The MeidasTouch Podcast - Meidas Health, Episode 12: Changemakers Take on Goliath (i.e., the American Health Insurance Industry)

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

Dr. Elisabeth Potter, a reconstructive plastic surgeon, and Dr. Warris Bokhari, CEO of GetClaimable.com, join host Dr. Vin Gupta to discuss how they are advocating for patients nationwide who have been victims of unjust health insurance denials. Drs. Potter and Bokhari examine the current landscape, share how they are working to scale their advocacy efforts, and explain why they view this moment as a critical inflection point in reducing the outsized power insurance companies have long held over patients. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We have been talking about this from the very beginning since we launched Midas Health as part of the Midas Touch Network back in April, that the very best healthcare leaders across the spectrum are not at the highest levels of government right now. And so what are we doing about it? We're bringing them directly to you through Midas Health. And episode 12 is very much in keeping with that trend. We've had former FDA commissioners, we've had incumbent secretaries of health for major states across the country.

We've had senior leaders at the WHO come here and they're coming here for a reason because they know that we have reach that we know they know that people listen to Midas Health. They know that people are listening to the Midas Touch Network, arguably the nation's leading podcast based on some metrics. So thank you for being here. Without further ado, I have two colleagues, physician colleagues who are making serious waves in really changing what's ailing the American healthcare system and that's our health insurance system. Dr. Elizabeth Potter and Dr. Wars Bokhari.

I'm going to bring them both on here. I'm so thrilled that Elizabeth and Wars that you're with Midas Health. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having us. It was great to be here. Thanks. So both of you are clinicians by training. Dr. Potter, you're a board certified plastic surgeon that does kind of a lot, you know, across the spectrum supporting patients with a variety of different needs. Warris, you have a very interesting background spanning

clinical technology, everything in between and you're both entrepreneurs as well. I don't know how you found the time, but I'm going to first kick it to you, Elizabeth. Just tell us a little bit about yourself. The stuff that maybe people just don't know. And you know, how did you land up doing what you're doing fighting the good fight? Sure. So I'm Elizabeth Potter.

I live in Austin, Texas and I'm a reconstructive plastic surgeon. So that means I did the traditional plastic surgery training and then additional training in microsurgery at MD Anderson to treat patients affected by breast cancer. So 90% of my work is treating those patients. And that's simply because there's not enough of me doing this work in the country. So I take care personally of about 40% of the women in central Texas, and also I take care of women from around the country who can't find access to breast reconstruction through insurance.

Typically, you know, women drive from Mississippi, Alabama across states because they can't find someone who's willing to take insurance reimbursement and perform breast reconstruction for them, which is provided for under the Women's Health and Cancer Rights Act. So, you know, reimbursement drives access. Saying something's covered doesn't mean that a patient has access to it.

And that's really where I started in advocacy. And then it sort of went to a different level earlier this year when I had a video go viral where I was called out of the operating room by a representative from UnitedHealthcare to discuss some mundane details about a woman who was having a mastectomy. She was actually out of the operating room by a representative from UnitedHealthcare to discuss some mundane details about a woman who was having a mastectomy. She was actually asleep on the table. And it was absurd. It was as absurd as it sounds.

And I just posted about that experience that day and then unfolded a series of events, which included United discrediting me in the press and saying that I had lied about that call, which I certainly did not lie about and there was plenty of evidence to show it. And then a series of other events. So I'm just, I'm in the thick of it because I care about patients. I listen to my patients, I know what they need and I'll take on anything that gets in the way. Kind of love that. And you know, for all our listeners out there, if you just Google Dr. Elizabeth Potter and that moment, you can Google any sort of prompt here, but viral

video, whatever it might be, I've seen it. I'm sure many of you have seen it. It is compelling. And it's the reason why, you know, Dr. Potter is doing the work that she's doing. She really believes in it. And I thought that video was really compelling. Thank you for doing that. I want to dive deeper on all these things, but Boris, I want to bring you in. Tell us about Claimable and how you got to found it Claimable and what does it do? Thanks, Vin. So maybe I just start with this kind of assumption or this kind of assertion of what brings Elizabeth and I kind of into the same realm, which is at some point in your life, you realize it's probably easier to change your mind than change the system. But if you can't change your mind

because you're not wrong, then you're left with the only thing to do is to actually try and change the system because what else are you going to do? And it would be easy for us to say like, ah, actually we're wrong. Maybe we should do things differently, but all of the evidence is actually not pointing in that direction, right? So for me, this was born of a long observation of US healthcare over the last, I guess, 15 years and seeing what was happening here with medical bankruptcy, restriction access, or access restriction, sorry, meaning that even if patients were covered, they will have to have inappropriately high cost shares or driven to bankruptcy. And you would have medications that you just literally couldn't afford if you had cancer.

