OA516: We Turned Down Ads for a Scam Company Called CrowdHealth. Other Shows May Not. Send Them This!

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:01:17 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 516. I'm Thomas, and I'm a little congested, but our entire state is on fire, as usual.

0:01:28 Thomas: Also with me is Andrew Torrez. How you doing?

0:01:30 Andrew: I'm not on fire, Thomas. How are you?

0:01:33 Thomas: Wait, how does that work? So you just have oxygen available. Nobody Move to California! It's death here. Nobody better move. All right, I'm excited for our show today, so excited, but you know what I'm even more excited about? Andrew, Puzzle in the Thunderstorm takes the bar exam, extra special bonus for patrons only, it's on patreon.com slash law. If you, uh, if you've ever heard any of those podcasts, you know, I'll reverse order, Dnd Minus the Skeptocrat, uh, God Awful Movies, Scathing Atheist, the dudes from, from there, uh, plus Anna Bosnick, took challenged us, challenged me, I guess, I don't think it'd be pretty silly to challenge you, but challenged me to a bar off and we did it. And no spoilers, you'll have to find out how they did, yeah.

0:01:37 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. That's this weird thing where, uh.

0:01:49 Andrew: What? Oh, yeah.

0:02:21 Andrew: Yeah, the only spoiler I will give is not a spoiler at all, and that is that it's really, really funny, but Eli's

0:02:28 Thomas: Eli's Eli's bit is, uh, one of the funniest things I've ever heard, I'm still laughing at you. It definitely want to go hear that. In other news, hold on, we're switcheroo? Rapid response on Tuesday?

0:02:31 Andrew: Eli's bit is amazing, but you know yeah We

0:02:41 Thomas: What gives?

0:02:41 Andrew: As you know, I mean, we work, we've worked with several ad brokers. I represent a bunch of other podcasters, including the aforementioned Puzzle and a Thunderstorm guys. And beginning on Monday, my email was flooded with requests to run ads for a particular company. Company. And the minute I started digging beneath the surface, I, I knew that I wanted us to come out early, uh, and warn folks, because I will tell you, you are about to hear ads for this company, you're about to listen to and see sponsored content on the blogs that you read, uh, and I, I want to say this up front, as a member of Opening Arguments Media LLC, a Maryland limited liability company, company is, to the best of my ability, to ascertain a is a scam, in the way that episode 497, I called Christian Health HealthShare Ministries a scam, right?

The Oxford English definition of scam, a dishonest or illegal plan or activity, especially one for making money. Now, nothing they are doing as far as I can tell is illegal. Everything they are doing as far as I can tell is dishonest. And I want to be very, very clear about that. I want folks to know, and I want folks to be able to share this show out, uh, to their friends who may be listening, who may come across this on, uh, other podcasts and in other media.

0:04:16 Thomas: Yeah, we don't know yet as of recording because it's all preliminary, but based on the email push we saw, this ad could be showing up a lot of places, a lot on your favorite podcasts, or who knows? Maybe not. Maybe they all vet their ads as well as our esteemed Andrew Torrez. Who knows? But I wouldn't be surprised if you hear this ad coming up, and it will, uh, according to Andrew, be an ad for basically a complete scam, so we want you guys to be on the lookout for sure, and to, uh, use this episode to send to it to the people who are advertising with this scam, you know, to make sure they maybe pull their ads or whatever.

0:04:29 Andrew: Yep. Yep.

0:04:53 Andrew: We, we have informed several ad brokers not to solicit ads for these folks, but again, I, right, that's not the ad broker's job to to check to on that, right? The ad broker's job is to, to take people who want to place ads, uh, and place ads with people who want to, to get paid to air ads. Um, you know, we take a different approach on the show. So why, I don't I jump right in and tell the story.

0:05:02 Thomas: Yeah. All Right, let's do it. Can't. So what is CrowdHealth?

0:05:18 Andrew: In my inbox on Monday, I had two identical emails, both for this show, uh and for another show that I represent. Percent. And that email was from two different ad brokers saying essentially the same thing. Hey, we have a new potential advertiser, CrowdHealth, then described as a group of health focused people tired of paying for expensive health insurance. We want peace of mind that the care we need is covered and the freedom to live life without the fine print.

0:05:52 Thomas: God. That really already sounds like the, uh, health share Ministries all over again, right, Monk?

0:05:56 Andrew: It Sure did. And, right, then it said the way in which we typically get and run ads is you'll get a description of, hey, you, we have a potential advertiser for you, Moinkbox, right, and then it will say, if interested, and then, and then, right, what will happen is if, if we check it out and say, all right, well, that seems like a perfectly fine service, right? It's not woo, it's, you know, unscientific.

0:06:10 Thomas: Box, no

0:06:23 Andrew: It doesn't scam people oh, my god

0:06:22 Thomas: It's just delicious bacon even this vegetarian wishes he could be eating are

0:06:28 Andrew: And then, what they will do, and I think we make this really clear, is, like, like, Moinkbox will send us the bacon, right, and they make us do an onboarding call and say, like, yes, I got the bacon, I've cooked it, I'm going to make it, I've eaten it.

0:06:39 Thomas: You holding it right now? Are you smelling it? Right no? Not really

0:06:42 Andrew: And and and they send us copy, but that copy will have a personal endorsement. Right? And we edit those personal endorsements all the time. I give you a good example because I don't know if MoinkBox is listening to this show. Know, but I don't care if they do. The Minkbox copy says, you. Talk about what you like about.

0:07:02 Andrew: Yeah. Talk About What You Like About the Food. And it also says, that it is responsibly sourced, which we verified it is. And so we say that. And then it says, it's GMO free. Well, I don't want to read that it's GMO free. Because of the moral panic around it. Right.

0:07:01 Thomas: Oink oink yeah

0:07:18 Andrew: And I'm not going to feed into that. And so we scratched that line out of the copy and we said, you know, we're not going we're going to we're happy to read the copy, but we're not going include this additional statement that's potentially misleading.

0:07:16 Thomas: Because Yeah, that's a, that'S a great example because we scratched that out of a lot of copy, you know, it'll be like paint your life, GMO free. Like I'm not reading, you Know, no, I shouldn't besmirch the good name of paint your life, but like just everything likes to say, and you know I don't blame any of these companies they, they need to like they're marketing people to come up with the buzzwords they got to put on the thingies. You know, they see that that's the selling point for people and they do it. I don'T, you KNOW, but for us, we don't want to read that because it's silly.

0:07:32 Andrew: Yeah, we do. Do. Yeah.

0:07:55 Andrew: And And as you point out, I, right, feel like we hold ourselves to a significantly higher standard than, say, the Rachel Maddow Show, right? I love Rachel Madow, uh, but they advertise like, you know, cash for gold, and you, Frank Thomas's magic copper infused socks, and, and, you know, a whole bunch of stuff that we would just instantly, like we would be like, no.

0:08:17 Thomas: You know, at first, the way you said that, I thought you were making a joke, but then I replayed it in my mind. I realized that's the exact product. Like you didn't even, that was just a straight up Frank Thomas's copper infused socks. Oh boy.

