EXPERIENCE 37 | Healthcare pioneer Jason Rogers, Founder of Starlight Health

Welcome to the LOCO Experience Podcast with LOCO Think Tank Founder Kurt Bear. Listen in as Kurt digs deep into the business and life stories of business owners and thought leaders at different stages of growth from all walks of life. Launching and growing anything can be a crazy experience, so expand your thinking and level up your understanding of what it takes to find success in the world of free enterprise. Welcome back to the LOCO Experience Podcast. This is your host, Kurt Bear. And I'm here today with Jason Rogers. And Jason is the founder, president, janitor, and reelected bookkeeper at Starlight Health. And Jason, why don't you just explain to people what Starlight Health is and does as a launching place and then we can go into it deeper from there. Sure. So Starlight Health is what's known as a direct primary care that is very different from a traditional medical practice in a lot of ways. Primarily though, it's a, if you're not familiar with direct primary care, it's a, at its fundamental level, it's a change in the business of medicine. That's all it is. The traditional medical practices work on a concept called fee for service and which is exactly what it sounds like. You get charged for a service every time you walk in, you pay a fee for it. And in direct primary care, we scratch that and we use a membership model as opposed to the traditional fee for service. So it's kind of like blockbuster versus Netflix. Sure. And the Netflix model, you pay a subscription, you can use it as many times as you want. You can watch as many movies as you want. It's the same concept in direct primary care. So for me, you know, patients can see me as many times as they want. They can call me. They can text me. We can do video chats. We can do house calls. I offer all of my, well, I don't want to say all of them, but most of my services are at no charge to patients. That's everything from joining you. Remember, so here's your stuff. Exactly. I had a lot of issues in the past when I worked in a traditional practice where a patient would tell me they never had time to do a lab test, or they couldn't afford to do something. I got really tired of that. Well, and I was thinking one of the reasons I wanted to have you on here is because I do believe that direct primary care is at least one of the better solutions to doing health in our country. Me too. I think almost everybody has gone to a lawyer where it seemed like the lawyer was more concerned about having more services added to the suite of sales than actually sending them home with their law matters completely settled. And unfortunately, even in medicine as good harder as people are, there's still that kind of potential for inadvertent action or non-action on the part of the client or the doctor. I truly feel like the biggest problem medicine is the business of medicine. And there's a lot of people that get into medicine because they want to help and they want to heal. And then they actually find out like, okay, how do we make our money doing this? And there's administrators and there's people on top of us just trying to maximize revenue at every turn. And it's a train wreck. It's a mess. And direct primary care is the first model that I have found that is in any way sustainable, scalable, and a solution of any kind. Right. It reminds me of kind of the village doctor in little health in the prairie times, right? That's my point. He didn't have all the tools and equipment and have all the fancy stuff, but everybody could go to see Doc when they wanted to. Exactly. I don't know how much his salary was or how he paid or billed, but they took care of his needs. Exactly. That's kind of the same. That's kind of what I want to get back to is if I can have a family and they can have kids and just watch them grow. Like get back to the roots in medicine. Yeah. And less about all the millions and billions of dollars associated with it. Yeah. Well, before we get too much into Starlight, let's get to the roots of Jason a little bit. Okay. Obviously, you had some time in medicine and stuff, but let's go even deeper. What would you like as a young man and when did medicine start to become something you were interested in? That's an excellent question. So as a kid, I had no interest in medicine at all. I actually was very much into engineering and space. So I'm from Orlando and we're right next to the space coast. And I spent every weekends watching the rockets go off and I actually went to space camp and all that stuff when I was a kid and I went to college for aerospace engineering. I was going to work at NASA. That was my plan. And about a year into college, I came down with my own medical issues and wound up having to see 17 different doctors over the course of a year before I got a diagnosis. Then I had three major surgeries back to back over the next like nine months or so. And so I got very sick in college and kind of discovered medicine from that. Yeah. And decided that, you know, I wanted to help people too. And that's kind of what I changed my major. I switched everything that I was doing. And you know, went down the medical path after that. Interesting. And to the extent you're willing to share, was this like an inherited condition or something? It was a, there is an inherited condition that didn't really present itself until adulthood. Yeah. So there was a underlying thing that most people, I don't want to say most, but some people can go all their lives and not know they had it. You know, when I turned 18, 19 years old, which is when a lot of things will flare up and some people combination of stress and school and malnutrition because I didn't know how to eat like a normal person when I was at age. Not enough sleep. Not enough sleep. Too much alcohol. Well, yeah. Yeah. Too much alcohol. There's a lot of reasons why it popped up and you know, had a whole bunch of issues that came up. And for me, it was a condition known as hydrocephalus, which is basically a too much water that develops like in the brain itself. And it causes expansion of the brain itself. So causes compression of the brain against the skull. And they had to put a shunt in. So to like relieve the pressure. Yeah. To relieve the pressure of it. And you know, as a engineering student at the time, I had just finished calculus three differential equations, thermodynamics, solid dynamics, all of these high level math classes. And when I woke up from surgery, they came in. They were like, you know, what's your name? Jason, what day is it? Or what year is it? 2007. And what's two plus two gone? No way. Yeah. So all of my basic arithmetic, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, all of that. I had to relearn all of it. And it took me like six months just to relearn like basic arithmetic. Like were there times when you were like, Oh, I remember this now or things like that later on. Or it was, it's more like there was a wall. Like you it's on the tip of your tongue. And you're trying to like someone sells you like, you know, what's two plus two? And you're like, Oh, it's like it's right there. You can't get it. And yeah. So brain surgery is no joke. Yeah. So even something basic like a shunt. So, you know, I've, yeah, I I wound up switching my majors. I became a patient companion after that. So I was actually like in the hospitals and sitting with patients, a lot of them were in the neuro, you're in the neuro ward. And those kind of sparked a passion and use that sparked a calling. It's a better word for that. And when I graduated from undergrad, I decided to go to EMT school. So I worked as a medic on an ambulance and I did that for about two years. Was going to go to medical school, had every intention to and then decided on PA school instead. And that was kind of my. And where are we geographically? Are you still in Florida at this time? We are in Colorado. No, I know right now we're in Colorado, but but when you're in college and stuff, was that here in Colorado or Orlando? All in Orlando. And so the early career was there as well. My whole life was in Florida. And it wasn't until after PA school that I finally decided to travel and go elsewhere. And I arrived in Colorado about four days before COVID hit. Oh, is that right? Okay. So before we get to that in the launch of starlight and things like that, you did spend some time working in medicine and as well. And so yeah, talk to me some about like both that experience, but also how those seeds that became starlight health were planted. If you've got some stories about some of that challenging elements of, you know, like you say, the administrators are trying to maximize revenues. The doctors don't really care whatever gets them another Porsche. Yeah. Talk to me about that. Conscious, there's so much to say. So I started out when I graduated from school. I did travel medicine. And what that is is basically they will pick you up and take you to anywhere around the country. And all you need to do is work there and cover everything that you're traveling nurses. Exactly. So I went all around the country. I did in Florida. And I also went in California. And I tried different specialties. I tried urgent care. I tried pediatric. I tried family medicine and asked a million questions everywhere I went. So I did it for training purposes mostly. But the thing about it is you learn really quick the problems in medicine. And there are many of them. The first and primary one I believe has to do with volume. The entire model forces us to see more patients than we can handle. And the way that I've run the numbers on this before. And I could spend an hour with a patient like 60 minutes with a patient and sit down and talk to them, go through their whole medical history in depth in detail. The best medicine I could possibly provide for this