With nearly 50% of cancer patients going bankrupt in two years, when you look at something like the rate of denials, you're looking at something like 850 million denials a year, of which less than 1 million of those denials are ever challenged. The reason is, is because there's this absurdly high barrier that is put in place between the patient and the insurance company. If you think about one of Elizabeth's patients, they're sick, they have cancer, they're dealing with a lot of uncertainty, and they're being forced to fight against these insurance bureaucrats. And their physicians

are on their side, but at some point there's a limit to what their physicians can do. So, we built a system that automated the appeals process and we started in immunological conditions such as rheumatology, Crohn's, UC. We added in migraine. We've just added in GLP-1s. We're adding in asthma in the next couple of weeks and really starting to bring better access to these therapies. And we're beating around 80% of these denials, which suggests to me that about 80% of these denials are inappropriate. And we've now started partnering with a litigator, which is interesting because we're finding systemic patterns and we're going to start bringing lawsuits against the carriers where patients have been badly impacted.

How do people find out and or intersect with claimable if they've been a victim or if they feel like they've been a victim of an unfair insurance, I wonder how they can work with your company? Honestly, like what we offer online, we've been very careful about QA, QC, like quality assurance and making sure everything we do is accurate. We cite accurate evidence. So we really cater to some fairly specific conditions at this point that is expanding quickly.

That being said, I've been involved in everything from transplant to oncology. Whenever someone is at risk of serious harm, we get involved. Sometimes it's like an email from Mark Cuban at five in the morning saying, hey, have you seen this? And then we jump into it and try and help a family. And often these cases are extreme. We had a case here in California, which was a double lung transplant that got denied. We've had two liver transplants that we got involved with, both which got overturned. We had a case recently with a young girl who got hit by a truck where signal were denying care. They were actually denying neuro rehab for this kid. And it goes on and on and on and on.

And where we can't help in an AI driven fashion, we just get involved as good faith. We are actually looking at a not-profit that we'll be talking more about in the coming weeks as well for families who are kind of at some multiple of the federal poverty level. You know, Elizabeth, just hearing Laura speak, I know that you are now also, you're building on a lot of the just the leadership and those

moments that you referenced earlier. Can you talk to our audience about what you're doing now at scale or trying to sort of build organically in the space? Sure. So gosh, I just have to say worse is doing amazing things. And you know, I had seen him from afar online and watched how he was making waves and making things happen for patients.

And yeah, I honestly think that that's the spirit of where we're all engaging, right? The system isn't working for patients. And if we ask for permission constantly to help patients from entities that really aren't interested in delivering care, then we get held up and we don't wind up delivering what patients need. So all I'm doing really simply is just getting patients what they need and exploring options that aren't the traditional networks.

Right. And I'd say that I'm, I'm shedding light on the problematic system. So I feel that I know that folks have wondered how bad it is in insurance and how bad it is in healthcare. And what I'm doing is sharing the actual experience of someone who has been a good actor in the system. Right? of someone who has been a good actor in the system, right? So I have tried to provide cancer care and reconstructive care in network,

in communities, through insurance. And I set out to do that, to prove that case, that it could be done. I did not intend to tell the story that it would be extremely difficult or that the system would work against that. I thought I would demonstrate to my colleagues that we could in fact work within the system and do good things for patients in the cancer world. And what I have found is exactly the opposite.

So for instance, I mean, I took out my own personal loans. I built a surgery center to deliver excellent care in network through insurance because I saw women driving to me from around the country trying to get this care and they couldn't get into the big centers if they didn't have great insurance. Right? So, you know, if you've got Medicare or Medicaid or tri care, or some, some insurance that, you know, isn't really robust, you're denied at a lot of the big cancer centers. So I said said I can do this. I have all the skills I've got my hands. I've got my skill set. I've got my team we can deliver this care

Let me build the center and do it and we'll be cheaper and better with outcomes that we can you know demonstrate And what I found is that the insurance companies don't want me to do that They don't want to contract with me just this morning. I operated on a patient already today who wanted to spare her sensation after mastectomy. And she said mastectomy removes the sensation to your breast. She's a really, you know, very smart woman. Researched all of her options, knew that there was an option out there, nerve grafting. And we discussed that and we tried to get her insurance company to cover that.