0:08:26 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. So this copy comes in and says, all right, answer the following questions. Number one, is the host interested in signing up for the product? Two, will the host give a personal endorsement? Three, if the hosts won't do personal endorsement, would they be willing to do a third person ad read encouraging use of the product? And four, is the host between 25 and 50 years of age?

0:08:54 Thomas: And five, if the host finds out we're a scam, will they do an entire episode saying we're scammed? That was a deal breaker. We checked box five.

0:08:59 Andrew: Yeah, not not. Yeah, no. Fortunately, not. Not in the request. OK, so I figured, all right, this doesn't look great from the one line description, but maybe it is, an you online health insurance brokerage and they're going to follow like the insurance model. You know, whatever. I went to go Google it. So I type in first I type in CrowdHealth.com. CrowdHeath.com is not owned by CrowdHealth. It is a parked domain owned by MoneyWealth. Com, which itself is a parked domain. No idea. It's not it's not an active domain.

0:09:37 Thomas: Money wealth, wealth. Yeah. Oh.

0:09:42 Andrew: CrowdHealth.org is an entirely different company. They are an established company that sells and supplies PPE, KN95 masks for COVID, a trusted business. And CrowdHeath is an EU initiative that sets certain research parameters and appears in the academic literature.

0:09:52 Thomas: There you go. Yeah.

0:10:05 Thomas: Interesting.

0:10:05 Andrew: So, no. Yeah, right.

0:10:06 Thomas: So? They've chosen a name that perhaps is borrowing from the trust and the trademark of other things a little bit. You

0:10:09 Andrew: I cannot speculate as to why they chose the name. I can say the effect of the name that they've chosen makes it almost impossible to find anything about their business amidst a whole bunch of other businesses. And I will say, as an entrepreneur, as you and I deliberately choosing the phrase "opening arguments," knowing that in a real trial they are called opening statements, leverage that difference to be able to say, yeah.

0:10:43 Thomas: Know, the opening arguments is a common phrase for, you know, could be debate, could be, what? Yeah, come on, all right, sorry, I won't open up that wound again.

0:10:44 Andrew: Yeah. Ordinarily you would want some distinctiveness with your product in the marketplace, not to obscure your product into the marketplace. But it's possible there are benign reasons for choosing the name that will result in it being very difficult to find where this this product is. So their Web site is join crowd health dot com. You can go there and click on it. You will find a placeholder page. There are two links. One link is for more info, which enables you to sign up on their mailing list. Don't do that. And one is for come work with us because they want to hire a manager of verification and bill processing. This is the the business. Right. They sent us a two pager, which we have uploaded to the opening arguments website. And I will link in the show notes. But I'm going to read the entirety of that two-pager now because, spoiler alert, the business model here is this is somebody who is an evangelical Christian and also a venture capital guy, right,

0:11:29 Thomas: Manager of scamming, there's that bunch of jobless. Oh, yeah.

0:12:01 Andrew: Who has was noticed, oh, hey, we have these Christian health share ministries, and that seems to be a pretty good scam. But, you know, if you're not a Christian, you can't join them. So what if there was a worse version of Christian health care ministries? That, this person, Andrew Schoonover, by the way, we're going to expose him in a few minutes, has created CrowdHealth. So I'm going to read the entirety of this two page handout. And if you're like, man, two pages seems like a lot for you to read. Don't worry. Most of it is stupid graphics. So I will not be reading a lot of stuff. It begins with technology focused, community powered alternative to health insurance, an innovative solution for managing large and unexpected health care costs. By the way, that part already false, contradicting right? Their own advertisement three inches down this page. Right.

But we'll get to there in a minute. Then they repeat the line from the email that was sent to us. We are a group of health-focused people tired of paying for expensive health insurance. We want peace of mind that the care we need is covered and the freedom to live life without the fine print.

0:12:09 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:13:09 Andrew: And then there's a little graph that says, compare health insurance versus crowd health. And in the middle is something that looks like a Pokemon Pokeball, right? And basically what it's meant to show is that there's no reason for the line to be drawn the way it is. It's just a terrible infographic. The argument is 50 percent of the U.S. population accounts for 3 percent of the total health care spent, which is a big fat duh, right? Like the largest catastrophic health care spends come at the beginning and end of life, right. That's where all the costs go. So the idea here is, oh, hey, you know, you're in your 30s. You're very unlikely to be, you to require catastrophic health care costs.

0:13:56 Andrew: So why should you be stuck in a risk pool with somebody else that is? Right. Classic way in which, you Christian health health share scams are trying to define down the risk pool. But again, notice that that completely contradicts large and unexpected health care costs. Right. Like we we don't want you to have large and expected health care cost. We want you To be between 25 and 50 and at no risk for for any kind of large health care class. Now, then we have seven bullets compare to compare. Pair. So health insurance, you pay $500 to $2,000 a month. CrowdHealth, you pay $175 to $700 a month." Now, let me say this. When we saw the Christian HealthShare ministries, none of them had a monthly quote donation that was as low as $175.

0:14:12 Thomas: Yikes. Yeah.

0:14:51 Thomas: I

0:14:52 Andrew: There was no way to make the math work on that. Next bullet point, deductibles, $8,000 plus on the health insurance line, by the way, that is true. And that's true for a lot of, kind of high end plans. But it actually is a way like having a large bubble deductible is a good way of equalizing the risk to everybody in the pool. Again, right, I don't want to get into a huge defense of insurance agencies, but any event, deductibles, eight thousand dollars plus. But usually that is the sum across the entire year of expenses, right? So in other words, you know, you're paying the first eight thousand dollars of health care expenses and you're not paying everything above above that.

0:15:41 Andrew: You know, so long as you're in network. The crowd health line, $500 deductible per event. So now again, right, like think about all of this, right? The idea here is you get a bill and you submit it to this group, right, now to crowd health or to your Christian health care ministry to share it out, the Christian HealthShare Ministries model is, you know, then if they approve of it, they'll raise the funds and send it to you. This model is no, one of the first 500 bucks is on you and then and then we'll send it To you. So now you're talking about multiple recurring low end health insurance visits and you're still responsible for the first five hundred bucks, which is almost all of it for non-catastrophic care.

0:16:17 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:31 Thomas: I'm gonna say for For typical day-to-day, average health, non-emergency stuff. That means you're just paying out of pocket for every appointment, every, you know, uh, what about like pharmacy?

0:16:32 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, per event, right? Yeah, not a deductible that is added together over the course of the year per event.

0:16:42 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. So like medication, how does that work?

0:16:52 Andrew: So keep in mind, we have to speculate because there's no information on any of this. But Well, keep in mine that you are about to hear ringing endorsements on your favorite podcast From people who cannot possibly have had any of their bills paid with this, right?

0:16:56 Thomas: Right. Yeah. It's part of the scam. Oh God. Let's, you don't have to worry about it. Let's be more optimistic about humans and hope that this isn't true. Maybe everybody will suss it out like Andrew Torrez.

