My name is Brennen Hodge and I'm an entrepreneur on a social mission to fix our failing healthcare system.
Hi everyone!
My name is Brennen Hodge and I'm an entrepreneur on a social mission to fix our failing healthcare system. I've decided that I will not passively sit back and watch as corrupt politicians, greedy pharmaceutical companies, and unethical health insurance companies take advantage of us by charging more and more for healthcare, only for us to get less and for their profits & bonuses to increase.
I believe the health of a person should take precedence over corporate profit.
I believe in prosperity for all, not extreme financial gain for a few.
I believe that the power of the people is greater than the people in power.
I believe it's time to make a change.
I know you've heard the quote, "If your dreams don't scare you, they're not big enough." Well, I've been working on a dream (or vision, rather) over the past few years that absolutely terrifies and excites me at the same time. This is something so audacious and so radical that I have a hard time telling people about it because it seems impossible to the ones who blindly believe & follow the status quo. But all of you on Steemit will get it. You and I are the pioneers of this new beautiful decentralized technology called the blockchain. You and I together are the ones that will build the future for ourselves and for future generations to come.
Everything started falling into place when I held my first born son a few days after he was home from the hospital. There's something very profound about bringing a new human being into this world that makes you view life from a higher perspective. As I held him, I imagined what his life would look like when he was my age and how much the world would progress (or regress) in the realm of healthcare. Combining everything I knew about the advances of artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, biotechnology, omic research, quantum computing, and just about every other exponential technology, I envisioned what the future could be and should be.
For the sake of my son, my current & future family members, and every beating heart on this planet, I've dedicated the next 30 years of my life to build this future.
So what's this big idea?
I've developed a system that eliminates the need for health insurance. The whole industry -- gone. No longer needed. I'm calling it "Citizen Health -- Healthcare for the people, by the people."
I've constructed the concept behind Citizen Health as if there were no existing healthcare landscape. As if we blew up our current system and gathered our greatest minds together to develop a better way to do healthcare. I imagined what healthcare of the future could be when we use technologies & capabilities of tomorrow, not the business models we've been keeping on life support for the past 50 years.
To build an organization like Citizen Health, I had to think differently. So, with a solid idea of what the future could and should look like, I started working backwards. It's much easier to connect the dots thinking that way -- the status quo doesn't apply.
Here's a brief overview:
Citizen Health is a new health ecosystem that involves a peer-to-peer funding, collaboration, & governance platform built on the blockchain that pools money & resources together to pay health professionals directly and instantly. We're going to crowdfund & crowdsource an entirely new ecosystem (I'm launching an ICO soon) where there are no health insurance middlemen (it's run by AI, smart contracts, & chatbots) to convolute the relationship between health professionals and patients. The perverse incentives & moral hazards that for-profit insurance companies and third party payers create do not belong in a system that manages our health & well-being. Citizen Health eliminates the need for the 300+ different health insurance companies completely. I'm not trying to compete with them. I'm changing the game.
The foundations of Citizen Health:
- Peer-to-Peer HealthFund: This P2P mega fund consists of cryptocurrencies collected from monthly memberships, investments from other entities, and from token sales. These funds will pay & reward doctors, patients, developers, scientists, and other participants.
- Collaboration Engine: Our collaboration engine will be the driving force connecting intelligent people from all over the earth to focus on solving problems in science and medicine. This will include health professionals, scientists, developers, engineers, researchers, caregivers, etc.
- Community Governance Platform: This will be a hybrid of liquid democracy and futarchy. All decisions pertaining to Citizen Health will be made on this layer and all token holders will be able to propose, discuss, and vote for these decisions.
- HealthGrid: This will consist of user generated health records, genomic data, microbiomic data, and numerous other data points from health trackers and wearables.
The purpose of the above stack is straightforward: To build a healthcare system that is 10x better than our current global health system. With all the exponential technologies about to converge in the next few years, we're about to enable opportunities that were never financially or technically feasible before. For the first time in human history, we'll be able to practice proactive, preventive medicine, not the costly & inefficient reactive care we've been used to.
Adding to this boldness, I believe the foundations we're building with Citizen Health will enable us to cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by 2050. With the progression of Moore's Law and the advances of nanotechnology, biotechnology, omic research, and CRISPR, we're about to create a future where this is possible.
The turning point
Over the past few years, I've done significant research in crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, and crypto economics which has changed my perspectives on capitalism and corporate structures. I believe our future will not be the "big government, big corporations" we commonly see in science fiction movies, but rather taking the structure of decentralized collaborative organizations where tasks, services, knowledge, & value are distributed among many rather than in hierarchical controlled silos. I see this transformation happening in healthcare, leading to an ecosystem that is financed, owned, operated, and governed by the only people who matter in the equation -- the patient & health professional.