And they said no. They said no again on multiple appeals. grafting and we discussed that and we tried to get her insurance company to cover that and they said no. They said no again on multiple appeals. So she said, okay, well, what would it cost me if I wanted to pay for that myself? Because I really want to do this and it's my one chance if I don't do it today, I won't ever be able to do it. Okay. So we went to the hospital and said, okay, hospital, what will this cost for nerve grafting and some OR time? We're already gonna be there doing mastectomies and doing reconstruction just to add this on and they came back with $80,000 For this woman with breast cancer, then then they said we'll do you a solid we'll let you have it for 42 $1,000

So I said, okay. I own a surgery center. It's me and you, that's all, it's me and you, whether it's the hospital or the surgery center, what would it cost me to do it? So went to, went to my place and asked that question and it was less than $20,000. Less than $20,000. And she ended up actually paying out of pocket because she wanted to preserve her sensation. So I'm fighting every day to make a business case for better care outside of the current systems.

And what I'm finding is the work isn't just in making the case for it, because I've got lots of data to show. Many stories just like that one. It's in telling the public that the system doesn't want to save them money and provide better care. You know what's interesting about that Elizabeth and Morris, I want you to react to this. But one, what Elizabeth just said, so compelling, and I thought that was so well stated. But it feels like the conversation we've been having about insurance

amongst the public has not been that Elizabeth and the stories that you've been telling, making it real. It's been, when we talk about it, vis-a-vis health policy, it's who's not covered, why are we not covering them? Every two to four years, it's we're going to incrementally draw back Medicare or Medicaid or commercial insurance for a certain sub-segment of the population. And that's the conversation that gets had, these macro statistical based conversations, not really focused on storytelling.

And it also feels like it's the type of conversation that a lot of people hear and look at and say, well, that doesn't apply to me. And yet here you are telling the story that I think is broadly applicable to anybody, likely with good insurance, is that this can happen to you. And Morris, I'm wondering, to your point, I wanted to pose this to you. Do you feel that there's an every, every person, and I was going to say every man, but this is an every man, every woman, every child experience that this, the things that you and Elizabeth are fighting for on behalf of patients, this is an every person problem,

no? Yeah. I mean, I get the claim files back on cases, right? So I actually see what the insurers say behind patients' backs. So there is a woman in California who we fought to get a lung reception for stage four non-small cell lung cancer. The only available care that actually did that surgery was MD Anderson in Texas, who passionately believed that she was a great candidate.

She'd responded really well to chemotherapy, almost no detectable disease anywhere else. The insurer based in California denied the care and we got the claim file back and what they described her as was a cancer victim, number one, which I thought was horrifying. The second thing that they said is any surgeon, any thoracic surgeon can debulk a tumor. And then the third thing that they did is that they had a bariatric surgeon, which to your listeners is an obesity surgeon, actually review the case. So it was improper in three dimensions, right? My own case, which was in the New York Times last week for my inhalers, I'm asthmatic and

I fought Aetna to get coverage for my inhalers during the LA wildfires. They said that they granted me a courtesy exemption. And I found out about this in, I guess in the times, or maybe I just wasn't paying attention, but like breathing is not a courtesy, it's actually a necessity. So I found that to be like a staggering admission and also very completely ignored the law, which was actually under California and New York law, which was actually under California and New York law, like New York law where my plan was purchased, they had exactly three days to respond to what I put in as a formary exception, after which it would have been

considered self executing under law. So I am the little that patients understand about how their plans operate is staggering. and this happens all the time. You know, I invite our listeners, I know we get a lot of feedback on social, I get it often directly via email. You know, I'm getting to know Dr. Potter, I've known him worse for a little while now, but I do know that the two of them, this comes right out when you first interact with them, that they are willing to help anybody. And so if you or a loved one or somebody that in your neighborhood is experiencing one of these insurance denials, let me know. I'll share it with Elizabeth and Morris and we'll see what we can do.

But let tell us these stories because again, you know, Elizabeth, this is an every person problem know that you could have Cadillac gold plated insurance and yet this could still happen to you. It is an every person problem. And I think even just the fact that I'm sitting here with you says something. I am a full-time reconstructive surgeon. I operated this morning. I'm going to go to clinic later today. I did not plan to do this.