patient. And I could get paid five times more if I spent five minutes with them and solve five patients instead. Right. So I don't know if that's the exact number, but it's substantially which is why you never spend an hour with a patient. Never spend an hour with a patient. And I would try to when I told you that I saw 17 different doctors before I got a diagnosis. I was in and out of rooms every five minutes until one doctor and actually was a PA who spent an hour with me. And it was that one that was able to finally get a diagnosis. And I know the value of listening to a patient. Right. You know, if you just listen to them and they'll tell you what they'll tell you what's wrong with them. Yeah. Yeah. You don't need a fancy degree sometimes to know they have the wisdom. Yeah. But yeah. So I went into medicine wanting to be like that wanting to be like that one PA that listened to me. And I ran into the roadblock of the supervisors coming up to me saying you're going too slow. You're not generating enough income. And we need you to see more patients. And you know, and I I would start ramping up how many patients I'm seeing. And you start forgetting who you're talking to. Right. I will never forget. I know exactly when I decided I'm starting my own practice. It was in Chico, California. And I was in. They had me seeing about 30 patients a day. So I was in and out of rooms every five, probably 10 or 15 minutes. I couldn't remember anybody. Right. There were so many. They were all blurring together. I was probably responsible for almost 3,000 patients at that point. And that's how many were on my panel that I was personally responsible for. And I walked in out of a room. And my nurse came up to me and she was like, hey, so and so didn't get their medication at the pharmacy. And not recognizing the name, I was like, oh, who's that? And she looks at me. She says you just saw them 45 minutes ago. And not 10 seconds later, my supervisor comes up to me and says, hey, we're going to start double booking you so that you can see more patients. Right. And I'm just like, okay. I can't handle this. And I walked back into my room. And they're into my office. And I had almost 600 messages on my inbox of, you know, patients that were messaging me, trying to, you know, hey, where are my lab results? And blah, blah, blah, blah. And insurance that was like denying an MRI. And I know they need an MRI. Yeah. And they need an MRI, but they're denying the coverage. And I'm like, well, they want me to call them and spend an hour on the phone discussing why this one patient needs it while there's 600 other messages on my inbox. Right. And if I were to do something basic, like call a patient and give them their lab results, my supervisor would come up to me and say, no, you need to have them come in for a visit because you don't, we don't generate income by calling them and telling them the results, they need to come in so that we can charge for it. Right. And this whole process just jaded me. I'm like, this is wrong. So many levels. And, and what's broken about it? Is that like, I think when we first met, you were talking about the direct primary care. And it's like, maybe 500 or 700 patients that you need to have a good sustainable practice and not be overloaded with work to do. And you just talked about serving 3000 patients and not being able to get it all done. And I guess the question is, is that the difference there is that basically the suck from the insurance companies and all of the unintended consequences of not going in for appointments when you should and going in when you don't need to. There's, it has a lot to do with insurance companies and reimbursement from an insurance. So, you know, even though a patient will pay a certain amount for an office visit, that doesn't necessarily mean that the practice itself gets that. Right. And the reimbursement amounts for private insurances is higher than Medicare, which is higher than Medicaid. So in practices like, you know, where I was, I was in a critical access hospital in the middle of nowhere, basically. Right. And they, because of the low reimbursement from a lot of their Medicaid patients, Medicare patients, I was required to see a substantially more amount of them. And because they just didn't make enough income from each individual one. Right. And that's, you know, that model of requiring me to see so many, I mean, that bleeds into a lot of things. If a patient calls up and wants to be seen, well, I was booking out three months. Right. You know, hey, can I get my lab results? Well, there's 600 other people waiting for their messages in front of you. Right. So I'm sitting there triaging and prioritizing who needs my response and my first. Right. And well, if I'm calling looking for an appointment, when I need an appointment, is this week or next week. Yeah. Typically in three months, I'll either be dead or in a figurative set of thought. Yeah. And that even bleeds into like medical decision-making. And if you think about it, like if you came into a doctor's office and you had something basic, like a cough, and they know that they have no availability for three months. And if you were a, if they had the ability to call you on a daily basis, they might do nothing or, you know, they might do something completely different if they knew that they could get a hold of you immediately and see how you're doing versus if they know they can't see you for three months. And the only place you're going to get to go is the ER. Here's some antibiotics. Here's some antibiotics. Here's your chest x-ray. Here's this, this, and this. If you need anything, go to the urchin care. Right. And you wind up walking out with five medications. You're like, what is all this for? Or alternatively, you know, if you have, you know, hypertension, if you're, if you have, you know, high blood pressure. And they can't see you for that long. Well, they start on our really low dose. In case you have side effects, it's not going to be super problematic. Because they know you can't get a hold of them if there is a problem. Right. But it also might not do the job. It also might not do the job. So what winds up happening is by the time you are titrated, which is, you know, raising your dose to the dose that you need. And the time in between appointments, because of how many they have patients they have to see nine months to a year, go by before you're finally at a place where you need to be. And or they're like, Oh, this medication is not working for you. Let's try something else. Right. And like, how long does it take before patients are feeling better? One of my, uh, experiences in medicine as a younger man and chubbier man actually was, was having a physical or something. And my doctor was like, Oh, do you snore sometimes? So you'd like put me in a sleep study. And in no time, I had a CPAP. Oh gosh. Thing. And only after I had quit using it, because I thought it was stupid. And I went to see an ear nose and throat special about something else. Uh-huh. And he was like, Oh, based on your throat structure and stuff, uh, you shouldn't be on a CPAP. Just you just need to lose 10 pounds and actually exercise once in a while. And that was kind of the start of my own. Like, okay, I'm just going to try to escape from medicine, not participate. And so I'll take more care of my own health. I'm going to start running and eating better and drinking less and all those things. And so for me, that was kind of my response to what I seemed like a grabby grab hands, uh, industry of just trying to, here's a bunch of prescriptions, here's something to get you off of my cycle. Uh, you know, there's, and there's another side effect to having too many patients and, you know, overloaded on how much time you have in the day, is if somebody comes in and you don't immediately know the answer to their question, well, you better go see a specialist for that. Right. And, you know, you get immediately turfed to this person or the next person. And, you know, I'm sorry. Right. Or if all you have was a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Exactly. Two, right. And I think that's part of the antibiotics thing and just press for time. It's like, well, I don't know, might be a virus, might be a bacteria. And here's an antibiotic. We'll see what happens. There's another piece of it too. When you were doing our billing codes, so like in the traditional system, there, there's an actual number of how many services you provide, like if I ordered a chest X ray, some antibiotics, and a referral, well, that counts as a higher level of code. And I can bill more for it. And so just tack this on there. We get to bill more for it without really having anything that's more beneficial to the client. Exactly. And creating make work for the team. And sometimes I would have a supervisor come up to me and say, we need to just start providing more services. And I'm just like, you know, this is wrong. Yeah. So this is when the kind of the slightly psychologically, the, the seeds were planted that, okay, I got to end this. Honestly, there was a lot of factors to it. The biggest thing was I couldn't remember the names of any of my patients. Every patient I was seeing, I was spending the first five minutes just catching up on their chart and trying to remember who they are. And then gosh, I was going home about three hours over shift every day. And I'd go home completely exhausted and lay down and just be like, well, I'm not going anywhere tonight. And it's just not sustainable. Like I could, I could feel myself burning out. And I had just gotten started. Yeah. And I was like, if I'm still doing this in five years time, I'm quitting the entire profession. So I'm like, I either make a change now or I watch myself burn. So were you typical of the industry? Like, I'm sure you had peers that were also in the same kind