Even as a financial instrument, it's not getting the job done.

When merchant boats were sailing around the world for the first time, we needed a way to minimize losses. Thus, we came up with insurance.

But now, we can send millions of dollars to the other side of the world in seconds only costing pennies.

Our health & wellbeing should be treated differently than wooden boats lost at sea.

@mattrmd You're right -- The first step in fixing these problems starts with being honest and logical.

If we see constraints limiting our output, it's not smart to add more constraints. Yet we do it every year with more regulation and bad software.

I think we are exhibiting a major case of sunk cost fallacy in healthcare. For the most part, the $3 Trillion economy healthcare operates in has been an experiment for the past 100 years. While we're getting further off track each year, we continue the same irrational behavior because of the time, effort, & capital already sunk is the broken system.

Sometimes we've got to wise up and cut our losses.

For starters, I believe we can cut our healthcare costs by 50% if we change how we pay for services.

See, there's an inherent conflict of interest in the health insurance business model. For every dollar your insurer pays in claims is a dollar less that goes to their profits. So when something bad happens to you, their interests are directly conflicted with yours.

Why do we think this is a good plan? It makes terrible economic sense for 99% of the population.

Payments from patients to physicians and other healthcare providers should be quicker, cheaper, and easier. We have the technology. We just have to remove insurance from the equation.

@mattrmd I would argue that we're not having a shortage of primary care physicians. With 2 hours of computer time required for 1 hour of patient face time, we're just being inefficient with time.

100,000 physicians * 5 hours/day computer work = 500,000 extremely valuable, but wasted hours.

How many patients could be seen with those extra hours? How many lives could be saved?

Hello, friends! My name is Brennen Hodge, and I'm one of the founders of Citizen Health.

I am a definite optimist and a person who sees the world as it should be. I believe every day is an opportunity to build a better future we all want to live in.

My background has been in technology, science, & business. Over the past 10 years, I've started four tech companies that have led me to where I'm at now with Citizen Health. My previous company in the pharmaceutical analytics world opened my eyes to how bad healthcare was and that it was only getting worse.

I'm slightly obsessed with the mission we're on at Citizen Health. We're not building a simple product or service with plans to sell to Amazon or Google. We're building a community of people who want to make healthcare better for the next generation.

My hopes for this community are to build meaningful relationships with people who believe the same as me and actually want to get to work fixing healthcare.

I look forward to this journey with everyone!