You guys are amazing and I love talking with you, but I'm this morning. I'm gonna go to clinic later today. I did not plan to do this You guys are amazing and I love talking with you, but I'm a doctor Doctors are having to engage with with media To tell the public that there's a big problem brewing. I mean The it's just it's appalling to me that medicine has gotten to this point. The number of times that patients reach out to me and tell me that they've had difficulty just getting basic care, basic cancer care.

The number of times where I've had to fight for a patient to get routine cancer care, for patients to get mammograms, to schedule cancer surgery. When I have to justify my plan to a pediatrician on a phone call with an insurance company, it's completely upside down and we're not going to be able to fix it from the inside out. from the inside out, right? It's clear that insurance companies aren't self-regulating to a better course, right? So, yeah, it's...

I don't mean to be dramatic, but I am sounding the alarm. I'm sounding the alarm. I'm saying, I have doctors reach out to me regularly who say, okay, Elizabeth, you're in private practice. So I'm my own practice. I'm my own boss. And that's why I can sit here today and talk with you. 70% of physicians are employed. And many physicians who are employed are not free to post on social media or take interviews

or say anything that could be deemed as critical of their institutions, including their hospitals or their group or the insurance. Right. So I'm speaking for, for a lot of people saying this doesn't feel right to doctors in America. And you know, even if that's, even if that's the only thing that the doctors are able to say, like, hey, help me, I'm trying my best, and the system is at odds with providing great care. It's that intersection of, you know, doctors who want to take great care of their patients and the industry, which has a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to maximize profits. And we have met in the middle and things are just dissolving.

What is- Look, please, Morris, please. Things haven't improved, right? So the three of us have a background in science. So if you were to take a scientific approach to this, we've run the experiment for like a long time. Nothing is getting better. So as Elizabeth's saying, the system will not self-correct. We have to change it.

And it is really up to like our generation to change it. One for ourselves when we actually become like fully reliant on the system to look after us, but also for the generations behind us as well who are going to need it. So that to me is incumbent upon us and brings urgency to my work and our work every day to show up for patients. So that's really interesting to me. And the second thing is that every single defense of insurance is in defense of a payment model. The payment model doesn't serve patients. It doesn't serve providers.

And right now it's not even serving the shareholders. You look at what's happening on Wall Street and you're getting CEOs from these insurance companies being turfed out. Like Karen Lynch from CVS, she got removed and replaced. Andrew Weddy sat down. This isn't an accident. This isn't coincidence. It's because these companies are not doing well what they're meant to do. Something has to change.

What do you think, what has to change? And I say that because, you know, all of us, Elizabeth, your point on independence and being able to speak freely, I couldn't agree more that I wish more of our colleagues had freedom to do that. And you're right, a lot of them don't. And a lot of them would probably want to be in a forum like this talking about these issues. They just can't. And, and the end as a version of sort of corporate suppression of freedom of speech, and it happens all the time. I, but I do, I posing the question of freedom of speech and it happens all the time. But I do, posing the question of both of you and Elizabeth, perhaps you can begin, what needs to change?

And I'd love for you to be specific in this world in which we just saw the one big beautiful bill, quote unquote, come out and do all the things that, we've seen now every four to eight years, incrementally clawback things and coverage and access to make things worse. Frankly, I feel like that's dumbed down these nuanced conversations and giving cover to what commercial insurers are doing to every person across the country, which is the things that you guys are fighting against.

These policy debates distract us. And at least that's my opinion. And so, you know, what are the things that you think we should be doing now? Having you've been at this now for a while, wondering what way, have you noticed certain trends or things that we're not talking about in our public discourse?

I love that question. And I'm all about some practical advice. What can Americans do right now? What can Americans do right now? What can businesses do right now? And the number one thing is, okay, open enrollment period's coming up. Okay, so let's challenge the insurance companies out there to demonstrate who the good actors and the bad actors are. I would say if you've been hearing a lot about an insurance company as a bad actor,

