Demystifying Self-Funded Benefits Can Forge a New Path for Employers

Hey, everybody. It's David. I'm your host of Highway to Health podcast. Thank you for being here. By now, you know this podcast is meant to celebrate, give a stage, an opportunity to those those that are committed to improving the access to care, the experience while getting that care, and, of course, the outcomes for our patient and provider population. We've got a fun conversation today. You're gonna enjoy learning from Spencer Smith of Pareto Health. Spencer? What's up, man? Welcome to iWay Health. Great intro. Thank you. Being here. Thanks for having me. This is gonna be a lot of fun. Absolutely. We're gonna get into some fun topics. We've got some cool things planned. But we we start every podcast with the same question. You're a fit guy, but you're a busy guy. That yes. Yeah. That's true. And, I like learning from our executives on, you know, the healthy habits they've built into their life. We have a responsibility as patients, as people. And, share with our listeners what you do to maintain mental, physical well-being. Yeah. Well, that's a great question, man. So fortunately, I have a background, in playing soccer my whole life through college. So I think that foundation created the habits, where they're sort of so ingrained in my life that it wasn't really a question of, am I gonna exercise and eat? Right? It's just a a necessity. So I carried those through into my adult life as well for I have a a spouse, a wife, Courtney, that's, also very active and very fit. And we've actually made it a a big part of our life. Cool. So we had a lifetime fitness almost every single day. The kids are in tow most of the time, sort of establishing that precedent. And so I would I would just say that it's sort of a a non negotiable component of our lives because we wanna be around for our kids to grow up Yep. And grandchildren. And those habits can be, you know, I I walk almost every single morning now. I'm in the gym lifting weights four to five times a week. I do some I don't I played soccer, but I don't love, cardio that much. So I love it. I try to get it when I can get it. But, diet, I think as we age, I'm forty about to be forty two. So as we age, just diet, man. You have to really dial in what you put in your body. Yeah. And when we get into the stuff about health care, man, I mean, I think that the way that we fix health care Right. In this country is fixing the average American's health. That's where it all starts. I would agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. We have a responsibility. Absolutely. An obligation. Not just for ourselves, but for the people we love. Yeah. Your kids play a big part in that. Mine do too. And then, my wife is like, you know, there's a carrot. There's a stick. You know, the wife's more of a stick. She's gay. She's gonna make sure you get She's getting in line. Right? Yeah. She's hey. If she's on the the Peloton at five AM, you better be Well, I look at it as like a especially if you have a spouse that's active, like, I look at it as like a mutual responsibility to other, man. It's like, if she's gonna be in there keeping herself fit, and obviously, as we age, we wanna still look our best for our significant other. So it's like, I feel an obligation to her to do the same too. So it'll it'll never probably not be a part of our lives. One hundred percent. God willing. Right? I know. I know, your kids are a little bit younger, but your oldest one's getting to that age where they're probably starting to play sports and other things. And and mine are getting to that age too. You never you never think of it this way, but when you have habits like you just described, it's not that you have to teach those kids what they should be or could be doing. They just see it. And they're almost immersed in this idea, and it's almost natural to them. My eleven, twelve, thirteen year old, and even our four year old are just they're usually out there with us. You know, they're in the gym with us and, it's fun to see them with an active lifestyle Yeah. And enjoying being outside and enjoy being Well, and it'll be because you start them so early, it will just be part of their sort of ritual every day. It's their habits. Right? So they will never question, do I need to eat right or do I need to go to the gym or do I need to play sports? Because it's like, they haven't really known anything other than that, so there's nothing to teach them because you demonstrated it it to them. And that's Yeah. I feel like from a leadership perspective, that's part of our obligation as parents is to demonstrate how to live. Yeah. Yeah. Not just not just, do what I say, but do what I do. Do what I do. For sure. I appreciate you sharing that. Oh, thanks. And, good question. If you could show me or teach me how to get the hair at forty two, that would be I appreciate it. I don't I wish I knew the answer. My dad's sixty seven and has a full head of white hair now. So, like, I'm already I got a little gray in the beard, but, you know, as long as I hopefully hold on to it, that's that's the main goal, man. Thanks. I'm jealous. I'm jealous. But I mentioned in the intro, you know, this podcast is for the people, the organizations that are improving access experience outcomes for our patients and providers, but that didn't explain why you're here. Yeah. Fair enough. Tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about Pareto. Yeah. So my role is SVP of consultant development, and I won't bore your listeners with, like, the five minutes it takes to actually explain that job. But my job, I