Right.

Um, and, and these Medicare Advantage plans have gotten really popular.

Like h- a little more than half of seniors on Medicare are in these plans, and that's 'cause they offer some benefits that traditional Medicare, or they o- usually offer some benefits that traditional Medicare doesn't, like vision and hearing and dental, which are pretty important.

And they often have lower out-of-pocket costs, including, um, reducing the premium that you would pay.

'Cause Medicare, as I found out as I started investigating all this, isn't free healthcare.

You pay a premium for it.

And there's, there's a whole other side to what's missing from regular Medicare, which is for most of regular healthcare, like if you're not going into the hospital to s- as an inpatient or at the pharmacy counter, pretty much everything else, Medicare only pays, like, 80%.

Yeah, so who's most affected by this?

They only have to take you once when you first go on Medicare.

When you when you go into Medicare for the first time, they have to take you in a few states.

They have what's called guaranteed issue and they have to take you anytime.

But generally for most of us, yeah, they don't have to.

And it's the it's the it's a kind of pre Obamacare world where they're like, well, you have preexisting conditions.

No, we're not going to sell you anything.

So that's a big shock to a lot of people.

There is a lot of help available, right?

To start, it's important to note that not every hospital system is playing the same financial game.

There is a spectrum, right? And on the one end, we've got, like, urban safety net hospitals and rural critical access hospitals, which exist to serve people.

They don't make a ton of money.

They are often in very tough financial situations.

And on the other end, these hospitals will also complain about their financial situations.

But you've got the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic and their like.

And sharing a tier, perhaps not quite as high as them, are tons of big academic medical centers.

So who's to blame for why healthcare is so expensive? Well, it may depend on who you ask.

Can you talk a little bit more about that and what made you wanna get to the bottom of this system?

Oh, sure.

I mean, I was born with a little congenital heart condition.

I have to get m- seen every year.

Doesn't bother me.

I can do whatever I want pretty much.

I'm not supposed to lift heavy, heavy weights, but, like, I can do whatever I want.

What is the biggest surprise about Medicare generally, but specifically, like, costs that you wish everybody knew before they turned 65?