0:17:11 Andrew: Because it doesn't exist yet. I sure hope so. And I put this out here to help folks who are considering it look like we get it, a living podcasting and making a living as a content creator is not easy and you have to beg people for money. And when ads come by, you're like, oh, great. Somebody wants to advertise on our show. It's a really, really tough choice to make and it's really hard. But but I want you to be able to if you're a podcaster, I want você poder ir para os ouvintes e nós temos muitos podcastores que who listen to us. I want you to be able to go to your listeners and say, hey, we took that hit. You know, we could have taken the money and we didn't because we trust you and because we don't want to be pushing a scam. Yeah, we do not know what the contracts are, which which helps put this bullet in context.

0:18:03 Andrew: Under health insurance, it says limits and maximums. Mean, in a finite universe. Under CrowdHealth, it says no limits and maximums. That cannot be true. Here's how we know that that cannot be true. CrowdHeath, and I'm going to get to the proof of this in a minute, is funded with $6 million in venture capital. Now, I would like to have $6 million in funding, um, is with zero patients. There is no, so by definition, maximum right now would be a six million dollar procedure, right? I, they don't have any money beyond that and and by The way that

0:18:40 Thomas: Well, less their advertising that they're, uh, you know, they're paying for the advertising on podcasts.

0:18:44 Andrew: They are flooding with, yeah, there is not a chance, right? I don't know what their reserves are because, again, this isn't an insurance business so they don't have to disclose. I do know, no, every dime they've ever made amounts to $6,025,800. Okay. And I can prove that to you in a second. That is not enough to say, No maximums. Maximum $625,000. Practical maximum, I am sure much below that. And here's how I can be sure of that because directly under those bullets are, on the insurance side, it says, why so expensive? And on the crowd health side, it says here's how we do it. So on the why so expensive side, charged highest price by providers, paperwork and overhead, cover all pre-existing conditions, which again, that's why it's insurance. They are required by law, thanks to Obamacare, to cover pre-existing conditions.

0:19:02 Thomas: Mm-hmm.

0:19:47 Andrew: And then higher costs lead to higher prices. Not sure that's great economics, but whatever. You notice the key thing in there. How we do it, negotiate all major bills. That's the same garbage thing that the Christian health share ministry scams do. Low overhead, no paperwork. Don't know how that's the case because...

0:19:59 Thomas: Yep. We haven't even bothered to register our domains and stuff. That's how low our overhead is.

0:20:12 Andrew: No. That's true, uh, but, but seriously, you were generating more paperwork than a standard insurance company because you're trying to convince a provider to lower their costs to you, and you were standing in the shoes of someone else. So, I, that, will not be the the case. Then some expensive conditions excluded. Yeah, a bet, right? So I don't know how we get to no limits and maximums and some expensive condition excluded.

0:20:40 Andrew: It kind Of does, doesn't it? And then lower costs lead to lower prices. No, price is all the market will bear. I'm not going to give this guy an econ lesson. He's a hedge fund manager. I'll get to to that in a minute, um, and again, I, I just want to point out, it's right here in their own print. Their little Pokemon graph has 50 spends an average of $310 per year or less on visits, Rx, etc. That is the case, they are telling you they will do nothing. All

0:20:39 Thomas: That sounds like a limit or a maximum.

0:21:13 Thomas: Yeah.

0:21:15 Andrew: Then we have, by negotiating appreciating with providers and paying at the time of service, CrowdHealth is able to provide its customers with significantly lower costs. Here, they can't compare to actual CrowdHealt costs because CrowdHeath has never done this before. So what they do is they have a list of procedure, facility slash city. Then it is self-pay rate versus insurance rate. And then they've taken the insurance rate and they've cited it to a particular insurance company. Now, and so, for example, it says MRI of the foot, $379 self-pay rate, $445 insurance rate. Again, keep in mind, under CrowdHealth, either way, that's a zero to you, right? Like, you've got to pay the whole thing. They're not paying for any of it.

0:22:00 Andrew: Now, they do say, right, MRI of The Knee, self- pay rate $600, insurance rate $1,100. Hundred dollars. So presumably if they actually paid out, you would pay the first 500. They would pay the last hundred dollars and you would be better off. I mean, again, I don't know why they're comparing it to the price that the insurer reimburses the doctor for. That's not the price you pay on insurance.

0:22:27 Thomas: Yeah.

0:22:28 Andrew: And yes, like we know that there's tremendous, tremendous, uh, amounts of, you know, potential for fraud, uh, and even not fraud, but perverse incentives when you have to get an insurer to pay for a thing, um, but, column is not representative of what you pay under insurance. It could be, and in many cases is, zero for the whole line, right? So, uh, I don't know, but, but comparing six hundred dollars to zero makes, makes them look worse, not better. So, um, that's page one. Page two is "Who makes up our crowd." Uh, we are a motivated community of doers, creators, and lovers of life who take an active role in staying healthy and caring for those around us. And then they've got some stock photos, and under stock photo number one, which is a lovely African-American couple, it says "Lives a busy life and will take advantage of virtual care assistance."

0:23:16 Andrew: Uh, under, uh, stock Shock photo number two, which is a young man checking his knockoff Apple Watch. It says likely exercising with connected wearables and tracking progress. Number three is mommy and daughter. Very, very cute picture. Mommy and daughter engaging in healthy outlets like Pilates or hitting the gym. And then finally, we've got a diverse cast of friends giggling together that says likes to stay healthy and really doesn't like traditional health insurance. That's just marketing. I mean. Right. There's nothing we can say to that. We're now at literally the last part. How crowd health works. Crowd health reverses the insurance model. We treat your payments as your money, not ours. Okay. Which sounds a lot like it goes into an escrow or whatever.

0:24:03 Thomas: It sounds like you're not getting anything at all is what it sounds like. Oh, yeah,

0:24:06 Andrew: Yeah. With CrowdHealth, everything becomes simple and transparent. We take a flat fee, not describe what that is, pay bills super fast and give back what's left to the community. Okay. So again, because we have the Christian health share ministries as a concept, it sounds like that's what they're trying to do right there. They're trying to repeat the, like, there's a central pot of money you're giving in. It's all part of, we're part of this shared community. We take a flat fee off the top is an interesting model that even the, you know, Christian ministries don't dare to do. Do. Then we have three bullets. Monthly membership. Members are responsible for paying their monthly dues in order to participate in the community. Two, choose your doctor. I love this one. When you need to see a doctor, you can go to any doctor you want. There are no doctor networks.

0:24:58 Thomas: Of course.

0:24:59 Andrew: Yeah, that's true. That's true for the uninsured.

0:25:01 Thomas: Why do we give a shit what doctor you go to? We're not we don't sweat the details here at crowd health oh

0:25:04 Andrew: We do not. And then easy payment for For your health events, you're responsible for the first 500. Anything over $500 gets covered by the community every time. Every time. That's what it says in the ad copy. Okay. Now, again, we have no contracts. We have no idea.