think, in a nutshell is to amplify the messaging around what Pareto Health does. So I do a lot of content on my own. I have a podcast on my own called, Self Funded with Spencer that I operate every week. And so I use A plug. Yeah. Threw Threw that in there. Right? I use that, I use that platform, if you will, as an opportunity to to hold conversations like this with experts. Yeah. The idea being is I I firmly believe a rising tide lifts all boats. And so if we can educate the marketplace, not just employers, but individuals to be better health care consumers and truly be health care consumers and not sort of at the mercy of the system, I believe you can use content to to do amplify that messaging. But then, I do a lot of public speaking, do a lot of sales and sales training, hosting webinars, etcetera. But Pareto in and of itself is what we call a benefits captive. And without going into the weeds there, I think of it as like a a community of of like minded employers that said, let's all band together. Let's leverage our buying power for better products and solutions, but let's also leverage that scale to diversify risk across a large pool. And so our health care and our health insurance spend is far more stable over time as a result. It's a needed needed area. Needed it's it's been a gap, honestly. Yeah. It's huge gap. In this in the history of these types of solutions. So, we're gonna get into more about the challenges that our employees are facing Sure. Even even, the employees, the patient, and and how that can be addressed. So, but I'd like to get I'm gonna put you on the mark, put you on the spot here. Okay. Uh-oh. So with your time in health care, my time in health care, we probably have similar opinions, differing opinions on who holds the power, who holds the leverage in this health care ecosystem. Okay. If I counted to three, I'm curious to know if, we would say the same answer. So Okay. Alright. When I count to three, you say between the patient, the provider, or the payer k. Who has the most power in health care today. Okay. Alright. Patient, provider, or payer. Okay. On three. On three. One, two, three. Payer. Yeah. Hundred percent payer. Good. I thought you'd say the same thing, and I think we have probably similar experiences. Tell me why. I I relatively complicated if you dig into it, but I think having a model where a third party payer is negotiating on behalf of both buyer and seller, and they have contracts behind the scenes that nobody really is privy to. And they also have entrenched interest through vertical integration of buying providers and owning networks and PBMs. I mean, if you really peel back this onion, it's actually pretty dark. But that model where they're ultimately, I'd say, wielding most of the power as a result of that structure, leads them to where they have almost an an, ending power in this equation. I think we can dig into how that happened probably, but I think when you just look at that traditional model, and I'll use, an acronym I became Yeah. Interested in recently called PosiWid. Have you ever heard of that? No. K. The purpose of the system is what it does. And a guy named Stafford Beer came up with that, and he was, like, the systems genius guy that was, like, focused on how feedback loops work and organizations are arranged. But the purpose of a system is what it does means whatever the outcomes that are happening, well, that's what the system is designed to do. And so he would argue that, you know, it's kinda foolish to then lament the fact that the the system is not delivering what you want it to do because that's not what the system is designed to do. Yeah. And so I say all that long winded way to say that those publicly traded entities that hold most of the power have also established and enshrined a system that is delivering higher costs over time and subsequently more profit for them. They also have some just unfair advantages. Yes. They do. One of them being data. I mean, they Mhmm. You know, our providers usually have deep expertise, knowledge, data on a very narrow sliver of our patient population. Yep. And it's usually within their community. Right? Payers have that too, but then they can go far and wide Mhmm. And understand trends. They can understand they can anticipate better and then adjust, evolve, and even strategize Yeah. And acquire. Yeah. Yep. Another good one. Based on what they I think it's it's data, but it's a lack thereof. Right? So, ultimately, the business owner has an obligation to receive their data. So let's call them a plan sponsor, especially in the world of self funding. But the the system and the partners that they use sometimes will limit almost completely the access to that data or they will parse it out and not give them the full scope of what's going on. And when you're an employer trying to deliver better outcomes to your population, yet you have absolutely no data to make decisions or see what's driving your cost increases, well, who who has the advantage there? Right? It's the one that has the access to the data. And so I I would argue, and legally speaking, especially when they're self funded, they should get access to their data. And you're seeing some litigation around that right now as a result. And so I think that keeping them in the dark has also trained the buyer to just sort of accept really poor outcomes as status quo Yeah. And think there's nothing they can do about it. And so that control or the lack of control over the data becomes a huge inhibitor. Yeah. I agree. I I also think there's an opportunity for, providers to work better together. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that's not something that they all see each other as competitors, understandably so. We're all businesses. We all have patient acquisition's a real challenge sometimes, and patient retention's an even bigger challenge. But so you it it's natural for these providers, especially in a big community but, man, there's power in collaboration. Mhmm. And, to understand you know, just like what you're you guys are doing at Pareto for employers, there's an opportunity maybe for these providers to collaborate and join forces together. Well, I don't think it's an us versus them or an either or. I think it's both sides of the equation, the delivery side and the insurance side. The employers sit in the middle of that. But I think all stakeholders should have a seat at the table, and we should all be driving towards optimal outcomes for the patient or the individual. If everybody had them as the sort of the first and foremost obligation, then I think the system would be better. But right now, there's a lot of finger pointing that's going on. Oh, one hundred percent. Yeah. And a lot of it comes from the patient. Right? Well, it's the provider's fault and the well, it's the payer's fault. And then it's just this not never ending. Well, think about it from an most people think, oh, my insurance covers that. Or like Ozempic's a great example where everybody's demanding that GLP ones be covered by insurance. What people don't understand is everything that you add to the list of things covered by insurance means the cost of insurance goes up over time. And so we've taken something that was supposed to be for, like, large unknown risk, and we've turned it into the way that we pay for routine, you know, regular recurring risk. That's not what insurance is designed to do. So the more you fold up into that, the higher the cost go. And when people are just demanding more and more things to be covered, well, as a result, things cost more. Yeah. Yeah. Cause and effect. You mentioned employers kinda live in the middle of this. Yes. What kind of leverage do they have? What kind of leverage could they what maybe the opportunity that they have to gain some of this leverage. You mentioned data, but where else? Well, so I think the they actually don't realize how much leverage they have, but the point is they have to make a different decision, you know, going back to the purpose of the system, what it does. Right? Well, if you're getting the outcomes that you don't want over and over again, well, what choices do you have? You either stay there and kind of complain about it and accept increases or you explore a different model. And so whether that's self funding, which is all that is is an employer now taking the onus of paying claims onto their plate and buying a catastrophic type of insurance called stop loss or something like we do, which is a version of self funding for the small to medium sized market called a captive. There are absolutely options out there that exist, and it's just a matter of raising the level of awareness, asking the right questions. And then a lot of the employers will procure their solutions through insurance consultants. And so it becomes down it comes down to do we ask our consultant the right question? Are they bringing us these options? And if not, why? And that's a different topic we put into, the incentive model. But, ultimately, the consultant has to lean in and and start, strategizing better on behalf of the employer. But I think if the employers demanded better of their consultants, then the consultants would be bringing the right solutions to the table. Man, the consultants have a big job. Yeah. They do. And you've had a lot of them on your podcast. And the consistent theme of the ones that I know and the ones that seem to be doing things in a really good way Right. Are the ones who see themselves as a guide, you know, as an educator Mhmm. As somebody who's, you know, leading to a solution, not leading with a solution. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, we need more of that. Well, and I think even at Pareto, we'll differentiate between broker and consultant. I think most people know what a broker is, but I think that term is simply just somebody that's shopping insurance on behalf of. Whereas a consultant is actually looking at the specific use case of the employer, what are their actual problems, and then bringing, like you said, a solution to those problems to the table, but not just sort of shopping on their behalf. And then what we call an apology tour every year where they come back to the table and go, sorry. I got your fourteen percent increase down to a nine. It's best I can do, and then I'll see you again next year. That's a that's a broker, and I think that version is outdated, and I think the industry is demanding better. Yep. And so you have to truly be a consultant now these days to be competitive at least. I've overused this phrase or this term on this podcast, but every time I have a conversation like this, it just it proves to be true. It's gonna take a village if we wanna get to where we wanna go in this health care journey of ours. You know, we've talked about patient, provider, payer. We've talked about broker, consultant, employer. And the truth of the matter is we all have a responsibility. We all have an obligation. We've all gotta do our part. Mhmm. And, the better we understand that, the more we work together, maybe the more the more, positive outcomes we Absolutely. We can realize. Yeah. We agree with you. Value based care is something that is drastically changing, the health care landscape. It's