If you've been hearing a lot about an insurance company as a bad actor, then for large employers, reconsider who you are contracting with. That level of pressure will act more quickly than government ever could. The market can change this more than government can. If large employers around the country say, I will not contract for my employees with a company who is consistently seen as a negative actor in the healthcare community in America. That will move the needle. That will drive change. So open enrollment is coming. I would say do that. And I would say if you're a company out there that feels like I don't want to be thrown in the mix with bad actors, okay, come to the public. Come on this show. Send your CEO talk about what you're going to do different

for the American people quickly. That means they should buy your product and be in your network. Because we can drive network change. We can. I also think, let's start talking about the direct care model. I mean, fee-for-service worked for a long time

and there were problems with it, but we can get back to something like that, again, through employers. Not through, you know, patients having to pay out of pocket for cancer care, but through networks of doctors contracting directly with employers, bypassing insurance completely and saying like, I can, I can price out breaststroke instruction for Walmart. If they would like for me to perform all of their breast reconstruction, I'm happy to do that. And I will save them, I bet over 50%. So Elizabeth, I'm going to interrupt you there. When you say direct care, can you speak a little bit more about what does that mean? For our listeners out there, physician practices,

however big or however small, directly contracting for payment with employer entities as you just mentioned. Sure. So you might've heard of concierge care and you know, concierge care when someone decides they want to pay a certain doctor, you know, to provide care for them and they don't want to go through the insurance network, then we all kind of know what that is, right? So I live, I live in a world where that doesn't really work because people are, you know, inundated with this devastating financial situation when they have a cancer diagnosis. Okay. So all of a sudden coming up with the cash to pay for cancer care doesn't sit well with me

as someone who takes care of patients with cancer. So I walk that back and I say, what do we really need? You have a patient who needs a doctor and a facility and treatments. You don't actually need an insurance company. So what direct care is, is a way of putting those things together outside of the insurance company. It takes some forethought and it takes some willingness to change.

It takes, it might seem like it's gonna take risk for a company, but honestly, companies like, I know Mark Cuban's company is doing this. The companies around the country who are exploring direct care, because it makes more sense for their patients, it saves them money. And I think that it's better for the health of the physician system. So if we can empower physicians to know their value, and I think a lot of physicians don't, to know what they're bringing to a patient and put a value on that and then take that value to the employer and say, you know, I see, for

instance, my EOBs, my explanation benefits for breast trick instruction when my patients have microsurgery. And some of them say, you know, that the care that we delivered cost $250,000 for a three-day stay in the hospital. And I am positive that that is not anywhere near the cost. And that's why I built the surgery center to show it. So direct care is saying, okay, let's get real specific, like Americans are when they have to write their budget. Let's actually talk about how much does anesthesia cost

and a surgeon and a bed for 12 hours and the medications. And let's add it all up. And then let's come up with some markup that provides me the ability to make some money and keep my doors open. And let's tell Walmart just to contract directly with me instead of going through United or some other company that's taking a piece of the pie like an ATM. Like it's just like an ATM. There's literally no value add coming from these insurers. If

anything, there's active value destruction. And also because of a way self-funded plans of work, which means a large employer, typically a thousand employees or more, the employer is actually on the hook for the liability if the insurer does something wrong. Under ERISA, the Employment, Retirement, and Investment Savings Act, the employer becomes liable. I would contend that none of these employers actually know what these insurers are doing to operate their plans because every time we've involved an employer in one of these complete nightmare cases that gets sent to me, the employer says, yeah, sure. I want to help. How can I help? And they overrule the insurer. I've seen it time and again. So I think there's something there for sure on direct care. I think

direct primary care can really work. For sure. I tried imposing, I tried exploring that when I worked in insurance and the idea of there not being any claims coming from primary care and managing risk in the community and keeping things out of the hospital, I think it blew the tops of their heads off.

I don't think they could actually understand it that there was another way of doing this. Now, if you could actually say, look, we know what's needed in a community per capita. We know that, say for example, Boeing is in this community and there's a lot of people doing airplane manufacturing, they're going to need orthopedics, physical therapy, or if you happen to work in Silicon Valley and then it's mental health, primary care, pediatricians, et cetera. to work in Silicon Valley and then it's, you know, mental health, primary care, you know, pediatricians, etc. You can actually coordinate what kind of care exists in a DPC model, direct primary care. And that would be very, very effective. We need something like that. I actually

don't believe insurers have any purpose and the pharmaceutical benefit managers for sure have no purpose. Morris, you know, it's strictly that every entity in healthcare, but just across the spectrum, that's making money that's as profitable as an insurance company is, across the spectrum, that they are most interested in self-preservation. They don't want anything to change. They don't want a bad press cycle. All these things. None of these things are good to self preservation. Why is it, you know, I've seen already, you know, the video of Dr. Potter that went viral that I thought, you know, spoke for itself.