0:25:18 Thomas: Every time wow plus we've already seen them say like except for certain thing you know like this really uh seems to contradict itself a lot am I uh am I wrong I

0:25:34 Andrew: Ixnay on the, you know, existing prey. Unditions, okay. Right. Right. So that

0:25:41 Thomas: Could listen to you try to do pig latin all day

0:25:43 Andrew: That piglet, though, pre-existing conditions is hard to do in piglet. Ag and Appy, maybe. I don't know. Anyway, that's the flyer. So what is crowd health now that we've been through the flyers, which does nothing to tell us what it is? I will tell you.

0:25:56 Thomas: Yeah it's an innovative new company that collects money from you in exchange for I

0:26:08 Andrew: No, good. No. Please finish that, because I've been trying to finish that sentence.

0:26:10 Thomas: Don't know yeah I was hoping you would

0:26:12 Andrew: It is a Texas corporation organized in Austin by Andrew Schoonover on April 19th, 2021. So it has been in business for less than four months. I will put the site to the Texas Corporation's code search for that. That. Andrew Schoonover, despite the fact that he lives in Texas, obscured his name on the filing by hiring a corporate registered agent, Cogency Global Inc. Now, again, not a crime. That's not fraudulent. There are plenty of times, like if you to, for example, You will hire a registered agency because you want your corporation to be based in Delaware. Right. And you don't live in Delaware, right? So you just hire a corporate agent. You pay them a hundred bucks a year or less to serve as the registered agent.

0:27:01 Andrew: And they do that. So I want to be clear. Right. There is nothing inherent in organizing the corporation that says you have to. But is a little weird. And I will tell you that Andrew Schoonover's SEC Form D application, which we're going to talk about in a minute, lists CrowdHealth Inc. as being organized in Delaware. Not as in Texas. So of that what you will. The corporation is just about four months old at this point. It was formed, began raising money on April 22nd. We know that because when you raise money, you have to file a form with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It is Form D. And I can search those things and I will publish their Form D in the show notes.

0:27:50 Andrew: They have raised six million $25,800 from 23 angel investors. The reason we know that these are angel investor, an angel investor just means a sophisticated person who goes around and like gives money in exchange for equity in small businesses, right? And the idea is if you're a very wealthy person and you do a a good job of vetting small businesses that need cash, you can make a lot of money on your investments, particularly you in, you the health care, biosciences, technology, right? That's how a lot OF small businesses, a lot OF my clients raise money. Nothing wrong with that. And in fact, the reason we know that these are angel investors is because listeners may be thinking about like, you an initial public offering, right?

0:28:38 Andrew: An IPO, right. That is the whole world gets to buy shares of for the first time. Right. And you say, man, I love Airbnb. I stay in Airbnbs all the time. I want to get in and I wantto buy that stock. In order to get to the IPO phase, you have extensive disclosure requirements, right, you got to tell the public everything about who you are and what you've done and your business plans and your expenses and whatever. When you want to raise money from sophisticated private investors, you don't have to go through the same level of disclosure, right? You get an exemption to those disclosure requirements. And there are a bunch of different rules that give you an exemption. The one that they relied on here is SEC Rule 506B that says don t have to to publish the same kind of information, because you're not advertising to the general public. You're advertising to people. You are soliciting people who are sophisticated investors.

0:28:49 Thomas: No

0:29:35 Andrew: And we feel like they can look at your business plan and figure it out on their own. You still do have some positive disclosure requirements, but much less. Okay. So that raise was complete by May. The Austin Business Journal published a glowing article about how six different companies raised 106 million dollars and listing crowd health as one of them um now we go into right heard the pitch you give us whatever a month you're responsible for the first 500 bucks we'll pay everything above that no questions asked asterisk um would you pay premiums to a health insurance company that was worth six million dollars I I sure would no of course you wouldn't right so what

0:30:13 Thomas: Yeah one person could wipe that out in a heartbeat like a literal heartbeat actually it's like I'm going to start a bank I'm I've raised twelve thousand dollars for me and my investor friends join my bank that that wouldn'T work would it that I don't think that would work you it'll

0:30:18 Andrew: Ab it it is yes exactly right it no and this and this is why I am comfortable right we gave the disclaimer up front I'm going to put it in the show notes because Andrew Schoonover is going to hear this podcast and is going going to think about suing us. And I can tell you, brother, bring it on, okay? I am comfortable.

0:30:52 Thomas: Give them even less to be able to pay out of a six million measly dollars for health insurance. You better save that $6 million to pay the first like four or five claims from your health share ministry or sorry, from your crowd health.

0:30:54 Andrew: Yeah, right. Seriously, yeah, from your healthcare, not a ministry, right?

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We talk about at this all the time, You right? Can never know with epistemic certainty what's going on in someone's head. But courts draw reasonable inferences all the time. And this has all of the hallmarks of a classic Ponzi scheme. There's not enough money in it. There is not enough money being collected for what they are promising to pay out to make the numbers work in any kind of sense. And so, uh, again, going with scam, if, I if we told you, on this show, if this show were entitled, uh, "Amway is a Scam," uh, you would not need to share it out with anybody because I can type "Amway as a scam" into Google and get 80 billion hits, right?

And And with Amway you actually get the like vacuum cleaner, whatever the hell it is they're selling these days, the, you know, face... We, that, that model that leans on the Ponzi model of, we, incoming revenues to pay prior investors slash claims. We know what that model looks like. We are comfortable colloquially calling it a scam.

0:35:55 Thomas: Yeah,

0:36:43 Andrew: I've added in the disclaimer here that I'm not saying that you're doing anything illegal. I'm saying you'redoing something that is fundamentally dishonest and misleading. We've pointed multiple instances of that out in your own two-page marketing materials. So CrowdHealth. Would you like to know a little bit more about Andrew Schoonover?

0:37:04 Thomas: I think the answer to that question is yes.

0:37:06 Andrew: I'm going to link his LinkedIn page in the show notes. He's got a public LinkedIn page. I am so happy that I have zero mutuals with this guy. I literally like I checked that because, you know, I have a lot of people on LinkedIn. So, yeah.

0:37:19 Thomas: I don't do the LinkedIn. I get an email every day or week saying one person is noticing you on LinkedIn, and I don't remember ever having signed up for it. So I'm impressed with whoever is noticing me on LinkedIn. In, I don't think I have a LinkedIn, but maybe.

0:37:34 Andrew: It's just me. I keep I keep refreshing your page going. Why won't Thomas friend to me on LinkedIn? In.

0:37:38 Thomas: Why isn't Thomas my friend?

0:37:41 Andrew: Andy Schoonover has posted a stupid, unfunny TikTok video about, like, oh, here comes in the, you know, out of market anesthesiologist to blow up your health care. He's a hedge fund guy. He was with, uh, and is still listed on, uh, the page of, Lion Venture Partner's was no, he's got a picture of like lions out there, right, the idea is they were formed to fund those businesses born from a passion to impact society through mission-based. If you have a mission-based business, whether currently operating or just a dream, we support your passion. So that, I said, and I'm going to talk about his hedge fund. For the last eight years, he has been working with a venture capital outfit. But again, you're asking, is this a person with a background in health care?

