Note: I am not affiliated with Crowdhealth. I am and have been an appreciator of their business model and their role as an answer to the woes of modern health insurance and opposition to libertarian thought from advocates of "welfare". Recently on Nostr someone wondered how Bitcoin would change Healthcare. These are my thoughts on that. (I am available for hire though, haha.)

Waking up to a world where your efforts for the day will remain, in perpetuity, is a much different world than one in which it is disconnected from those efforts and, the more likely, to evaporate through the excess of power beyond your own actions. The country may go to war, your partner may brake up with you despite your best efforts, but the individual has always begged the universe for something, anything, with consistency, something protected, something to strive for and build on. **1 sat will always = 1 sat. ** Civilization is the pursuit of this consistency. Predictable outcomes, routine interactions, normative comfort, shared safety. Bitcoin is often compared to gold, while at the same time we Bitcoiners recognize it as something entirely different, new and as yet not fully understood. Salt is a better description in my opinion. Salt improves taste, heals wounds, reduces bacterial growth, contributes to electrolyte balance. [The Salt trade is older than and rivals gold's footprint on human history. Animals travel miles to lick salt, only humans value gold. Quantized, solid, large bricks of the grayish white substance were transported on camel back and easily divided into smaller morsels that flavor everything it touches. Just like Bitcoin. A forum for news and discussion is improved with a teaspoon of lightning. A social note protocol is made better and more genuine with a pinch of zaps. Governments are rolled in, cured and hung up to dry by the discipline of proof of work and the market of currencies.

Competing for hard money rather than lobbying for cantillion government policy means cooperatives like Crowdhealth create responsible communities. They do not only benefit them. Indeed, it can be argued that the degradation of community started with the removal of mutual responsibility through inflated money. Mutual aid societies served as focal points and balances of power. The doctor in such a premodern health arrangement was responsible to the individual and the community, not the bureaucracy of the state or a faceless insurance company. Look at the fee reduction record of Crowdlhealth and i would argue at least 20 to 30% of those reductions were by doctors who were surprised by and for the sake of the "human touch". Bitcoin brings the human back to civilization.

Eventually individuals and corporations will be able to invest in company shares using Bitcoin, and have returns payed in Bitcoin. This means, in the case of crowd sourced healthcare initiatives like Crowdhealth, the opportunity to have retirement hedge fund like income and a base for expansion into more services and sectors. For example: An eventual "Crowdhealth" branded hospital can be funded not just by memberships, but investment dividends from aligned companies selling products such as organic and nutrient rich foods. Thise supports farms with the best soils and soil management along with the distribution networks for these products. It can fund real academic research into health and longevity. It can lobby. Wherever it is competitive and profitable to do so.These contribute to a feedback loop of success. The company sustains itself on and is optimized by healthy customers. The negative signal of fiat is circumvented in the most efficient way, depending on the obstacle. These patients, customers, members, then consume aligned products, or they find an alpha in some other health modality that the crowdhealth network can further promote. Unhealthy patients, rendered unhealthy from any part in the loop (food, lifestyle, product or participation) can opt-out and vote with their dollar, I'm sorry, with their Bitcoin. Instead of negative signals from government subsidy reinforcing detrimental parts of the healthcare lifecycle; genetics, lifestyle, environment, education, choice, through fake money, things like the insurance code industry, simply fade away.

Whereas pre-modern mutual aid societies arose out of racial, religious or regional affiliation, bitcoin and the internet enable intersectional, cross-cultural, location agnostic mutual aide through immediate and permissionless human action.

Let us consider the profitability of an extreme scenario. 100,000 customers across two historically impoverished continents, South America and Africa. If each customer pays 10$ a month this equals 12 million dollars a year. If 500,000 pay only once a year, in or near an emergency situation, that is 5 million dollars, a year. The salary for a team of doctors working in shifts to fly around to various nodes between these two continents throughout the year would be well under two million dollars. Aircraft maintenance and piloting are also similarly negligible. The greatest expense will be fuel and initial purchase or renting of the craft. The nomadic nature of this health care arrangement means talent can be sourced from and staffed from the best doctors in any country, thus further optimizing costs by arbitraging the cost of skilled labor between countries. Intercontinental or even local flight costs can be offset with legal airfreight transport of packages and goods, sanitation and isolation of the medical facilities withstanding. With bitcoin, health scales.

Granted, these are back of the napkin calculations that do not describe all the accumulated expenses and complications but the main themes of Bitcoin, permissionless software, enabling international opportunities, in health, are sound.

Thank you for reading.