something we've talked about for a long time. K. You know, my background with revenue cycle, it was shoot. Thirteen years ago, we were already talking about value based care. We're starting to see some of that take take hold. Mhmm. And, actually, some of these models being implemented. How does value based care change the way or impact, you know, an employer that's considering being self funded? Can I ask you what is your definition of value based care? So in a perfect world, value based care is meant to help providers deliver the kind of care they they got into the industry to deliver Forgive. Yeah. Surrender. Yeah. In a practical world, that's probably not true. Put you on the spot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In a practical world, what I think it means is they're gonna have to really contain the cost of care Mhmm. So that they can maintain the margin to keep the door open, which then ultimately is gonna impact the experience and the outcomes for the patient. Mhmm. And that's what I'm worried about. K. My my problem with value based care, and I don't I'm not against it, is this who's determining the value? Who's establishing what is value? And then how do you over perform on delivering that value? So what are the metrics to over deliver on that? I would delivering that value. So what are the metrics to over deliver on that? I would like to see providers that are in that model at risk. Meaning, if they over deliver, they have the ability to actually make additional money. And if they under deliver, then they put some of their fees at risk as well. So when you think about the notion of aligning incentives, as long as those particular incentives are aligned, then I'm cool with it. But I I think I think there are other models that exist that might deliver that, even better than what I would think of as value based care. And so I'm sort of a little skeptical, and that's just that's just my opinion, because I think whether that be, like, a direct primary care model, you got advanced primary care, which does add fees at risk. You know, you can have multidisciplinary, primary care, which is adding other specialists into the fold. The whole purpose of primary care is to be the foundation Yep. Of a health care journey. And rather than being a feeder into the system, it should prevent as much as possible going into the system. And a lot of that comes down to health and what we recommend. But until we sort of fix all of those incentives, I don't know if we're exactly gonna get the outcomes that we're wanting. Couldn't have said it better when I was. Okay. Cool. The second the second thing I'll add to that though is, you know, the risk side of things is is obvious for the provider. Right? And you talked about overperforming or underperforming. Yeah. But the other side of that risk is attribution. Like, you mentioned multiple specialties. Mhmm. Oftentimes, multiple specialties are are included in the same case of care or episode of care. Mhmm. And then who, you know, who is attributed, the reimbursement and at what percentage for Yeah. That same person Yep. That same case, that same episode of care, that care journey. Until we get that stuff figured out, it's a it's a it's a big concern and further explains or details why providers are so are so, are so worried about adopting these models more and more. But it's still at the end of the day and, you know, I don't wanna hammer this too much, but it's still a sick care model. I mean, I don't know if you've watched the have you watched the recent podcast that Tucker Carlson did with Casey and Cali Means by any chance? No. Oh my god. You gotta watch it. I mean, this is a great show. But, that is probably one of the best health care individual episodes I've ever seen. So two plugs? Two plugs. Sorry. Yeah. And I have no financial incentive to that podcast. Okay? But it's it's just that good. And it's really talking about all the perverse incentives that exist and, like, how very little information Yeah. Folks that go through medical school, how little nutritional guidance and education they're getting, they end up sort of following the allopathic medicine model of just prescribing drugs as the first blush of any symptom. And it's like, it's not health care. It is absolutely sick care. Yeah. Unfortunately somebody gets sick, you can keep them on that assembly line forever, and they're a profit center. And that's it it's kinda gross, but that's that's what it is right now. Yeah. And we see it I mean, we see it more and more, especially when I I was exposed to it most when I started having kids, and they started getting to that age that, you know, they're they're seeing the doctor more. I'm getting older, so I'm seeing the doctor more. And, I think we're all feeling it right now. And, the good news is with people like Tucker Carlson and these these people having these conversations is, hopefully, the exposure helps. Why I mean, and this is the timing of this episode's good. I mean, health care is at, like, literally top of everybody's mind right now. Yeah. I think, like, from a policy perspective, and I won't get into politics, but I think we're gonna see some pretty big changes Yeah. Come down the pike as a result of that. I do too. Yeah. I had a guy on recently that talked about, you know, a single single payer model and Mhmm. All of those concerns. And long story short, it just adds more responsibility to us Yeah. The individual, the patient. We've gotta take care of ourselves. That's why I start every podcast with that question. Yeah. It's a great way to start. Because it's something that you gotta control