The answer to that is an unequivocal no. So let's go through his. This is his self-published biography on Lion Venture Partners. Uh, graduated the BS in commerce from the McIntyre School at the University of Virginia. He started his career at Host Marriott Corporation, now Host Hotels and Resorts, uh, in the treasury asset management and acquisition and development groups and completed transactions valued at

0:38:01 Thomas: As in like Lion Ted.

0:39:02 Andrew: Approximately 1.5 billion dollars. He then moved to Silicon Valley to attend Stanford Business School, where he got that entrepreneurial itch as his friends headed off to Google, Facebook and other high-flying tech companies. After graduations, Andy and Chris Hendrickson, his business school roommate, founded Blue Canyon Capital, which was formed in September of 2006. Blue Canyon Capitol then purchased Valued Relationships Inc. in Dayton, Ohio. Andy became CEO and served in that role for five years.

After fourfold growth in revenues, the majority of VRI was sold to Pamlico Capital in 2014. VRI investors received a gross return of approximately nine times their investment, and then he moved on to Lion Venture Partners. So he's a hedge fund guy, he's money guy, he is not a, a health care guy in any way whatsoever. There are a handful of posts, uh, uh, that Andy has made, uh, in connection with trying to roll out, uh, crowd health here. Comments on some other people that are, that are all basically like, uh, existing health care sucks. Right. That's going to be their business model. Existing health care sucks. So, you know, come on to to CrowdHealth. I thought this was pretty telling: says if there are any doctors out there tired of dealing with health insurance and are willing to share their cash prices, you will get paid the day of the procedure slash visit. Please email us at particular email account. I'm 30 days away from having a bunch of uninsured folks who want to pay you quickly and dollar sign directly. Yeah.

0:40:33 Thomas: Jesus. What? I mean, this is like the fire festival of health insurance.

0:40:39 Andrew: I, it certainly feels that way. We have been making the comparisons to the Christian health share ministries model, not just because it seems to be directly copied from that. But Andy is also on Twitter. You can follow him at Schoonover Andy. And you do follow him at Schoonover Andy, which, by the way, I do, you will see precisely the kind of Twitter account that you might expect from a somewhat circumspect evangelical Christian who wants to be sort of in the business community. So there's not, there's not a ton of like crazy pro-Trump anti-vax stuff.

0:41:24 Andrew: Right. But there is, you. This is his foray onto Twitter was to retweet Michael Foster saying civil law changes to reflect the people. It's naive to think that you can change the law without changing the people. And if you manage to change the wall first, that the people will in time change with it. This is why we need a revival of biblical Christianity. Then there is, you truly, I tell you, this poor widow is put more into the treasury than all the others. The the widow's offering as you scroll through, there is a pro life bit they in which Andy has retweeted out the pro life ministry carrying to term, at carryingtoterm.org, that says termination, meaning abortion, is always mentioned as an option for terminal pregnancies, it damn well should be.

0:42:10 Andrew: Here's to informed choices and raising awareness. And then the little graph says carrying to term is discussed as an action for terminal pregnancies 37 percent of the time, a Duke University study found. Yeah. Terminal pregnancies, carrying to a term, right, and so idea is the fetus will be delivered dead, yeah, it should not be discussed yeah what we're doing here is we, we are demonstrating, uh, for purposes of drawing the inference that Andy Schoonover looked at the Christian health share ministry scam and thought, boy, I'd like a piece of that. And what if we didn't have to have the religious stuff attached to it? What if we could bring in all of these atheists and materialists and suckers?

0:42:31 Thomas: All this? What are we doing here?

0:42:50 Thomas: Yeah yeah or just casually religious people that wouldn't be religious enough for a Christian health share ministry. Yeah. Man

0:43:00 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. This is, I think, there is no chance. I am happy to litigate this in court. Hear ads for Christian HealthShare Ministries because, you know, I occasionally will listen to, you like I've mentioned, the, you know, the Unbelievable Program, which is a debate.

0:43:22 Thomas: I was gonna say Rush Limbaugh, and then I just remembered he was dead and I felt all, all warm inside again for a brief moment it's

0:43:24 Andrew: Yeah. Oh, I know. So good. There is not a chance that he is not familiar with the structure of Christian Healthshare Ministries. Happily, I, I will happily depose Andy on that fact. Um, so, uh, what Andy has managed to do, and, and by the way, like, we know from those that like, that there is sort of that internal view of like, you know, Christians can, uh, know, owe a duty amongst each other, but, not you to outsiders. Right.

0:43:54 Thomas: Weird because they pay the doctors but yeah fine, wow

0:43:56 Andrew: Yeah. Not saying that That's going on in his head. I'm just saying that certainly would infer that was access and copying. So now, Andy has managed to create something that looks like the Christian health share ministries model, but in actuality is way worse than that. So go back and listen to our 497. Yeah. Here's why it's worse. OK. It's worse for at least two reasons. The first is 26 U.S.C. 213. And we talked about that on episode 497, that is the provision of the tax code that says there shall be allowed as a deduction. The expense is paid during the taxable year, not compensated by insurance or otherwise, for medical care of the taxpayer, his spouse or a dependent. OK, and there is an exemption, right, that exemption to, so, so paying your medical care is tax deductible, and subsection D1D says, for purposes of the section, the term medical care means amounts paid for insurance, including paid as premiums under Part B of Title 18 of the Social Security Act, blah, blah.

0:44:14 Thomas: Oh

0:45:09 Andrew: So this has been litigated. We just have. And we talked about it again. I strongly oppose this. But there was a public rule notice and comment period as of that began on August 20th of 2020. 20. Right. And new rulemaking that went into effect at the IRS that considers a Christian health share ministry as medical care insurance for purposes of Section 213 D of the tax code. So Right. In other words, that's a new change to how the IRS is going to operate. They're going to to let you take the amount, the amounts that you're spending on your nonsense non-insurance and write it off as insurance on your taxes.

0:45:57 Andrew: This you will not be able to write off on your taxes. It is not governed by the IRS circular. And the reason that it's not governed by the IRA circular is because Christian health share ministries are defined in the tax code. Uh, and those, and, and to qualify as a Christian health sharing ministry, um, you must, uh, have a shared set of religious or ethical beliefs.

0:46:15 Thomas: Man, really

0:46:30 Andrew: Yeah, that

0:46:29 Thomas: Well then also, wasn't there the thing where it's like you had to be grandfathered in, wasn't that part of it too, isn't it a bad sign that the difference between this total scam and the Christian hell share, you know, being counted by, I guess, the tax code as actual insurance is something as stupid as you either share some beliefs or you're grandfathered or something like that, like there's no substantive reason why Christian, like, these are both scams, this thing's even worse that we're talking about today, but still they're both scamps. Like, there's no substantive difference, really, except a slight degree of scamminess, right?