I'm not getting into the blockchain specifics right now, but the opportunities this technology enables will open up entirely new economic business models that haven't been conceived before. We need what the blockchain offers in order to grow AI, robotics, healthcare, finance, government, and the future of the world. I believe you see the same opportunity I'm seeing with blockchain tech.
Here's the deal. We are at a turning point in our country. We MUST do something to fix this broken mess or else we're going to continue on this path:
This chart is behind a few years, but I'll fill you in on where we're at now. For the first time in decades, our life expectancy in America has DECLINED. We're now spending $10,000 per person for our life expectancy to decrease. I know there are plenty of factors that come to play in this equation, but I'm pointing the finger at the Medical Industrial Complex we have created.
What's next?
Disrupting the American Medical Industry might seem like a pie-in-the-sky dream, but I've spent the past two years of my life researching and planning this out and I have a clear roadmap to move forward. I'll be releasing details over the coming weeks.
I know I'm not going to be able to do this alone -- It's going to take thousands, if not millions of people joining forces together to bring on a revolution.
Would you like to help me in this endeavor? If this message rings true to you, please share it with your colleagues, friends, and family. Upvote it, share it, resteem it -- whatever it takes!
Do you have any stories about terrible experiences with health insurance or the medical industry? Do you have any suggestions on what you would like to see implemented in a new healthcare system? Care to express what you dislike about the American (or any other country) medical system? If so, please comment below. Let's get the conversation going!
To keep up with our news & updates, sign up for the newsletter here: http://citizenhealth.co/
Thank you for taking the time to read this,
-Brennen Hodge
I say go for it man!
My brother and I refuse to fund big pharma healthcare system as it stands. We pay cash and get blood tests every year, checkups, and dental.
All cash basis. Or barter.
Stay healthy and stay away from pharma. Use oral cannabis and other herbs instead.
Cannabis taken orally prevents:
Dementia
Cancers of all kinds including brain cancer
Improves immune system
Cannabis oil on skin prevents:
Skin cancer
Age spots
I strongly agree. Harbs are lot better than pharma. Nature already gave us everything we need to stay healthy. In fact just consider the benefits of seasonal fruits, its has tons of anti disease prevention vitamins. Unfortunately many of us way too much dependents on medicines instead of these natural resources.
The american healthcare system is so damn bad. I live in the UK but unfortunately our government health service is going to be oligarchically privatized (not true privatisation) and I see our life expectancy falling as a result as a nation. So awful.
Great great stuff @brennenhodge makes me think I should give up work and do something truly wonderful to help the world like yourself.
Surfyogi, when you say "Cannabis taken orally" do you mean simply eating pot?
Boiled down in a rice cooker using alcohol, creates a pure resin of the plant that can be taken as an oral medicine. I like to boil off ALL impurities including water and alcohol, until there is simply the resin of the flowers that is left behind; a dark hash oil. Very small doses of this can be taken orally, like the size of 1 or 2 rice grains...
Alcohol? Do you mean Isopropyl or vodka? Seems tedious. Just throw some dried bud into a smoothie and be done with it. It's likely to be healthier raw anyway :)
I would say you are VERY POORLY informed, so I would not even know where to start..
Turns out you can use Everclear, OR 99% ISO, but it's a complex subject, and I would not attempt to try to educated everyone, starting at all different levels of chemistry knowledge.
Turns out, it does help to have a brain, and know what words like "decarboxylation" mean.
No offense, but you might not be well informed on this subject. It usually helps to BAKE weed if you want to eat it, for example...
Hi Brennen. I just joined steemit today and decided to search Health and this is the first article I have read on the site. I am an internal medicine physician finishing up my training in 10 days or so. Unfortunately speaking in regards to Healthcare in America, I believe there are challenges that we will need to overcome which other countries have eclipsed decades ago. 50% of healthcare is spend within 6 months of death. 50% PERCENT. In certain European countries intubations and dialysis are not offered after a certain age. I am sorry, are we outliving other countries? No. I spent a decent amount of my training in Intensive Care Units. Its difficult to explain to certain families to let go of patients who are brain dead let alone bring them to grasp the reality that we are actually hurting their loved ones more than we are helping. THE REAL PRIZE IS IN PREVENTIVE MEDICINE. Welcome to America, how can i prescribe you medication if your not sick? One thing people also tend to forget is LAWYERS. Laws in place have made it difficult to actually treat patients to the best of our ability. Instead we practice protective medicine where we make sure we will not be getting sued for not prescribing a certain medication even though it may not benefit the patient. If I get started on pharma companies and "Not For Profit" hospitals I probably wouldn't get much sleep tonight by the time I am finished typing.
And of course, let's not forget the lobbyists. Oh, hang on, they call them specialist consultants these days don't they?
"THE REAL PRIZE IS IN PREVENTIVE MEDICINE"
100% agree and that's one of the main objectives of Citizen Health.
You may have read it before, but the book "An American Sickness" hits on a good bit of what you mentioned. I highly recommend it! https://www.amazon.com/American-Sickness-Healthcare-Became-Business/dp/1594206759
And welcome to Steemit!
take a loo at EECP Brennen, I think this may interest u a lot. There are many golden nuggets out there.