what you can control. And, and luckily, through diet, exercise, and these other things, knowledge, we have an opportunity to do that. Mhmm. What are some some common misconceptions about being self funded? There's, you know, value based care presents risk to the patient or to the provider. A common mis misconception or maybe real perception of being self funded is the risk that the employer takes on. So I'd like to talk about that. Do you get questions or concerns around, like, access to care by their employers or employees when when dealing with an employer? Well, I'd say I'll even take a step up and say the most common misconception about self funding is you hear that term and you think all of the obligation is on me, the employer. I'm self funded and therefore, I have no insurance at all. I mentioned earlier this thing called stop loss insurance, which is a catastrophic form of insurance in case somebody gets very sick Yeah. Or we have more than expected overall plan spend. So, yes, they're self funded, but most of these employers that are self funded are partially self funded because they purchased that insurance. So I just wanted to miss dispel that misconception because that's a scary term. Like, oh my gosh. I don't have insurance anymore, and that's just not quite the case. But access all comes down to what does that employer want, in terms of an outcome from the plan. And so when we think about when especially when somebody comes into Pareto, we think about where are they today in their sort of health care transition? What do they want the plan to look like tomorrow? And then what do they want it to look like five years from now? And so they can follow a crawl, walk, run model. And so I say all that to say access could be exactly the same. You mentioned UnitedHealthcare earlier in the conversation. Somebody wants to use UMR as their administrator and have access to UnitedHealthcare network and use, Optum as their pharmacy benefit manager. To the individual, there will be zero disruption in access, and they probably won't even know that their employer has self funded. You can do far more innovative things than that model, but if somebody's just, I wanna go self funded first and then derive all the benefits down the road, that's a way to do it where there's zero disruption and there's no inhibiting access or anything like that. Okay. I still think that's a misconception in the first place. It wasn't me. I can't get access because my employer is self funded. That's just not the case. But I think that's a way that you could have no noise at all and then, over time progress as a plan sponsor. Yeah. That's good to know. What about quality of care? Yeah. Same thing. I mean, it is the same thing. Alright. So let's take it. Yeah. You know, let's say But I have some nuance to that, but it is the it is the same answer. But I I wanted to say there's also actually an inverse relationship most of the time between cost and quality. People presume that if I pay more for health care, that the quality is better. It's usually the opposite. Yeah. Okay. So there's a I'm a point up the street, but at Oklahoma City, I'm gonna point up the street. Far on my past. See if I'm here. Highway. Yeah. Doctor Keith Smith, I've had him on my show. Brilliant guy, has Oklahoma Surgical Center. And he does a bundled surgery model where you come in and get your knee replaced at his facility. It's a hundred percent one flat rate for everything from preop, anesthesiology, the actual operation, the device, and postop care. Hundred percent is gonna be one price regardless of if there's complications. And he is by far cheaper than any other option in the state. And his argument is that my cost staying the same over a decade is proof that my quality is better because I can still make money at that price point, but I've operationalized it so much that the outcomes are almost always good or great, yet I'm still delivering it significantly cheaper, as well. So that the quality component, I again, I would dispel that almost on the surface as a nonissue. I'm glad you said it, because it's true. You know, the the old saying is you get what you pay for. That's not always the case. It's very rarely the case in health care. It's really just where you go. Mhmm. That's just where you you go? I mean and this comes back to the payer. Same location, same doctor, same procedure, same facility, four different prices for the four different big carriers. Yep. Nobody can tell you why that's the case and why usually if you pay for it in cash, you pay less than those payers have negotiated with their scale to be able to provide. One hundred percent. Yeah, which leads into my next question, overall cost Mhmm. You know, for the employer. Yeah. So no guarantee if you go self funded that you will save money in any individual year. That's sort of an understood thing. Right? There is some risk involved. This is risk management and mitigation. Yeah. But on average over time, as one of my mentors said way a long time ago when I learned about self funding, on average over time, it's almost guaranteed that you're gonna save money because now you're moving, you know, carrier profit from the equation. You're removing all the limitations of choice of vendors that you partner with. You know, you know, removing some of the contractual limitations that exist that prevents you from doing the things you want. Yeah. And then by by actually managing your own plan spend and having access to the data that helps you do that, then you can target where your problem areas are and actually address those things. If you bundle it all into this