of roles and types and stuff like that. Like were they at that same kind of level or were they like, it wasn't that you took a little more time with your patients and stuff. And that's part of why you were burning out. I think for me, it's so the answer is a little bit of both. I specifically spent more time with my patients than almost anybody else, any of my peers. And I think my patient time comes from somewhere. The time comes from somewhere and you know, patients would wait in the waiting room for me for like two hours before they saw me. But they also knew that I would address any concern that they had. And it's great. But I was missing my lunches. I was going home late. I didn't have energy to go out with friends or have any kind of like personal life at all. And it's like, gosh, like mentally just drained. And you can't perform well. You can't provide good medicine if you yourself are, you know what I mean. Yeah, totally. And if you're, especially if you're, if your conscience starts to feel that weight of, hey, I might not have served this person like I would have wanted to or, you know, whatever, you know, I missed. I did the wrong prescription on this thing because I was too busy. What if I did it on somebody else that hurt them, you know. And you know, I think I probably gave myself more of a problem because I wanted to address. So I wanted to be comprehensive in every visit that I had. Other providers probably maybe didn't have as much issues as I did because they would specifically cut patients off. They'd be like, we can address one issue today. Right. And that's all you get. You came in for your tummy. We're going to address your tummy. We're going to listen to your elbow right now. Yeah. And they'll be like, I'm sorry, you can come back for another time. But actually, the brisketis in my elbow is an indicator that my tummy problem is related to something else, nutrition or whatever. Yeah. So that is how a lot of other providers would do it. Yeah. And but there's also just a high level of stress. And I mean, if you've ever walked into a high stress environment, it's that there's like a vibe in the air. Everybody is just angry all the time. Yeah. That's what a lot of medical practices are like. And you know, you I would go in and the nurses are all complaining and everybody's complaining. And all the providers are taxed. And even if they're handling better than I did, nobody is really doing well. No one's having fun. No one's having fun. And they're just trying to get through the day. So and I'm like, this isn't why we're here. Right. Right. It's not why anybody gets in the medicine is to be miserable every day, try to make a small difference, but know that it's not as good as you wish. Exactly. And then go home. And then go home and rinse repeat do it tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. So, so talk to me about that. Imagining, I guess, a life in Colorado or something like, talk to me about that transition phase. Yeah. So I originally actually tried to start it in California. Oh, so that's where I was at the time. You know, I was in Chico. And I, I love Chico. I made a lot of really great friends. And I had a lot of. Where is Chico? Is it like out in the desert away? Is that a side of Los Angeles or something or up north? It's northern California by redding. Oh, yeah. Okay. So it's yeah, I know the general area. Yeah, the general. So it's a vanarchy. Yeah, it's sort of there. But I really liked the area. It was a small college town. And the population size worked for me. I liked the, I liked everything about it. And I just met a lot of really great. Yeah, we both swallowed a frog lately. Talk this much usually. Right. But yeah, I just loved the town. And I was that's where I was. And I decided I wanted to start a practice there just because I, I fell in love with, you know, the people and the town and the vibe and everything. And I went so far as to starting the actual business structure and looking for a medical director and all of that. And then the lawyers told me that as a PA and not an MD, I could not own the practice. So there are rules having to do with the business law and medical law where I could not hire my own supervisor. Okay. So I have to, by law, I have to have a supervising position in order to practice. And I couldn't because you couldn't qualify for that position or whatever. I can qualify for that position. And therefore I couldn't own the practice. So that translated, okay, where can I own a practice? And I did a whole bunch of research across the nation. And there's only a handful of states that allow it. Colorado is one of them. Well, and I have actually good thing you're in now because Colorado is trying to change the California of the best they can. Yeah, I guess I hear that sometimes. But yeah, so I found out that Colorado would allow me to do it. And I immediately got online and started emailing every doctor I could find, trying to find someone that might be willing to do it be a supervisor. And I think I wound up talking to about 50 to 100 different doctors before someone finally got back to me. And and that's the MD that you that's the MD hired basically to be the medical director. Exactly. So we had a big meeting me and the lawyer and him. We all came in and just talked to each other and started hashing out, you know, supervising requirements, you know, monthly meetings and check-ins and all of that kind of stuff and and how we would be able to do this. And the what's interesting about Colorado is that I can own the practice and the practice hires the providers. So it's a little that little separation is what makes it different from other states. And that that's what brought me here. And then it's brought you to Colorado. What brought you to for Collins. For Collins and Chico are very similar. And if you if you were to take a trip to Chico today, you'd probably feel like you were at home. And that's why I picked it. It's a very similar town. It even has California State University, which is CSU. Right. And it's they're just very similar. And I I knew without even being here that I was going to like it. And I actually the first time I ever experienced Fort Collins was the day I moved here. So well. Yeah. Really? Really? Like you rented a place to live. You had already been hired or contracted. At least contacted this medical director. I sold everything that I owned. I packed everything into a civic. I drove from Florida to here. And my first time being here was when I moved here, which was I was in February of 2020. Okay. And I put everything into a storage unit. I went back for a travel job for two weeks. And then when I got back, I moved into my apartment. And about a week later, however many days later, it was. That's when COVID hit. Yeah. So you hadn't even put the single up for Starlight Health here in town or anything because it nothing had started yet. Yeah. I was several months away from launching. Yeah. But I had to get here first to start getting the preparations in. And then the office that I was going to go to shut down. They were in mid renovation when COVID hit. And the whole thing shut down. They're like, we don't know when we're going to open up. So my whole office plan went out the window. And that's when I was like, do I even need an office? And I decided to switch over to doing house calls. Really? Yeah. I wasn't aware of that. Yeah. So for the first six months or so, I was house calls only. Right. I was mobile only. And I didn't even have an office. And it wasn't until I got a couple of female patients who needed like a well woman check. And I'm like, I'm not doing that at your house. Right. So I was like, okay, we need to get an office now. And by that time, offices started opening up. Right. I found another place that would do it. So. Very cool. Yeah. So tell me about how, like, how do you go about getting clients? I guess members do call members in your situation or patients, patients, members, yeah. Like, especially in COVID, but in general, like, how do people find? Like, I, I'm imagining that, you know, when I Google looking for a doctor, I've got, you know, Rocky Mountain Family Physicians. I got associates. I found medicine. I got kind of the traditional things. And then anybody else is just like whatever. Like that has been a challenge. Yeah. I will straight up say that. When I got here, I had an entire marketing plan of tabling at all these events. And all the events got shut down. Right. So that's been a work in progress. I found most of my patients, and especially in the beginning, are all from word of mouth of patients that are people that I spoke to personally, got to know them, explained how the practice works. And just kind of went from there. And they were intrigued and decided to try it out. And then some of them told their friends. And it's kind of been growing that way. Yeah. I joined some business groups and explained, you know, to the business groups of, you know, experience with others like this is what it is. This is how it works. Some of them joined in one of them actually, you know, brought on some of their employees. So offering it as a benefit, which was awesome. And yeah. So it's been much slower than I had anticipated for the first year, but it's giving myself a break considering. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, regenerating and not having to have everything figured out is okay sometimes. Yeah. And but you're also right that one of the big challenges is people don't even know about direct primary care. They don't go searching for something they'd never heard of. And so trying to funnel them like, you know, the digital marketing side and things like that is proving a challenge. So for whom are you a good fit? Like I'm thinking about like people that have like an employer health plan and stuff. It's kind of maybe an awkward fit for many of them or maybe not. I don't know. So we have a different style of dealing with insurance than most people are accustomed to. Okay. And when in the traditional system, when you have health insurance, people use it for everything. You use it for every doctor, you use it for every lab study, every imaging study, blah, blah, blah, blah, anything you do. Right. You use your insurance for it. And that is what they want you to do. Right. That is not how we think of it in direct care. In direct care, we say, get your insurance, put it aside and leave it there. And if and when you ever have some sort of major catastrophic event, it is there for you to pull into. Right. And the rest of the time, you pay out a pocket and you can save thousands. Yeah. Office visits to this and that. Office visits, medications, you know, lab studies, you pay out a pocket for all of that. And number one, it doesn't matter what network you're in. Number two, you're going to get a discount anywhere between 60 to 90% on everything you do. Right. So it works well with anybody who has a high deductible insurance plan. So if you're like me, the plan I have has an $8,200 deductible on it. So before insurance even kicks in, I would have to pay $8,200. Right. And if you think of the membership, if you get all of my services included with membership, you're never going to sort of a catastrophic event. Right. You're never going to reach that deductible. And you're going to get all your care same day next day or. And that's like all your services. It's like a wellness check. I've got a cough. I've got a tummy ache, whatever. What if I like crash my bicycle and scuff my elbow up big time sutures free? What happens if I break my arm? It's breaking your arm make claim and insurance saying at that point. Well, not necessarily. So what we can do for breaking your arm is number one, I can split it. I can cast it for free. That is part of your membership. Oh, well, the x-ray if you needed to get an x-ray is not free. You would have to go to an imaging center to do that. Here's the thing about x-rays though. You can use your insurance, you know, say, let's take health images, for example, you can use your insurance, get an x-ray for about $400 or you can cash pay it for $60. Really? Yeah. Like that's the disadvantage. Because that's one of the ways they cover all the people that don't pay for their x-rays through Medicaid or this or that is by charging or charging for it otherwise. You got to remember that, you know, the reimbursement that practices get is much smaller than what you pay. And you also got to remember that how I told you that I had I spent an hour on the phone arguing with insurance. Well, they have to hire somebody to do that. Right. And they have to hire staff to deal with insurance to fight with them to get reimbursed and to deal with all the prior authorizations. And there's a whole suite of tools and systems that they have to go through just to get paid for doing an x-ray. You get rid of all that and you just say, I'm going to pay you $60 cash at the time of service. No questions asked. They're going to say, when can you come in? Right. And my x-ray machine only runs a certain portion of the time and more times we can splash it the better. And the same thing happens with MRIs. You know, in MRI, if I use your insurance, probably around $2,500 for it, you can get that for $4.50 cash. Really? Yeah. And blood tests, you know, a traditional routine blood study that you would... Okay, so if you think about how the system works, you go to your doctor and they say, okay, let's get a routine blood test on you. So you're paying $100 for the visit and then you pay for the lab studies and you go get the lab studies and then you have to follow up for another visit to get the results, right? And most of the patients would pay somewhere between $500, $600 for two visits and the labs. Those labs only cost about $14. So that right there is what my practice says, it's free. Right. You can just go get it and I'll cover it and I'll just eat the cost. And so, you know, sutures, like if you broke your arm, I can do an ultrasound at a point of care for free. But if I need to get next ray, I'll say go to the imaging study for $60 and call it a day. And you don't have to use your insurance. Don't bother with it. Don't even touch it. Don't even look at it. Yeah, interesting. So, because you're going to pay substantially more if you use it. So if you're clients, members, whatever we have patients, whatever you want to call them, how many of them, like you've only been a year or whatever or some change now, but like over time will 95% of people just see you basically most of the time. I had several patients who had multiple specialists that they were seeing on a regular basis, like an endocrinologist and other things. And they have since stopped seeing them and I've taken over the care that the endocrinologist has. So, as part of their membership, I have access to virtual consultations with like 120 different specialists and at no charge. So a lot of times, I don't have to refer for. No, are you part of a network or something that gives you that access? It's called Rubicon MD. Okay. And it basically allows to present patient cases and lab studies and imaging studies and blah, blah, blah, blah, and get a expert consultation. And they can tell me what they would do if a patient came in to see them. And they can let me know when that patient needs to be seen by an actual specialist. I mean, that's just like a software service support package. Software service. Software service kind of thing is paid for by me. No charge to patients. Right. Just part of your base technology platform is exactly access to these people are even smarter than your specialist. Exactly. So, you know, that is how I can avoid sending to referrals. Not all the time, there are still some patients that need to be seen by a specialist. But I'll give you a great example of something that happened. I had a patient come in who was having heart palpitations. And in the traditional system, this patient, I would have had to get it. They would have had their visit. I would have had to get an EKG. I would have then forwarded it to a cardiologist. Cardiologist would have booked out probably three months or so. The cardiologist would have run a halter monitor. And then they would have had to follow up with the cardiologist in like a month to get the whole to results. Like that's the standard system for this. And the cardiologist charges like $400 to visit. Right. Halter monitor is like $600. The EKG would have been $200. Plus my visit, they would have ran probably $1,000 to do this whole system. And instead, I ran an EKG for free. I offered them a halter monitor at cost, which is $220 flat. And I had my cardiologist review it. And for free, and patients total cost was $220. And they had their results within about seven days. And they versus six months and thousands. And even then, that was when I had a different pricing structure. And at previously, I had a lower membership rate. And I would charge at cost for these extra services. I've changed my pricing structures that it's a little bit of a higher membership fee, but it includes anything. So in the future, halter monitor like that, I would have just eaten a cost and called it a day. So seems part. Yeah. So what's that look like? I was just thinking to myself that, you know, one of the interesting things about health insurance and companies and group health and things like that is that, you know, your older employees, though you might enjoy them and find value and stuff, they basically sway your group insurance rates to the higher. And, you know, if you're young healthy people, then that doesn't, isn't as attractive. And this and that. But yours is kind of a membership service almost. So is it the same for old people? Is this for puppies? Families is different. I suppose there's two categories. So as on an individual family side, it's $100 a month for an adult. So over 18 to 64 65 and above, it's 115. And if you'd like to add a child, it's $50 a month for that each each. And then with that, you get all of my services all my time, unlimited visits. What if I'm just lonely? I've had that too. We had to have a talk with that. Okay. Spouses too is at the same price as the original adult. Yeah. So they're, I mean, you know, honest merchant over here. There are other practices in the area that do direct primary care. And they will cap a family. The problem with capping and limiting, you know, how much like a whole family will pay is that then you have to have more patients in order to cover those costs. And I decided at the onset that I wanted a lower practice volume. I wanted more individual that I could remember and know their names and their families and their pets names and all that stuff. And I wanted that more intimate, which means a smaller practice side, which means I can't be capping things like that. So, you know, it's kind of like you get what you pay for kind of thing. Yeah. For sure. Now that's the individual side. For employers, I decided to just do a flat 100 per employee. And it doesn't matter what age they are. It's not going to go up. It's not going to go down. That's just what it is. Yeah. And yeah. So employers, it's, it's not insurance. They're not mandated to give it to everybody. Right. They can, I mean, it's bad for them to do this, but you can choose who you'd like to offer to. You're cool. Yeah. Your name. So, you know, I'm a private practice. So there's, there's three entities. The employer can choose who wants to join. I can choose who I'm willing to take. And the patients themselves can decide if they want to join. Oh, so you don't take necessarily everybody. There are some patients that I may not be right for. Yeah. So for example, I want nothing to do with like chronic pain medications. There's