0:46:35 Andrew: Absolutely right. That's the second part. So Right. I was Yeah, that's exactly right. And and these incentives were and these incentives were created by law. Right. And that's the second aspect. We talked about this in Episode 497 as well. 26 U.S.C. Section 5000 A contains the individual mandate that you as an individual purchase health care coverage. Um, that has an exception, right, for health care sharing ministry. And again, that is defined as members which share a common set of ethical or religious beliefs and share medical expenses among members in accordance with those beliefs and without regard to the state in which a member resides or is employed, and which, or a predecessor of which, which, and we talked about how that was a loophole you could drive a truck through, but which, or a predecessor of which, has been in existence at all times since December 31st, 1999.

0:47:13 Thomas: Scam dog.

0:48:04 Andrew: And medical expenses of its members have been shared continuously and without interruption since at least December 31st, 1999, there are other criteria that go into it as well. But but yes. Right. Right now, thanks to the Trump reconciliation, the penalty. Right, for failing to maintain coverage under 5000 a was set to zero. OK, that's 26 U.S.C. Section 5000 A and then it's little C to capital B, little Roman three. Right. And you recall when they did this, they went into budget reconciliation and just gutted the penalties for for failure to maintain maintain insurance coverage under Obamacare. So it was right. The penalty was set at one percent for taxable years beginning 2014, two percent for taxpayers beginning in 2015, and then was set to zero percent for taxpayer years beginning after 2015.

0:48:59 Andrew: So the mandate is set to 0 now, but it's highly likely that during the second reconciliation, there will be third reconciliation process in December that the Democrats will set that back to a real number again. Right. And if they do. Right. Again, please do not use a Christian health care. Like you think how bad we felt defending insurance companies. Right, like now we're almost defending Christian health share ministries. Right.

0:49:30 Thomas: That's how bad this scam is, you're saying?

0:49:31 Andrew: That's how bad this is. At Right? Least if you're a member of a Christian healthcare ministry, you will not get hit with the penalty. Right.

0:49:32 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, yeah, so this is truly nothing. Like, the best that could be said for Christian HealthShare is that you're at least paying them a fee so that you might not have to pay a fee if they ever bring back the mandate. But like this, you don't even get that credit. So, like, they're trying to sneak in on the fact that it's a $0 mandate right now. But as you say, if they bring the mandate back, then you will be paying for this, and then you will also have to pay the mandate because you don't actually have anything like health, health insurance, right?

0:49:47 Andrew: Yeah.

0:50:06 Andrew: Yeah, and and one more thing on top of it. And I realize we don't need any more things on top of it, one more think on top. And that is from a tax law perspective. Thomas, if if you had a catastrophic illness, please don't. And And I said, I love my friend Thomas. I am going to pay for his catastrophic illness.

0:50:20 Thomas: Okay. Oh. Yeah.

0:50:29 Andrew: I'm going to play the medical bills on his behalf. This Right. Is any any one of the middle seasons of Breaking Bad. Right. Technically, taxable income to you and you owe taxes on that because I have give it gives his income derived from whatever source a gift counts as income. And counts as taxable income for purposes of the IRS. Now, I do not know how the IRS, I've tried to find this. I suspect that the IRS has not attempted to take that interpretation with respect to large payments from any Christian health care sharing ministry. OK. And I suspect that because it's religion that I'm going to touch it.

0:50:40 Thomas: Well, And if they technically, you count it as insurance, maybe they're just like, all right, fine.

0:51:22 Andrew: I don't know. What I do know is the IRS would would take a fresh look at any payments you would receive under this crowd health. And the more that it is described the way it is in the brochure, hey, yeah, no, we got this big community and then like we just, you know, you you pay some and then we give you some, the more it starts to feel like a gift rather than insurance, the more the IRS is going to go, yeah, we're entitled to tax that above a certain amount.

So I cannot, I want to be clear, and again, again, I want to be clear, always, because we try and be as precise as we can on the show, but also because I anticipate that Andrew Schoenhofer is going to try and sue us. I am not saying that any payments you get from from CrowdHealth, if anyone ever gets any, I am NOT saying that those payments will be taxed. I am saying that there will be an argument that they should be taxed and you will not have the institutional background and support and preferential treatment that religious institutions get under the tax code. Do with that what you will.

0:51:23 Thomas: Oh.

0:52:08 Thomas: Is There any way he's trying to have it both ways, like, like, maybe the advertising is not for a Christian health share thingy, but like, I don't know, in the documents and the fricking constitution of the thing, I know it will, will they try to have it both ways? Like, well, we are actually a Christian thingy to, in order to get these benefits.

0:52:52 Andrew: I don't think so, because, again, remember that the term health care sharing ministry is defined in the Internal Revenue Code. And and one of the criteria is that the members must share a common set of ethical or religious beliefs. Right. So, you know, you could I suppose what you could do. And I'm loathe to give Andy advice here because he's clearly still drafting these documents. Right? Like they're not available anywhere. But but fine. Here's a freebie. This one's for you, Andy. Um, if you had as a condition of your signup, right, that you agreed to a statement of principles with respect to the community, and if you used enough of the buzzwords that said, you know, I hereby certify that, you know, by signing up for crowd health, uh, I share in the following ethical beliefs, right? Right. And then you put in like, you know, the bullshit from his marketing copy and you have in there. Right. That expenses should be shared by and among, you know, those of a similar outlook bubble.

0:53:07 Thomas: Is Yeah.

0:53:54 Andrew: I suppose you could get I suppose you could piggyback that in there and try and argue that you meet that prong, which again, right. This is is 20 26 USC Section 5000 capital A, so that's all part of the the section subsection d sub section section D2, D2 capital B lowercase roman to uppercase roman to, right? So I

0:54:25 Thomas: I blacked out during all that. Some, some sort of, yeah.

0:54:27 Andrew: Think that's A smart That's the smart thing to do, blackout. Um, but But I will point out that that that prong, the shared beliefs prong, is also, right, like it's it's conjunctive with capital roman numeral four, which is the has been in continuous existence since before 2000. There Right. Was no way to meet the Obamacare definition of health care sharing ministries. And since all of the political lobbying that's being done is being done by ministries that have jumped through those hoops. Right. I doubt they're going to let Andy piggyback on their efforts. Right. I sure wouldn't. If I was the international lobbying arm for Christian ministries, I'd be like, oh, you know, like that.

0:54:30 Thomas: Well,

0:55:16 Andrew: That applies to, you The seven people that are paying me money right now. Andy Schoonover? Yeah, no, never heard of him. He doesn't even require that they be Christians to sign up. Why would it cover him? So long answer to your question. He can try and make an argument. That's how I would try and workshop it in. But he's going to be in trouble when it comes to the pre-2000 requirement. There's nothing he can do for that.

0:55:43 Thomas: This is, if I'm going to try to bottom line it for everybody, for the takeaway, if, if you've been sent this episode, if you've, if heard advertisements for CrowdHealth, this is somebody who is trying to start a scammy business with nowhere near enough capital to actually provide coverage to anybody with benefits that are nebulous and likely non-existent. I mean, you have a a a $500 deductible for every single thing, possibly, I mean, again, it's unclear because we can never get the actual documents because they're not available, but it, this is a total scam, and going to, and by the way, also, uh, you you hit on the Ponzi scheme aspect of it, does this person just think if they get enough people to sign up, you know, then they get a few months or or, you know, of of revenue before they have to pay anything out and then that's how this will all not crumble completely, is that what you think the plan might be, right?