fully insured model where it's just premium is all you pay and that's all you see, then you have no idea what's actually going on under the hood. And oftentimes, your risk is being used against you. So tell me this. I mean, there's people listening and they're going, okay. Starting to understand it. Risk isn't you know, we deal with risk in everything that we do every day. It's just what are you willing to accept? You mentioned small to medium sized businesses earlier. Dig into that. Double click on that. Yeah. So what I would define as a small to medium sized business is small on the small end is around fifty enrolled employees. And a medium sized business might be upwards of seven hundred and fifty or a thousand enrolled. These are more self funded designations. You know, the the small group market, I think, technically in in the fully insured world is under fifty and large group is over fifty. But when we sort of delineate that segment, which is really the middle market segment, which is there's a quarter million businesses in the United States in that size segment, that's an under served part of the market. And so these business owners traditionally have not had access to self funding in a way that was predictable and stable. Pareto and the captive itself is the answer to some of those preventative reasons why people wouldn't self fund when they should have been self funded a long long time ago. Is there an ideal, like, demographic makeup of those fifty to seven hundred and fifty you know, whatever the size what's the ideal, like, demographic makeup? Believe it or not, there isn't actually like a it could be manufacturing. It could be tech. It could be trucking. It could be health care delivery. I mean, there really is nobody that in an industry necessarily is a complete nonstarter. It comes down to, like, what is your, willingness to do something different? What is your ability to sort of manage risk, or risk tolerance? Some of your actual, you know, risk profile, meaning, like, your actual claims experience. If your company is just running horrendously year after year, there this is not like a silver bullet solution where everybody just gets a perfect outcome. And so there will be, you know, individual employers that just it doesn't make sense. Maybe it doesn't make sense this year and we'll look at it again next year. At the end of the day, we still have the same competitive challenges that everybody else does, and it has to be reasonable, the terms that are put forth on the table. But I think the concept, it's very rarely that we'll deliver the concept and then not connect with an employer. And then we start getting down to the numbers and stuff. Ultimately, it does have to make sense. So we've talked about a lot of things today. For our listeners, if we can narrow it down, if there's one thing that they walk away understanding, they walk away knowing, and they could they could tell their wife when they got home. What's that one thing that you want them to know? I think, honestly, there's hope. And I sound sounded cheesy to say, but there is hope. We're, I think be an election year, man. It is. There's hope. Hope and change. Right? But I honestly, I've been in this industry fifteen years. I've seen a lot. I haven't seen it all, but I've seen a lot. And I am so passionate about this subject because I know it works and I know it delivers the outcomes that employers are looking for. And so all we really need to do now is one, demand better, two, be willing to lean in on this is usually the second biggest line item on an employer's p and l or their budget, and they buy it super unintelligently versus every other piece of their business that they manage. And so it really comes down to choice. I know I've not been getting the outcomes that I want. If I keep doing the same thing, what do I think is gonna happen in the future? Am I gonna get the same outcomes or worse? So comes down to if you believe in optimism, I'm a a white pill kinda guy. I wake up every day and take the white pill and believe in hope and that we can fix these things. I really do think we can. But enough business owners have to make that decision for themselves. Enough consultants have have to make the decision to lean in and actually do something better. And, ultimately, individual people need to demand better, in terms of health care in the US. And if we do those things, I think we'll prevent the pitchforks, and I think we'll actually have a better system or a better alternative system possibly in the future, that will do what we want it to do. Education is the key to all of this. Yeah. I mean, the patient has to be better informed, better educated. That's a responsibility that they have to have. When choosing where to go and who to, you know, their their personal health care needs, employers are the same, but at a multiple. Mhmm. Right? Because of the number of lives that they're impacting and and in some ways responsible for. Mhmm. So there are people there are organizations out there ready to to share, to educate, to engage. Go find them. Yeah. Pick their brain. Learn, from them and with them, and then make the right right choice for your business. Yep. But in the age of education, in the age of information that we live in right now, ignorance and uneducated guesses have big impacts. There's too much access to information nowadays. So if you don't know something or your main ignorant, it's kind of a choice at this point. Yeah. Yeah. I would agree. I appreciate you being here. It's a pleasure, man. It was fun. You're welcome back anytime. Alright. Let's do it. Alright. Thanks, Dave. Thanks.