a lot of issues with like D.A. And that was the sexy brand, a branch of medicine for a while is chronic pain management clinics and stuff and just milking those trees. I have had like three doctors that I personally knew lose their licenses because of all of the shenanigans involved with that. And I'm like, I want no part of it. Right. Fair enough. So, you know, patients that are very, you know, on on pain management and things like that, I may not be the best one for them. There's other practices in town that are more willing to accept a chronic pain medication. And, you know, there's also patients. I'm, you know, I'm a PA. I'm not an MD. I'm not specialty trained in the way that they are. So if a patient has a lot of issues. And I mean, I'm talking patients with like 20 problems on their list. And they got 30 medications and 14 specialists. You might need to see someone with higher training than me. Yeah. You need a conductor of the orchestra. I'm just a simple band leader. Well, I mean, I, I can do a lot. And, but I also know, well, you can't do all that. I can't. Not for a hundred bucks a month. Not for a hundred bucks a month. It's going to take more energy than I can provide. And, but, and you can fire customers, too, then, right? I can't. Like you're like, Mrs. Jones, you're sweet. But you book all of my time. So, see you later. You know, I've been practicing for, for five years. And I've had to add the conversation four times where I told a patient that your case is too complicated for me. And you need to see like an internal medicine specialist to take over. So, I mean, that's, that's a three-star rod of 10,000 or four of like 10,000 patients. That's not bad. Yeah, fair enough. But, you know, I, that's why doesn't everybody do what you're doing? Well, because it's too hard. It's, is it kind of change? Can you make more money? I can. Actually, it seems like it could. If you could, 800 patients, and I'm pretty surprised, this is a little more, you'd be even happier. That's, that's a piece of it. I, as a, you know, I could make substantially more as the practice grows more than I ever could in the traditional setting. As a staff person or even, even as an owner, probably. As a staff and employee. How's malpractice work and that kind of thing? Is that like, I know that's a big part of the medical cost these days, too, is just all that malpractice insurance. It's not that bad for me. Less because you're kind of in a different model that doesn't force all these growths. Because I have a medical director who, you know, talks to me on a regular basis, who's able to help me out my, all that stuff comes into play. Yeah. And I, yeah, it's, it's significantly less since I don't have to see so many patients. And, you know, when, I mean, I had a patient a month ago that after the visit, I went home and researched for six hours, like their case. And, you know, was searching for, I mean, seriously, six hours of time. And all of their paperwork was like spread out on my floor and everything. Yeah, you're like NCIS investigations or something. Exactly. And you don't have the time to do that in, in a traditional practice. And, but because I could and because I was able to research and figure out what was right for this patient, like, I mean, that was, that was a case study on its own. Yeah. Of, you know, that, that patient had been sick for a year. They'd been in the ER four times. They'd been, they'd seen like five different specialists. And that's what you do it for, right? Like, that's what you do. Like, that's why I did this was so that I would have the time to sit down and research and go through all of their studies. And as soon as I had everything in front of me, and I had everything laid out on, on the ground, and I could see what was going on. I was like, oh, I know it's wrong. Yeah. And now two, three months later, they're like, I feel better than I ever have. That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, so you came into this into Starlight Health with a reasonable amount of experience in medicine, you know, you weren't quite what behind the years, but you, it was hard years that you put in and really aggressive stuff, but really no business experience. Yeah. Yeah. So talk to the audience about like learning about the business element. I'm sure sounds like you had a business plan, at least to an extent that was developed and had a business plan. And so yeah. Yeah, that's been a learning curve. I'll say that. And yeah, talk to me about some of the total screw ups. If you wouldn't mind, that way when people who are listening that have done this, they're like, feel better about themselves. I mean, I think I feel like I'm still screwing up. I'd say one of the big ones is advertising has been an issue. I, you know, I didn't know much about advertising. And early on, I would hire some advertiser to, you know, do all the things. All the search engine optimization. And I feel like I've trained how much money and search engine and social media and all that stuff. And yeah, at the end of the year, I'm like, well, I got like two patients from that. Right. I spent $14,000. So I don't know. Maybe I should have just done all that myself, which I started doing the past couple of weeks. And banking, we always used to say, the big problem is half of all marketing dollars are wasted. It's just impossible to know which half. And digital marketing is a little different, but it also, you know, sometimes you've got to invest for months before you know whether it was a waste or not. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of my tools that I use were designed so that I could operate a practice on my own without a thousand staff to run it. So there's a lot of like digital services and everything that allow me to sign forms digitally on your phone, self-schedular or so patients don't have to call in. Right. And there's a lot of like actual high tech types. And each of these things cost $37 a month or whatever it costs a month plus I'm the one who programmed it. So, you know, with my engineering background, I know how to do, you know, coding and all that. So I built it. And that was like six months of my time building all that stuff. And yeah, so it's been a work in progress and trying basically, you know, if I can automate something, then I don't need to hire a staff person for it. And then I can pass those savings on to my patients. Yeah. So it's you and a medical director at the moment. Right. And does that medical director just kind of oversee you? Or are they seeing patients they're doing stuff all the time? They're a full-time employee. Yeah. No. He's not really an employee. More of a... He's a subduke-man or expert almost or a supervisory role. Yeah, it's an administrative role. Yeah. He has his own practice. So he owns next-era healthcare. Okay. And they have last I heard 90 clinics nationwide. Oh. Yeah, he's huge. He's like one of the largest direct care practices in the nation. And if not the largest. Oh, that's same model as you. Same model. Well, it's a little different. But very similar practice. And yeah, he's got his own his own panel, his own business. Yeah. He's he's already overseeing all these other direct care positions. And so why not oversee you too even? Well, what I love about so his name is Clint and Clint Flanagan. And what I love about the guy is he is a believer in the model. Right. You know, he he wants direct primary care to succeed. He wants it to take over as the new way of doing things. He's also smart enough to know that people have different opinions on how it should be done. And it's not a cookie cutter approach. Yeah. And he wants to support me to see what I can do with it and where what my vision is and to see where it goes. And if he, you know, maybe he'll incorporate some of my ideas or I can incorporate his, you know, he will still about having patients be better served. Exactly. And you know, he he's a very unique personality in that he was willing to take me on as in a supervisory role so that he could see what I would do with it. And that's where I'm going with just pretty cool. So I've only met one other person like that. So, you know, it was that. Oh, sorry, I said that wrong. He's the first person. Okay, fair enough. It's like that. So fair enough. I gravitated toward it. So like when we think about growth, what how what's the growth path look like? Are you just hiring another you soon? Or is there like an administrative need? Are you automating so much that you don't need that? My so my first goal obviously is to build my panel. You're 700 patients. I think I'm going to get my salary like 250. Whoa. Yeah. So what's interesting about the direct care model is when I get to about 150 patients, I'll probably start matching what I made in a traditional practice. As I build to like 250 because yeah, 150 at $100 a month, $1200 a year. So we're talking about 175,000 gross revenue less probably 50,000 in cost. You've got to pay Clint something in this and that and not even but there's like like all the softwares and stuff and rent. The overhead in a direct care practice like this, we need to take out all of the insurance and all the nonsense is probably 60% less than a traditional. Well, and I'm able to have all the self schedule. You don't need two staffers just to manage insurance stuff. Yeah. I don't even need a person to answer the phones. You know, my patients have the self scheduler where they can just pick their own appointments and I have a text messaging app where they can just message me and I'll get right back to them. You know, you don't need some nurse like Starlight Hall. Yeah. How can I help you? It just goes right to me and bypasses the whole shenanigan. Yeah, I think I'm thinking about ways that have probably tested you a little bit just all the the content for communications and all these different