All the great work you're doing, it's claimable. Why are they creating an opening for the two of you to be successful? Why not just acquiesce? And so I guess said another way, are you noticing that when you put the two of you collectively, but worse up to first you, that when you were pushing back as claimable, most often successful? I mean, how often are you successful? How often are you not successful when you're pushing back on behalf of your clients? It depends on the therapeutic area, but like around,

let's say 70 to 80%, I would say that we win cases, which suggests that 70 to 80% of denials are total nonsense. That's remarkable. GLP-1s, we've seen a lower success rate right now, but we think that the denials are completely improper. So it's gonna be interesting when those go to independent review, we're sending all of those denials are completely improper. So it's going to be interesting when those go to independent review. We're sending all of those denials to independent review on behalf of patients.

Take us back, take a go back to curtain dead. So somebody comes to you or you hear about something that shouldn't happen. And then how does the process work? Just curious. So if you go to getclamable.com, which is our website, it basically laid out in easy steps. You upload a copy of your denial letter, a copy of your insurance card,

you select what you've been denied for. So rheumatology, Crohn's, UC, will be asthma, migraine, host of other things. It's all therapeutics right now. And then you answer simple questions. How does this disease impact you? What are the symptoms like? So for example, when I get migraines, sometimes I have to pull over on the side of the road because the headlights basically give me, I just can't focus.

Does it impact your ability to work? Does it impact time with your family? We find that, for example, in rheumatology and conditions where there's a burden of chronic pain, people get isolated. They get isolated from their families. They get isolated from their friends. They don't see their kids. They disengage from their community. There's real harm. And then we also document what treatments they've tried and failed because oftentimes the insurer will push someone onto therapy if it doesn't work. And that decision is based on preference for their form, not based on anything that's actually good for the patient. So we've seen cases where, you know, the insurer has completely invented criteria, which are actually not in their printed criteria.

So they'd said, you need to try three medications in failure. Patient tries three, but they say, just kidding, it's five. Patient does five. And they say, just kidding, it's seven. Then we appeal it and we beat it in a day. We, you know, then I've got the other channel, which is basically my side job, which is like another 80 hours a week, let's say, which is helping families. And that arrives anytime. So like 4am, someone calls me and says, hey, you know, my dad, husband, wife, daughter, whatever, is seriously sick and needs help. Will you help? The answer is pretty much always yes. And then we just get to work as a team and we fight. And now we brought on an attorney who helps us basically find all of the ways that

the insurer is violating the patient's rights and the law. And we're prepared to actually start filing suits against the insurers on the basis of this. That is remarkable. Wow. That is, I mean, 70 to 80% success rate and you know, Elizabeth, I'm just like putting it all together. Um, and thinking about the future, I wondering what the next six months

I have in store for you, what are you hoping to achieve sort of as we approach 2026 as these health policy debates seem to kick into gear? But again, on a different, again, what we talk about at the federal level feels like a distraction from these really intimate, compelling stories. I'm wondering what the next six months have in store for you. I see a different level of understanding among the public, like a heightened level of understanding of the realities of insurance and healthcare. I see the next six months as a time when we can really increase like the depth of understanding

and the mindfulness across just grassroots America about the realities of healthcare. And that's really the work that I feel like I'm centered in right now. It's telling stories, telling the truth from, you know, across the country, from a million different voices, from, you know, across the country, from a million different voices, um, so that people start to develop their own opinions

about the system that we're living in, right? I think that... that pressure... in terms of public opinion... applied to companies... is going to be far more powerful than anything that's happening in Washington, DC right now. And it'll be faster. Yeah.

I just think, I think public opinion is, I feel the temperature rising. Yeah. And I want to channel that energy towards, um, towards those, those individuals and those companies that can actually drive change by forcing insurance companies to do better. And again, that's, if we have enough individuals talking about it, then the companies that they work for, small or large, if they start listening to, and we have a deeper understanding that companies can drive this change, individuals can drive this change just by running the bad act out of town or supporting a different player. So again, open enrollment's coming. Choose a good actor, choose the best actor you can find.

And if there's, you know, maybe ask your employer for a direct care option, not just, not that they do it, but just have an option for direct care and let's see what happens. Elizabeth, let me ask you, can I ask a question to Elizabeth? Oh my God, please. What do you think would happen if we started publishing denial rates per plan by ZIP code?

