understand and cannot cure with a patented pharma product. 

When they say “the exact cause of schizophrenia isn’t known” it sounds like “the exact location of Bigfoot isn’t known.”

There will never be “the exact cause” for “a person’s ability to think, feel and behave clearly.” Why did they say “the exact cause” implying that there could even be one?

Obsessions are not caused by OCD. Depression is not the cause of a depression. Autism, schizophrenia, ADD, OCD, depression, and any other label that does not refer to a specific pathology, are non-explanations that masquerade as explanations. These kinds of labels are useful for victimhood mentality and perpetual drugging. 

Sometimes sick people do get to know the underlying pathology, like coronavirus, Lyme, cancer, strep throat or broken bones. If there’s no clear cause for suffering, the mind craves an explanation and we are susceptible to latching onto quackery like non-explanatory psychiatric labels. 

What do people actually have?

think people experiencing auditory hallucinations have a hyperactive theory of mind structure running in the background all the time. Theory of mind refers to our human capacity to consider and attribute the mental states of others, like their beliefs, desires and intentions.

Changing a person's fuel source from carbs and sugars, to proteins and fats, can create a shift for people experiencing such discomforts. Could it be that without sugar and carbs, background hyperactivity is reduced to a reasonable level?

How much money is made from prescribing a dietary cure versus prescribing patented pills in perpetuity? Asking for a friend.

Sugars, carbs, industrial grains, and seed oils all provoke inflammation. Furthermore, pathogenic bacteria and viruses live inside our bodies, including inside our brains. What do these microbes feed on best? Sugars and carbs. 

“Schizophrenia is a big bag, where psychiatrists put all the patients who are difficult to understand. There is considerable overlap between depression, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, dyslexia and schizophrenia. Quite often a patient would be diagnosed as bipolar only to be later re-diagnosed as schizophrenic. Depression is often the only symptom present in a patient for years before other symptoms of schizophrenia develop. Members of the family of a schizophrenic patient often suffer from dyslexia, dyspraxia, depression, bipolar disorder, autism, ADHD and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Just as with childhood learning disabilities we see that psychiatric patients do not fit neatly into our diagnostic boxes. Is it because we are missing some underlying problem, which may be causing all these different conditions in different people?”

From Gut and Psychology Syndrome by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride

When I hear that multiple members of a family are labeled, I first think genetics. But then I remember that genes aren't the only thing shared. Environment, microbiome, diet, exposure to pollution, pesticides, phthalates, heavy metals, the memetic environment and relationships are often commonalities among family members. All of these factors shape us. 

Doctors and organizations invent psychiatric labels and utilize them for profit. When asked to explain the pathology of a label, the standard response is “we don’t know” or “it has a genetic component.”

Environment drives genetics. All of our genetics were and are created by environment. All of them. There is nothing but the environment driving our health. The task at hand is to find alignment with our current genetics, our environment, and who we want to be.

Reframing “I have schizophrenia/OCD/depression/ADD/autism/anxiety” to “I am experiencing this or these conditions” doesn’t allow for psychiatric label victimhood, or a copout for figuring out what the hell is actually going on — and curing it.

Further readings:

Tao Lin, The Story of Autism: How We Got Here, How We Heal

Stephanie Seneff, Toxic Legacy

Dr. Campbell-McBride, Gut and Psychology Syndrome

Michael Johnson, Autism as a Disorder of Dimensionality

Afterword:

It’ll be very difficult to have a healthy mind if you’re stuck in trauma response, anxiety, hypervigilance and/or chronic inflammation. Constant low-grade anxiety wears down the system. For many people, especially young people, living alone can be terrible for health. The body does not perform, or poorly performs, maintenance and repairs, when we are lodged in low-grade danger mode. Around 10% of cells in the brain are microglia. They regulate brain development, maintenance of neural networks, and repairs. According to the NIH, microglia are the “primary innate immune cells of the brain.” Microglia are disrupted by nervous system stress and inflammation. Vagus nerve stimulation can help bring microglia back toward optimal performance. I have personal experience with vagus nerve stimulation via cold exposure and kundalini yoga. VNS is also a formal medical treatment that involves the delivery of electrical impulses to the vagus nerve. 

Dr. Navaz Habib practices functional medicine and discusses on his podcast how pain, emotional or otherwise, is associated with inflammation. Social stress can cause inflammation. In his podcast, he says inflammation causes neurotransmitter imbalance, and neurotransmitter imbalance causes inflammation. It’s a vicious cycle.

From the Health Upgrade Podcast with Dr. Habib and Dr. Chris Keronomos:

“Traumas activate the limbic system. The ongoing fear response disrupts the whole circadian process, disrupts neural pruning, which leads to more dysfunction, in this circle. You’re never in a restorative sleep, your brain doesn’t detox, then you have inflammation and it’s a feed-forward.” 

“From my perspective, vagus nerve stimulation is so potent because it has the ability to address several, if not most, of the various different feed-forward steps making it impossible to get out of this loop of inflammation, neurotransmitter imbalance, hyper-excitation, stress, back to inflammation, down to the gut causing leaky gut, microbiome dysbiosis, and all of it feeding back through the autonomic nervous system with a heightened level of vigilance and sympathetic activation which leads to a higher level of pro-inflammatory monocytes being produced. You can end up with metabolic diseases that are more likely to occur as a result of being in this sympathetically overdriven state, which has its basis in trauma affecting neurodevelopment.”

“The inflammatory state is a heightened level of microglial dysfunction. The ability of VNS to take those microglial cells and move them back to homeostatic housekeeping task focus has the ability to break the cycle all the way around; because again, if you have the ability to have your neurotransmitters be produced in the right levels, you’re not suffering from excitotoxicity with NMDA receptor upregulation, side by side with that you get GABA receptor down regulation. [In the pro-inflammatory vigilant state] You're not only making glutamate more powerful but you're down-regulating GABA which is there to protect you from hyperexcitation. All of that ties back to microglial function, inflammation, and the vigilant state. You see it in concussion. Chronic pain is a big consequence.”

“VNS allows you to stop fighting against yourself, to stop fighting against the most powerful force in the body, the innate and autonomic nervous system. Those two systems together can kill you within 30 seconds.”

Thanks for reading

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