0:56:35 Andrew: I don't know because I have not seen the business plan, But I right? Am sure, and I'm sure we'll not get a chance to see the business plan unless he sues us, which would be delightful. So again, remember, Opening Arguments Media LLC, a Maryland limited liability company based in Towson, Maryland. I imagine that his business plan would show that for most of the folks who sign up, that the net output, right, that the net required payments to distributors zero, right?

0:57:04 Thomas: But Right, so let's say he signs up. I mean, again, I don't know what a realistic number is for this advertising push, but like 10,000 feels like it would be a ton, you know, um, I don't know how many Moinks we sell, but like this is a this is uh

0:57:15 Andrew: Yeah, I think we do. We do sell a lot of moink, but no, a

0:57:21 Thomas: Yeah, but what's a lot of Moink? It's not 10,000 Moinks, that's a ton of Moink, we, you know, and and so, and this is major personal decision So, but Out of 10,000 people Yeah, okay, you get in a little revenue, maybe that's, I guess could be a million dollars, could be what, $2 million? But like out of 10,000 people, how many people have a catastrophic event within a month of signing off? And again, I've seen COVID hospital bills that are like millions and millions of dollars.

0:57:30 Andrew: Major investment. Yeah. Ten thousand people. Right.

0:57:52 Andrew: Yeah. Adding No, ten thousand people would add. So, you know, it's between one hundred and fifty and seven hundred dollars on premiums. Right. So suppose take what's the median of that is going to be about 400. Right. 10,000 people at $400 a month. While this seems like a ton of people and a ton, that's just $4 million. Right?

0:58:14 Thomas: Yeah.

0:58:14 Andrew: And so you're going to sign up 10,00 people. Yeah, that is that is one one hundredth of one percent having a catastrophic illness rate. Now, again, the only way to make that work, because, again we haven't seen the contracts, I would be surprised given what is likely Mr. Schoonover's experience with the Christian Healthcare Ministry scam, those contracts are going to be incredibly exclusionary and require arbitration in a mailbox

0:58:15 Thomas: Again, one hospital bill. Is there Anything to stop

0:58:49 Andrew: In California, Like the other one, uh,

0:58:49 Thomas: An enterprising opening arguments fan or host from just paying a couple hundred bucks to get one of these contracts, anything to

0:58:59 Andrew: There would absolutely be Nothing that would Uh, stop you from Doing that? Yeah, as an hypothetical, um, I cannot imagine how you could make the numbers work without, uh, just lopping off the the catastrophic end of the expenses. Um, and if that's the case, right. That directly you are you are paying for what is effectively nothing.

0:59:00 Thomas: Okay, Hypothetically, You're Paying For nothing, because That leaves, but what does that leave that you're being covered on if you buy this? It leaves a 500 deductible for every single thing. So you get no coverage, basically. This is, all right, comfortable in saying this is very scammy. Uh, thanks for the breakdown.

I, again, valuable information, if you hear this ad on anything, on Crowd Health, the ad on any any podcast, whatever, please email, please tweet them, do do whatever, because we don't want people to be taken in by this Now it's time to thank our new patrons at patreon.com/law, enjoying all the goodies, a lot of movies coming at you very soon, the again the puzzle in a thunderstorm takes the bar exam, super fun, you want to check it out, get on that bonus feed, I'll start us off, basil, Baa, like a sheep, and there is no Dana, only Zull, so they want me to say basil, basil, that's not right, Joseph Wilfred John FitzPatrick III, Barrister and Solicitor, Anthony Schmidt, Peter Krivoshik, Seth H, Kevin Bryant, mcf, Jac Cole, and our goal is for every Thomas' co-host to do a talk on Skeptics in the Pub online.

Sam, your turn. Yeah, no kidding. Don't think I've gotten an invite for that one, but yeah, it'll be, that'll, I'm sure Sam will do one before I do. Your turn, Andrew.

0:59:47 Andrew: Absolutely.

0:59:48 Clip: And thank you!

1:00:39 Andrew: Thank you too. And by the way, I think that was just meant to be a Basil, right? Like, you know, Basil faulty, like the British. Okay, OK, cool. All right. Thank you to trollåli, to Lilly S., to Cody Beaver, Jordan, Nathan DeRosier. I think that's a returning patron. But anyway, thanks to Wait till Chris Rufo hears about CRT tvs. Eli, Horseheads NY is far superior to Binghamton. Well, we're going to have to have an upstate New York off, I guess. Uh and to Michael Blank, thank you all so much for supporting the show

1:00:43 Thomas: No, I know.

1:01:17 Clip: Oh, no associate of this firm has ever failed the bar exam. No kidding.

1:01:23 Thomas: Now it's time for T3BE. Um, well I think I'm fresh off of victory over the coin, poor coin, you know, I feel bad for it, it's it's doing its best, I think the best that it can do, but the coin is losing, so let's have it, T3b, here we go.

1:01:24 Andrew: Oh, All right, Thomas, a man brought a federal diversity action against his insurance company. I swear I did not pick this one out. I'm just going in order.

1:01:42 Thomas: You're Telling Me This is just random happenstance.

1:01:50 Andrew: I'm telling you, random, crazy, what a crazy, random happenstance.

1:01:51 Thomas: Okay, Answer, A scam? No.

1:01:55 Andrew: All right.

1:01:55 Thomas: I don't Know.

1:01:56 Andrew: Alleging that the company had breached its duty under his insurance policy policy by refusing to pay for his medical expenses resulting from a mountain biking accident.

1:02:02 Thomas: Okay. This Strains credulity, Torres, that you didn't pick this one ahead of time, but okay.

1:02:11 Andrew: At the jury trial, the man presented evidence that he had paid all premiums on the insurance policy and that the policy

1:02:11 Thomas: Okay, all right, oh, My God, did We open A portal to The future of Crowd Health, uh, customers? Very

1:02:23 Andrew: Covered personal injury-related medical expenses arising from from accidents. After he rested his case, the company presented evidence that a provision of the policy excluded payment for injury-related expenses resulting from an injured's, quote, unduly risky, end of quote, behavior. The company also presented a witness who testified that the accident had occurred in an area where posted signs warned bikers not to enter. The man did did not cross-examine the witness. After arresting its case, the company moved for judgment as a matter of law. Should the court grant the motion?

1:03:03 Thomas: Interesting, huh?

1:03:04 Andrew: A. No, because a motion for judgment as a manner of law must be made at the close of the plaintiff's case in chief. B. No. Because whether the man's behavior was unduly risky is a question of fact for the jury to resolve. C. Yes, because the company's uncontradicted evidence of the man's unduly-risky behavior means that no reasonable jury could find that the policy covers his injuries or D yes, because the man waived his right to rebut the company's evidence by not addressing the unduly risky policy provision in his case in chief.