Oh yeah. I mean, it's every time the denial rates come out where KFF publishes a study and says, the ACA plans and Blue Cross has this 40% denial rate in Alabama for whatever. It's appalling. And those are the specifics that America doesn't know. So I say, let's do it. Let's publish those and then let the chips fall where they may.

You're all. You know, Wars, and I know we're coming up on our last few minutes together, but it strikes me that so many of the things that I think Americans are interested in, curious about, let's say their favorite wearable to help them stay active or to gamify the idea of fitness. There are supplements that people

believe in whether or not there is scholarship behind it or not. There's so much out there in this new fad of wellness prevention longevity. I think accelerated by some of the Maha doctrine, but I think a lot of it has been far has been in there for, you know, far longer for decades now. You and I had a chance to work on a wearable together briefly. And I'm always amazed that in most cases, none of this stuff is covered by insurance companies. These are things that people want.

Generally speaking, these are things that people say might or studies have shown will help people say more engaged in their healthcare. And yet a company, an insurance company says, you know what, well, I'm largely not gonna wanna have that against my profit and loss margin. Why would I cover something like that? Like a device or a wearable that might help somebody gamify fitness or might detect sleep apnea. I know I need years

and years of clinical trials data to justify the expense. And it just feels like the way they think about this incredible world of precision medicine, new digital tools available to us, you know, at our fingertips. I know it's a different side of the coin than what you and Elizabeth are focused on, which is claims for, you know, critical care, but this prevention area as well seems, it seems real. And I'm wondering how you think about that. I thought about this basically for the last 10 years, as you well know, just this week, maybe it was last week now, there was a study published in JAMA Open, I'm an author on that showed the value of the Apple

Watch specifically in reducing asthma symptomatology. So that was a lot of work. That was a randomized control trial. It was 900 patients. It was a joint effort between numerous companies. And it's probably some of the best evidence to show that you could do this, and particularly in low income, which is great. And that's where my heart has been, partly because I grew up in a low income family in England. Secondly, because I am asthmatic, so it matters to me. This is never far from me. So how do I keep people who grew up like I grew up out of the emergency room? And you can do it. You can get ahead of these things. It took a lot to get that program instantiated and actually funded at an insurance company,

but I got it done. The question is what happens now? And I just hope that someone picks up that research and really deploys it. I know Care Revolution have built a tool that's kind of similar. There's a great piece in stat on this. It is possible. I will say that. It is possible for someone to care enough to do it. And we have shown it. The problem for me is that so many people say to me, and we've had this certainly this conversation with investors is like, I'm going to wait for a world without denial. So I'm going to wait for perfect. Perfect isn't going to happen. And meanwhile, there's all sorts of people suffering the ill effects of healthcare system today. They have no opportunity to get healthy enough to prevent an emergency admission, prevent unexpected costs, to prevent needing being on a biologic

for rheumatoid arthritis. That may not be something they could have prevented, but it is something they need access to. So I think it's possible to have both kind of a dual focus on prevention, but also making sure that care is truly accessible and affordable. So that's, you know, I've worked in both fields right now. This is where I am, which is like stopping, stopping this insane system from metastasizing forever into American society. Elizabeth, I'm going to give you the last word here. I know we had a wrap up, but what gives you hope Elizabeth? Oh gosh. I mean, I'm just, I think just the truth does, right? I mean, when you see a problem that's really,

seems like a bad problem, I just know that there's a huge opportunity there. And there's an opportunity for personal growth, but there's also an opportunity for, you know, for business, right? Isn't that when people really succeed, when they see a problem and they fix it? I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful

because we're all talking about this and we're people with different skill sets are coming to the table and saying how can I make America healthier? How can I do that? And I think it's actually good business. I do and I'm excited to see how the American market pushes us towards healthier. So, yeah, I think we've all got the, we have permission to speak out now. We have permission to have this conversation. Let's see what happens. And with that, thank you. I love that. I love that ending both from both of you, both your last comments there, Dr. Warris Bokhari, Dr. Elizabeth Potter. Thank you for joining Midas Health. We really appreciate it.

Thank you, Vin. Thank you, Elizabeth. Thanks. Can't get enough Midas? Check out the Midas Plus sub stack for ad free articles, reports, podcasts, daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski and more. Sign up for free now at MidasPlus.com.