fronts and a website and a standard message for after they book an appointment. Yeah, I so you know, building I think the building the website has been a challenge and not that I don't know how to build a website, but it's the actual content. Right. And like the message that I want to portray and you know, as a business owner, I'm sure you've looked at your website and the analytics and how many people are barely anybody comes. Well, I see how many patients are coming on and how many people are leaving and how many people are actually scheduled appointments and I'm just like, how do I get that better? Right. Totally. So what do I need to say to grab their attention? Right. Well, and the thing is it's nothing on your website that you need to say because they didn't even come to your website. Right. In most cases, you know, it's how do I get people to my website? How do I get them off of the social media or whatever it is that I say things about? Yeah. So I guess, you know, learning how to do action, you know, calls to action and you know, I read the whole story brand marketing at book and just I think. Yeah. So what does Starlight Health stand for? Like while we're on that story brand Starlight doesn't necessarily, I mean, it sounds nice and everything, but it doesn't necessarily tell me what that is. But what would you? I would say in a nutshell, it stands for personalized medicine at an affordable rate. Boom. It's pretty easy. That's what it's supposed to be. It's I want it to remove the barriers of health care of, you know, access to your to your doctor practitioner, whatever, the financial barriers, the convenience barriers, all of the problems in medicine, like there's a lot of barriers and I just want to get rid of them all so that I can actually treat my patients. Yeah. Fair enough. It annoys me more than my patients that I don't can't treat them. Like I've even had patients who despite my prices that I had, despite having labs that were $14, they couldn't, they didn't have the time to make it to the lab center to actually get their labs done. Right. So about a month ago, I called up a traveling phlebotomist who could come to them and start offering that and I negotiated some rates with her and so now I can offer that. Right. I don't have to leave your office as long as you're comfortable with a phlebot in this coming in and drawing some blood. Yeah. So she actually like met some patients at their work during their lunch break, grabbed their blood and took it off to lab corps and it under my contracts. So, you know, just removing barriers like that and same thing with like visits for my patients, you know, sometimes they can't make it to the office so I come to them or sometimes they don't have time for a visit and we can just text message or, you know, just financially if it's a monthly fee, there's no fancy charges. Yeah. Like what barrier of getting health care do you have? So you, you, you cap yourself and it seems to me like it's likely that 200, 250, 300 clients or whatever patients, whatever that won't take too much forever. Like what do you do from there? Is that starlight adds other practitioners that want the kind of lifestyle that you want? So, you know, another piece of my vision of where this is going to go is not just primary care, but like other specialties that I feel like could truly help patients, but they don't go to because of costs associated with it. And I have this idea in my head of, you know, like a physical therapist, you know, imagine a physical therapist and it would be great if patients could go, you know, help get into shape, you know, want to get their posture training and, you know, things like that. But the problem is every time you go to physical therapists, it's like $100 an hour, right? And things like that, I want to remove those barriers and start offering that as like part of a membership. So if I can get this large enough, I plan to start including, you know, like a massage therapist and a physical therapist and a nutritionist, things like that that can actually help patients and get them healthy, not just giving them medications and just doing a bunch of really expensive procedures, but like you said, you know, getting into shape, getting into, yeah, this is my $200 a month health club, right? It includes my medicine, it includes my physical therapy, your first trainer, whatever, you know, if I can get patients into a healthy lifestyle, then I don't have to give you all these medications. You should listen to our episode with Becky Lawrence from IOME. She's got a mental health program that's not all together different than the membership here. I've talked to her before. Yeah, she's nice. So, so that's the bigger vision is kind of a all things available to our members. One stop shop. Yeah. Yeah. One man. Well, and no barriers to doing this thing that's going to be good for you. Right. Fair enough. Yeah. That's that's the vision. To get there would, you know, number one, I would probably start by getting another, probably a doctor, honestly, preferably somebody who can handle from cradle to the grave. So pediatrician through geriatric. So anything that like I said, you know, any of those patients that I don't handle, which is like under the age of four and those really complicated patients, if I can have a doctor on staff, they can handle that, then that you might consider those people that I then I don't have to turn them away. Yeah. So, but if they visit that guy 10 times in a year and they're only paying a hundred bucks a month, they're a low margin client too. Well, it's, you know, you're getting them healthcare. You know, there's no cap on how many patients, how many times patient can see me. Right. And I've had patients see me five times in a week. You know, if they had like a, a wound, you know, I had a patient just like you described, had a fall and they scraped the arm and we were checking in with them every day. So and no, no charge for that. And you don't, you don't have to charge for these things. Right. It's, I, when you don't have to bill for a visit, that patient actually didn't even have to come in. They just snapped a photo and sent me a picture and I was like, oh, that looks great. Keep it up. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I was making modifications on their treatment plan based on a photo. And I had another patient try to do that, but they had a bad camera. So I was like, you need to come in. Right. Fair enough. So, yeah, you, you, you change the business and you, you separate the, the visit from how you're making money and all of a sudden a simple phone call is sometimes all you need. Yeah. So, interesting. Right. So, um, when else would you have me know about the, the health system in general or why primary care is going to win in the end or just generally not just me, but our listeners? Um, I think the most important concept is to have a primary care who knows you and who you can actually get a hold of and, and, and get into. And accessibility is what's important more than anything else. Like if you have a primary care physician who knows you, knows your history, knows what you're allergic to, medications you're on, and you have something basic like you fell and cut your arm and they can see you quickly. You don't have to go to the ER. You don't have to go to the urgent care. Um, you just, you just, you just don't. Right. The problem is when you call up your doctor's office and they are booking out for two or three weeks and you have an emergency. Yeah. And all of a sudden you're getting a $3,000 bill from the ER. Right. So, if I could tell any listener, you know, what, what is the best thing that you could do for your health? It's to find a provider who is accessible, who knows you and that you can get in too quickly. So, um, and the problem with the medicine is that that almost never happens. So, you know, it, you have a, actually call your doctor, you know, if you haven't seen them in a while, call him up, ask him, hey, if I needed to be seen today, how long are you booking out for? Right. And if the answer is anything less than tomorrow or anything longer than tomorrow, you might have a problem if something ever came up. Fair enough. Sorry. And also, cash pay is the way to go because it deals on all the stuff. There's not, not everywhere you go. Yeah. Um, that's part of my job is to figure out who offers the cash pay discounts. Right. We'll give you a great example. Um, there's a cardiologist in Longmont who offers a stress test for $87 cash. And if you use insurance, it is $5,000. That makes me so angry. Here's the kicker. Uh, if they, I had a patient who went in to try and get the cash pay price, but they were seen at UC Health in the ER department and they already knew that they had insurance. Right. Um, therefore they would not let the patient use cash pay because they knew they were an insurance patient. They're like, whatever you can't cash pay, we know we can bill your insurance company for this. Yeah. So you can't, you can't switch. Right. So like, I'm, I'm sitting there thinking about this patient. I'm just like, I don't know, man, maybe you just don't even use your insurance. Don't even tell people you have it. Like, unless you get cancer or some major illness, don't touch it. Yeah. So interesting. Yeah, because it's the 20% copay a lot of times too. Yeah. Right up to the deductible. And so your, your cash pay might be half of what your copay would be. This is a great example because of that price patient wound up never getting the test. Right. And they just walked out. More importantly. And so now I'm sitting here thinking to myself like, which I had the next rate or whatever. I just had that machine so that I could just offer you. Yeah. But, you know, that's, that's one of the barriers to healthcare is, you know, there was a financial burden right there and insurance