1:03:11 Thomas: I Look, I don't know what you're pulling from, you know, because sanctity of the game, uh, it seems weird that every single question starts with "a man brought a federal diversity jurisdiction." I know they're not about that, but it's still, it's weird to me, like, why is that? Every side note, you work on that, I'll work on this, but

1:03:57 Andrew: Okay. I will, I will work on that one. Uh, I can promise you two 41 does not begin with that. So there you go.

1:03:59 Thomas: Uh, but Oh Okay. Um, So yeah, man, lots going on here, as usual. We've got, it looks like, you know, plaintiff presented their case. They rested their case. You rest your case. And then the company presented a witness who said, so the key language here is, you know, oh, the person was mountain biking. And then the company says, well, we exclude payment for injury-related expenses resulting from insured's unduly risky behavior. Then they presented a witness that testified that the accident had occurred in an area where posted signs warned bikers not to enter. The man did not cross-examine the witness, that's the weird thing, so no cross-examination.

And then the company rests their case, and now the, the, now the company moves for judgment as a matter of law. This always has messed Me up in the past, like, trying for me to understand exactly what this means, but I think, I think at least understand what's going on here. I don't know if I'll get the right law, but uh, I'll give the right thingy. So, should the court grant the motion, let's work, work through it. A, no, because a motion for judgment as a matter of law must first be made at the close of the plaintiff's case in chief.

Well, if that's the case, then I will get this wrong, because I mean, I guess there's some sort of sense to be made to that, like, if, I guess the logic there would be like, if this, if the, is just so clear that you don't need, you can bypass the jury, then you would have to make it before even the defense makes their case. I don't, I don't,

1:05:35 Thomas: I, I, it doesn't make much sense to me, um, personally. I mean, maybe so, like, A could be the total porkage answer. Like, if that's it, I, I just don't, I don't see it though. It doesn t it's not, I get the logic maybe, but it's n t calling out enough to me to to pick it. So no on A. I m I m eliminating A. B, no, because whether the man's behavior was unduly risky is is a question of fact for the jury to resolve. Very plausible answer, I think that could make sense, more on that later, so Be in the picture still. C, Evidence of the man's unduly risky behavior means that no reasonable jury could find that the policy covers his injury. So this is where it gets a little tricky, because yes, the man didn't cross-examine the witness, but I still feel like that doesn't by default mean, like, the law recognizes the witness is right, because you're in a jury trial and evaluating witnesses, I think, even if you don't cross-examine them.

I could be wrong here, this is where it's getting murky, but even if I don't, let's say a witness gets up there and just, just sucks, you know, they're just, they're shade, they're just the, everything about the worst witness, maybe I'm like, I don't even need to cross-examine this, this is so ridiculous, I don't even need to cross-examine them.

1:06:49 Thomas: There's a terrible testimony, I'm relying on the jury to see how bad the testimony is, I'm not even going to cross examine. Could then the, the, uh, the defense be like, well, didn't cross examine, and so just as a matter of law, everything they said is right? I mean, honestly, that's not impossible that that's how it works. Like, I have to do some cross-examination to like dispute this other way. But I still think that, like, a witness, judging a witness is the job of the jury.

And I think the jury, even without cross- examining, I think the jury can be like, I don't know, seems convenient that they had a witness that tested or something, you know, like, they could, they could poke holes in the witness themselves, they could have, they could judge that the witness is full of crap even without cross-examination, or maybe not, that's the only Thing. I don't know. So that's C. Yes, because, yeah, okay, D. Yes, because the man waived his right to, but to rebut the company's evidence by not addressing the unduly risky risky policy provision in in his case in chief. God, I don't even know if I know what that means. Okay, let me sort through that. The This is because this is talking about the undually risky policy provision, not the witness themselves who testified to the thingy.

I, gosh, I just, D seems, I mean, if that's right, then that's as as much porkage as A, because the man waived his right to rebut the company's evidence by not addressing the unduly risky policy provision in his case in chief. Don't see how that takes away a jury's right, sort of. I guess it's not really a right, but I don't see how that takes away the jury's responsibility to evaluate a witness.

1:08:26 Thomas: I think D is gobbledygook. I could be totally wrong there, but I'm between B and C. I'm in a pickle here because I think B is the no-nonsense answer. But what I don't, I don'T like the language of, well, no, maybe I do. No, because whether the man's behavior was unduly risky is a question of fact for the jury to resolve. Yeah, I mean, I think they do need to still evaluate that fact, a question of fact, by saying, do we trust this witness? And I don't know that cross, you have to cross examine the witness. Otherwise it just goes down as gospel. I don'T know that that's, cause then does that end? You know, like at what, at what level of granularity? So let's say a witness gets up and says a whole bunch of stuff, like just tons of stuff.

1:09:14 Thomas: And then I get up and I'm like, oh, for technicality purposes, cross-examine the witness. Uh, is it true that your name is Bob Smith? Yes. Okay, box checked, because I cross-examined, therefore I've disputed it. I don't know. I'm not, I think I'm going with B. I think I'm gone with straightforward answer B. Um, who knows, you know, it could be a not straightforward one, but, uh, that's what I'm doing with, let's see what the coin goes with. Coin agrees. So, uh, the coin and I reunited at last, we both choose B, and that's my final answer.

1:09:46 Andrew: All right. And if you'd like to play along along with Thomas and the coin rare chance to make up a ground on, on both of them. If you're scoring at home, you know how to do that. Just to share out this episode on social media, include the hashtag T three B E include your guests, your reasons. Therefore we will pick a winner and shower that winner with never ending fame and fortune, fame and Fortune, not guaranteed.

1:10:07 Thomas: And that's, that's our show. Thank you so much for listening. Don't sign up for Crowd Health. Tell everybody it's a scam, and we'll see you for a very fantastic, it's kind of rapid response for Tuesday, so make sure to tune in.

1:10:19 Clip: I move for a bad court thingy. You mean a mistrial? Yeah, that's why you're the judge and I'm the law-talkin' guy.

1:10:30 Clip: This has been Opening Arguments with Andrew and Thomas. If you love the show and want to support future episodes, please visit our Patreon page at patreon.com/law. If you can't support us financially, it would be a big help if you leave us a five-star review on iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever podcast delivery vehicle you use. And be sure to tell all your friends about us. For questions, suggestions, and complaints, email us at openarguments@gmail.com. The show notes and links are on our website at www.openargs.com. Be sure to join the Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/Yodel Mountain and follow us on Twitter at OpenArgs. This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media LLC, all rights reserved. It is produced with the assistance of transcriptionist Heather Leverage, production assistant Ashley Smith, and additional contributions from Morgan Stringer and Debra Smith. Special thanks to Teresa Gomez, who runs our live shows and heads up the OA Wiki. Follow at OA Wiki on Twitter. Additional thanks to the moderators of the Opening Arguments Facebook community, Emily And finally, thanks to Thomas Smith, who edits the show and created the fabulous theme music, which was used with permission.