00:00You said last year you spent over $70,000 trying to get to the bottom of this. Do you know what
00:04your total is at now? It's well over $130,000. I mean, I have more bills. We were driving here
00:13and I'm getting tax bills. So I'm just paying the minimum on everything. My credit cards,
00:19I've exhausted my savings. I don't know what, I mean, well, I do know what I'm going to do now,
00:23but thank God this woman reached out to me and she's like an angel. I don't know why. I'm like,
00:30where are my angels? Tell me about this angel. Who's your angel? My angel is the PBN princess.
00:35Her name's Rachel Strauss and she advocates for people who have tons of medical bills that end
00:42up bankrupting them. And they're so overwhelmed and sick that they don't know, they don't know what
00:47to do. So they just make the payment plans. People don't understand that insurance does not mean
00:54everything is paid for much like with a car, you know, you, when you get in action, because you have
01:00auto insurance doesn't mean that the car is going to be paid for. And so I think with this,
01:06it's understanding, you know, shopping around, right? I think the Americans need to understand
01:11there's an emergency, you know, you roof, you like have to get in an ambulance. You do what you have to
01:18do. You don't worry about the bills that that's later. And that's why people like me exist to help,
01:22you know, with that process. But I think that for planned surgeries, or when you know, you have to
01:28have something done, right? You, you hurt your arm and then you're told you need shoulder surgery.
01:33I think Americans look at healthcare as a purchaser. I think they look at it as the doctor said to do
01:39this. So I'm going to do it. And I think healthcare, you know, even within the provider side, there are so
01:46much competition. That's why they advertise. That's why you see billboards and people need to
01:51understand that, you know, they have the room to look to see where the best cost for that service
01:56is, especially for routine or schedule, x-rays, mammograms, anything that you need in schedule,
02:04you know, she had insurance. And so that's the key here is that she was on, you know, an individual
02:10HMO plan that had levels of coverage. She did have out of pocket. And, you know, she that is one piece
02:18of the pie with where Brandy's unfortunate situation is in so many bills that came that
02:24are not being covered at all through Kaiser. And so in a Medicaid situation, you know, Medicaid is not
02:29meant to supplement necessarily an insurance policy. But if somebody can't afford the catastrophic
02:36coverage, the $100,000 of bills, that's, that is what Medicaid is supposed to do. But again, like
02:42anything, there, there is some gatekeeping and you have to understand the rules in order to get the
02:47maximum benefit of these policies. So what most people don't realize is that there's people out
02:52there like myself, um, that are pretty familiar with navigating the hospitals and the billing centers
02:58and where this is frustrating for average Americans. Um, and including myself, where I've had to advocate
03:05on behalf of myself, you know, I've learned number one, where we need to go, how to file, what claims
03:11truly should be billed back with Kaiser. Um, and we're not coded correctly so that we can start to
03:17recoup some of her money back. Um, I don't know that we're going to be able to wipe a hundred thousand
03:22dollars away, but what we are going to be able to do is make sure that the proper parties who have to
03:27pay for those claims pay for them. And that would be Kaiser and where, you know, where it does fall
03:34on her responsibility is working with the hospitals. She saw reviewing, you know, what was billed,
03:41making sure it was billed properly, um, because certain things were truly emergencies, um, that
03:46doctors will validate and getting, um, you know, those reduced however we can. And finally, once we
03:53negotiate, you know, the, the service fees, working on a payment plan so that Brady can live and, you know,
04:00have a roof over her head and be able to have food and everything that you need to sustain,
04:04but understanding that there will be, I mean, there was always a portion of out-of-pocket that
04:09was on her plan design, making sure there's a way that she can pay that back, um, comfortably.
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