got in the way of it. Yeah. Yeah. So what was originally designed to help is hurting. Yeah. For sure. So interesting. So it seems like a good transition there, especially we have the faith family politics segment here. And one of the things in politics is I'm, I'm very conscious of the unintended consequences in that realm as well. You know, in that unintended consequence of having that cash pay versus insurance billing dichotomy is that people just don't get it because it's too much or they, you know, whatever. Health care avoidance. Yeah. So, so talk to me about any of those topics that you're like, we're going to touch all three, but I'll let you leave the charge. I want to talk about your family first. Sure. Are you, you said you got your sister older sister? Is that your entire close family? So my family's in Florida. Yep. And we kind of have a bit of a Brady Bunch situation. Okay. Yeah. So I got a bunch of half sisters, step sisters, step brother. They're all dispersed around Florida and we got family in Maine. We got family in Texas. Used to have family in California, but they're the ones that moved to Texas. Okay. But yeah, we're kind of all over the place and talking about that growing up period a little bit like was your folks, your, your actual parents split at some point and then you have this merged family kind of my dad passed away. I'm sorry. I was probably about six months old. Oh, wow. Yeah. So I never knew your dad never knew no memories just pictures. Yeah. And so my, my mom met my stepdad when I was like two or three. So he's, he's been my dad. Sure. So did you do that for such a thing? Yeah. Since I knew, if any memory at all, he's been my dad. Yeah. And he brought in his family and you know, he had three kids and I can say that part. You got three kids and my mom had me and my sister. Yeah. So we all kind of like I said, Brady bunched it up. Brady bunched it up and you know, growing up, everything was pretty good until my sister, she passed away when I was in fifth grade. Oh, so she had a car accident. So that was, that was hard and we wound up, so we were in Naples at the time, which is in South Florida. Sure. And me, my mom and my dad moved up to Orlando and then his kids were kind of in Naples. So they were kind of older and on their own a little bit of stuff. They were getting ready to graduate from high school and all that and so that our Brady bunch kind of split from there. But no, they they're still in Florida. Then you kind of grew up as an only child almost a little bit more astronauts among that segment than not. You know, my sister, like my half sister, she's 11 years older than me. Sure. So yeah, I was kind of like an only child, but not really. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, so they're all they're all doing pretty well. And sister's got a bunch of nephews now. Yeah. Yeah. Um, my sister, uh, Tara, she just got engaged not too long ago. Um, good. Everyone in the family is like, finally. Yeah. The most eligible bachelor around the most eligible bachelor ever. Also, um, and then about yourself, uh, your single guy, you showed up here by yourself for you to bring somebody to it. So I met a lovely lady on my first travel assignment and about, gosh, how long it wasn't. Uh, 2017. Yeah. Um, almost four years ago, almost four years ago, I, I met her on my first travel assignment and, she was an actress and at the time, and she was getting ready to go to New York and, um, you know, I was doing traveling. So I was going to be bouncing around and just kind of met up and, um, you know, we dated for a couple of months and then we kind of parted ways. Well, we always, we kind of kept in contact the whole time and periodically, we'd meet back up with each other. And on one of my last assignments, we actually came kind of close together. We decided to go, hey, let's give this a shot. And so after I, we had a long term, long distance, really long long distance. Yeah. And then so after I moved here, uh, right around November timeframe, she finally decided to move here too. Oh, and so you want to share her name? Skylar. Skylar. Skylar. Jason thinks a lot of you. Yeah, I do. I do think very highly ever. And, uh, but yeah, so she was, she was on tour. She was on a national, uh, tour with her acting company. Oh well. And she was in Denver, um, when COVID hit, and her entire tour got canceled. Like you guys are unleaved now. Yeah. So that, when I told you that I had just moved into my apartment and I had just furnished everything, well, she was visiting me in like, for that. She's like, hey, I just heard from my tour company that I don't have a job anymore. Yeah. So she was like, she was, you know, she was only supposed to be in Denver for like two or three days. Yeah. And we were just hanging out. And, uh, all of a sudden, she gets a phone call from our director and the whole tour got canceled. And so she wound up staying with me for like three weeks before we were able to get her back home. That's all the flights shut down. And that's crazy. So yeah, she's doing preschool teaching now. Okay. She's actually right down. Awesome. Yeah. Um, but yeah, she's, she's at that phase where she's deciding, you know, just she still want to act or she want to teach. Right. Yeah. We don't have that many paying acting jobs here in college. There's some free ones if you want that kind of thing. Well, there's like candlelight and a little bit. Yeah. Okay. She's looking into. But, uh, yeah, she's, she's, I think she's probably going to be going to grad school soon. Yeah. Well, it's not a terrible place to spend some time here in Northern Colorado anyway. So anything else on the family topic that's worthy of note to any props to your mom or your stepdad or props to mom and dad. Um, you're dad. You're calling that obviously dad's a entrepreneur. He owns his own bit. Well, sort of pretty much owns his own business. Okay. And I probably get that from him. And, uh, desired to never be an employee with anybody. Right. Fair enough. Yeah. Mom, mom is retired at this point and, you know, playing tennis every day. So nice. Yeah. Well, that'll keep you waiting for them to come visit me in Fort Collins. Yeah. So, uh, I was pretty happy. I finally got to go see them a few weeks ago. Good. And I'll be flying next week actually to Maine to go visit my other family there. Very cool. Very cool. Um, yeah. So with all the issues with flights and going on all that, I didn't get to see that. Yeah. A whole for like a year and a half almost. And, uh, yeah. So I finally have to see them a month ago. So, uh, family faith or politics. You want to do next politics? Sure. Okay. What do you think? Whatever. You know, there's so many different elements of politics. I don't know where to start. Uh, how's Joe Biden doing? I mean, so he's doing all right. Yeah. He's doing okay. Um, uh, I've he's six months in now, roughly on his first Euro tour. I'm, I'm a very independent personality. I'm not Republican, not Democrat. I'm independent. Same. And I, you know, there's things he does that I like. There's things I he does that I'm not a super fan of. Um, and I think if anybody is truly honest with themselves, that's how they really feel. I would hope so. I would hope so. Um, I seriously doubt everybody thinks black and white like politics makes it seem. Yeah. And, um, I've been, I've been happy with how he's been handling the COVID stuff. I, I think he has done well with like the, the vaccine rollouts and all of that. And regardless of, you know, opinions pro and con towards it, I think the plan has been pretty good. And, um, I've, you know, I, I was happy to see at least a strong direction on that. And so, yeah, there's, yeah, and we don't have to get the national politics either. Like what, what, what, why is it that you are an independent, not one of the party people? I just, I don't really fit in any mold. Yeah. Um, I think the most accurate description I've ever really had is, you know, financially conservative, but very liberally, um, socially liberal, socially liberal. It's a libertarian. Yeah. Um, I've previously, they suck so much that you just don't. It's like, I, I voted libertarian multiple times. And like, they got like one percent of a vote. I'm like, dang it. Right. Yeah. Gary Johnson, come on. Come on. Yeah. Um, but yeah, you know, I just like, I don't believe in molds and labels. And I feel like people just need the ability to think for themselves. And if all you're going to do is follow a red or a blue, you're, there's, you're missing so much nuance. Yeah. And I just, you know, I wish there was like 20 parties, you know, or no parties. Yeah. And just let people vote for a person, not a party. Yeah. Fair enough. Well, thanks for that. That's a, that echo is frankly, the average podcast, uh, I guess that I have here is probably anti-party, but pro people. Yeah. You know, I'm not voting for a party. I don't, parties are like a, they're an anonymous entity. You know, you, you can't put a face to a party. Yeah. And, but I can, I can see a person. I can see if they are a trustworthy person. If they, you know, if there's somebody that I can put my faith into and agree with them or not, if they're a person with integrity. And so here's something on politics. Then, uh, like this Obamacare is headed to the Supreme Court. There's opportunities to, you know, reinforce it, strike it down, take its teeth out. Like from, from a medical result standpoint, and a national political movement, is there, like, are there things that could be done to move forward the direct primary care model, for example, or just to have better outcomes generally? Yes. There are, uh, currently bills in the Senate and Congress, to support direct primary care. And I believe there was a senator from Texas. I forget his name, Senator Crenshaw or. Yeah, down Crenshaw. Yeah. So he's a big supporter of direct primary care and is, uh, starting a, um, there's a bill that he's been writing and scoring. And, um, and my medical director that I told you about Clinton, and he often goes to Washington to speak with legislators, uh, about why this is important. Oh, why it's important. And one of the biggest things that would really help is getting high-risk tax codes and, um, the ability to use, like, HSA funds and, and all of those kinds of things, um, which would make it a more beneficial towards employers. Sure. Well, if I could save $100 a month in my HSA and spend that at Starlight Health, that's easy. Yeah. Um, but, you know, there's, there's a lot of, I have a lot of opinions on what would be better than what we have now. Well, that's what the, the new model, model of the libertarian party should be. I heard was a better, not perfect. Oh, well, you're never going to be perfect to anybody or everyone. Yeah. So, um, the other idea is you want to share, like, here in this forum. So I like the idea of meta-share. Um, do you know what those are? Kind of. So a meta-share is essentially, uh, it's not, it's like a co-op almost. You could think of it as co-op where everybody kind of pulls their money together and then if anyone has a need, they disperse the needs, uh, to those patients. The problem is there's very little accountability around it. There's no accountability. There's no, like, legislation or anything like that. They kind of, it's riskier. Pretty loosey-goosey. Busy-goosey. And, you know, if you wind up getting hospitalized for five months and you get a 10 million dollar hospital bill, if they don't have the funds for it, well, then you're stuck with the bill. Right. That kind of thing. And the idea of it though, of having, uh, a direct primary care type practice for everybody across the nation who, like mine, can just provide standard level of care and then having some sort of catastrophic, um, low, low premium, not $300 or $500 or $1,000 a month, but like a hundred bucks a month. Right. Everybody just pays into and then when somebody gets that 10 million dollar cancer or whatever, then they can just go get it. Um, like, and the Medicare could be like the between or part. If it's 10 grand or five grand or something like that, that's terrible. People like to talk about, you know, Medicare for all. Right. And all of that. Oh, that just sounds miserable for everybody. It's terrible for the hospitals. It's terrible for the patients. So, I mean, in theory, Medicare for all is great, but like I told you before, the reimbursement to practices is really low. Right. And it requires us to see so many more patients and all that. You basically got a screw private pay so that the Medicare people can get so right. I will be the first one to tell you that on the patient side, Medicare is also Medicare is great for patients. They pay like $100 a month. They can get all the care that they need. Right. It's it's fantastic for patients for practices and in primary care clinics and hospitals and blah, blah, blah. I hate it. Right. That's the reason that I had to see so many patients and burning out. And it's like it was unsustainable on the practice side of things. And and it's still it's still the fee for service model. It's still, you know, the fee for service model is a 150 year old, however long old it's it's it's an antiquated policy. You know, that's that's how blockbuster worked. Right. You know, but I mean, you can think about it like I can go to blockbuster and or you know, and blockbuster is a good idea. But you go to Best Buy and you can buy three movies for $60 or you could pay Netflix and have four months of many movies you want as many movies you want. So I mean, there's a reason the subscription services are like the new wave of things. And because it just removes all the nonsense. Yeah. And I feel like there's a way to grow with that and to embrace, you know, like why is Amazon Prime so popular? Why is that so popular? Why are all these services so popular? Because you can get as much as you need to for a monthly fee. And it removes the overhead or removes all. Yeah, and it's easy to track if you're the company, whatever you know what you're going to sell. And you know, even this last year when I had, you know, I was offering, you know, fee for service items. It takes forever to invoice. Right. I hate it. Pay in the butt. Pay in the butt. Yeah. Like that's why I don't even want to put $14 for this thing on my invoice because it takes me like $14 for the time to put it on there and try to collect it. And that's exactly like why I change it because I'm sitting there looking on myself. I'm like, I'm going to have to hire somebody soon just to invoice. And there's no fair enough. I just scrap the entire part of the practice and just come in and do it different wise. Yeah. I like it. We covered politics and family faith. I haven't heard you talk too much about faith elements here, upbringing or things. Is that well? Journey. I was raised Catholic. Okay. And when I was in college, you know, I had my whole medical thing. And I say I kind of lost it at that point. Not really something that I follow anymore kept it lost that way. It's just kind of faded. I just miss kind of what I'm seeing in your face. It's you know, if I had to put a label on it and say like agnostic. Yeah, just it's not important to me anymore. And you know, it's it's actually been in a in a weird way. It's been good for me as a healthcare provider because patients come into me with a variety of beliefs. Sure. And when I was younger, I was very I'm not sure what the right. If you're not Catholic, you're not as smart as me. I think I might have been a little judgey back then. Yeah. And I lost that judgment, you know, with with everything. And I it's very easy for me to just relate to anybody. You know, if someone comes into me and they're Buddhist or Catholic or whatever, atheist or it's like it doesn't make a difference to me and it doesn't change my healthcare. And I don't have any kind of like, you know, if the patient comes to me and for example, and they're like, I would like to get an abortion or or something like that. And it's like I believe in your decision made in the privacy and what you feel is right for you. And I'm not going to tell you I'm not going to force anything on me. But that's not included in the base rate. I assume. Yeah. Okay. Just check it. No, I don't do a horse. To be honest with you, I had a patient ask me about that like a week ago. And I had to look into it and you have to have a special certification. Right. I'm like, I'm getting into that. Yeah. I don't want that legal. I don't want that liability there. Well, and it doesn't seem that simple either necessarily. Now, like even the pharmaceutical version of it, there's like a whole thing involved and involved with it. Like there's a whole database and special numbers. Really. Yeah. It's too much work. Fair enough. Anything else you want to share in that topic or use the time for the local experience. Unless you have another question. Let's do it. It's what's the craziest experience of your entire life, or it doesn't have to be just a moment. It can also be a time, you know, moving here. So without any friends and COVID nation sounds interesting. But yeah, tell me what that experience is. So when I graduated from school, I did not want to work. I wanted to travel. And I booked a one-way flight to Costa Rica with no return flight and decided I was going to stay there until I ran the money. And I traveled all over the country and saw basically the entire place, learned some Spanish, had a whole bunch of crazy nights. I was paraglided of volcano as it started exploding. Whoa. And I was there during a monsoon and was hostling all over the place. How long did you say? Two months. Wow. Yeah. Two months. What an experience. And I'd say one of the crazier moments was, I don't know about crazy, but more fun walking into a bar. And it was, basically it was a dancing bar and there was a stripper pole right in the middle. Okay. And but nobody was dancing on it. Everybody said, I know what to do with this. And I knew what to do with it and took a drink and went straight to it and started dancing. And all of a sudden the entire place just exploded and a whole bunch of people ran as and then a whole bunch of people started like talking to me afterwards and then some guy started trying to make a fight with me and I'm just like, what's going on? I don't want to steal your girlfriend. I just wanted to dance. Crazy from there. I didn't remember the rest of it. What was the, was it rum? Tequila? What was the motivation for jumping on that stripper pole? I mean, I was just, you know, a bunch of people staring at the pole and nobody making a move. And I walked in. I'm like, no. Clearly I need to jump on that. Someone's got to do it. If not me, then who? I like it. I like it. Well, I think that's a good way to tie this off with regards to Starlight Health too, which is someone's got to change the way that we provide health care to people and why not me? If not me, then who? Right. So, well, Jason, thanks for taking the time to be here today and we'll look forward to seeing Starlight Health grow and prosper and your clients and patients as well. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Locoh Experience Podcast. This is your host, Kurt Bear, and founder of The Locoh Think Tank. If you or someone you know would be a great guest for our show, or if you'd like to learn more about our small business owner, pure advisory chapters at Locoh Think Tank, please visit our website at locohthinktank.com or email us at connect at locohthinktank.com. That's L-O-C-O-thinktank.com. If you've been enjoying this series, don't forget to subscribe. We love great reviews on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. And don't forget, always keep it local.