Welcome to Steemit Brennen!
I am sharing my first Steemit post to give you a hint of where I have been in the health care arena. https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@marymg2014/my-steemit-introduction-life-after-employment-in-the-healthcare-field
I applaud your mission and see it as an absolute necessity for humans to survive. While I understand your passion for technology:
It is crucial that the deceptive practices brought to light in this post be eliminated at all cost.
https://steemit.com/life/@camille1234/oh-what-a-tangled-web-we-weave-when-first-we-practice-to-deceive
As good as technology may be, getting back to the basics and treating health issues with what was provided to us thousands of years ago should also be part of the plan. https://steemit.com/cannabis/@marymg2014/us-government-patent-6-630-507-on-cannabis
As you can see the government is taking all the steps to gain full control in that area. This must also be stopped because all the research shows it works. If it did not would the government go to such lengths?
I am sure you understand the enormous opposition you are facing https://steemit.com/vaccines/@marymg2014/if-you-think-the-fight-against-forced-vaccinations-is-just-about-children-think-again-adults-they-are-targeting-you-too
so given your obvious resolve to this issue I say they are in for a fight!
I have followed, upvoted and resteemed your post. And followed your website. I look forward to seeing you succeed.
Hi @marymg2014!
It sounds like we're on the same page:
"Focusing on a healthy diet by avoiding all the toxic garbage that has invaded our food system is also a high priority. "
I'm a firm believer that if we eat healthy foods (not processed garbage) and have the proper exercise, 80% of our health problems would be eliminated. You may have watched this already, but I highly recommend the documentary, Forks Over Knives (https://www.forksoverknives.com/).
And I'm all for natural cures/treatments -- I'm a huge advocate for medical marijuana. Big pharma just wants to make money from their patent portfolio and they don't really care if they kill people or bankrupt them in the process. It's estimated that less than 50% of all prescribed medications have a positive effect on the patient. It's scary to take a shotgun approach to treating people.
As for the government patenting cannabis.... WHAT?! This is the first I've heard of this. Time for some research..
Thanks for your thoughtful responses to my first post on Steemit! I look forward to having many more discussions!
I agree .. There is a bit more though. You might be overlooking Geo Engineering and EMFs where we just can't avoid it. It gets interesting though I have found some really good ideas for those too. Ken Rohla (try youtube) is yet another person to touch on this. He gives a very powerful message, it is worth trying out imv..
Chemtrails are a huge problem but unfortunately, there is not enough awareness, yet.
Welcome to Steemit Brennen!!!
I hope you have a great new time in our community of steemians. You look like you're going to be a great addition and I will definitely follow.
Being on a whole food plant-based lifestyle myself and from the USA I agree that your diet and exercise can eliminate most if not all your health issues. I recently, well within the last year lost 70lbs and all my aches and pains disappeared, blood pressure dropped to normal to excellent range.
I also read forksoverknifes and saw the film, great stuff. Just keep with it and you're going to do very well.
Cheers
Mark
I have seen Forks Over Knives but I follow the recommendations of the Weston Price Foundation https://www.westonaprice.org/ It is the most heart healthy nutritional approach. Please check it out. My HDL is 80 I have had many physicians want to learn my approach to eating so they can share it with their patients.
Another assault on the the health of people is Fluoride:
https://steemit.com/drugs/@marymg2014/fluoride-the-damaging-neurotoxin-that-is-deliberately-put-in-drinking-water
Our area has a high percentage of memory spectrum disorders. Almost ALL of the ones I know about are on city water with flouride and dozens of other chemicals. Hmmmmmm....
It is criminal that they tamper with and destroy the most important nutrient our bodies need for life..... water. All I can say is that it takes a cruel, mentally sick person to do that.
Listen to Bill Gates opinion on vaccines and depopulation. Disgusting!
Lies from start to finish...
You did hear him did say that VACCINES are important because they will DEPOPULATE the world?
Yes, it is quite starteling is it not? But also the other "facts" are lies, that is why I commented "lies from start to finnish". I did not know that before, now I do.
More food for though. Truth Stream Media has a great reputation for their research. https://steemit.com/dna/@abcdoctor/maybe-crispr-isn-t-such-a-good-idea-after-all
I'll definitely give you a follow just because I admire your courage in going up against what is and will "likely" be an established business model of fraud that will l carry on into the future. I doubt you can break the bond between govmint and big business in the health care sector. Not in defense sector...not in health care. Those are "sacred" bonds between govmint and corporate America/Wall St. If you provide further updates...slow things down and take the issues one at a time instead of all at once please, my brain can't handle "pondering" what you just wrote before you make me think about a new topic I have heard nothing about. Take it slooowly. And wait until bitcoin is at like $500 before you do you coin ico also. If you launched that right now it would be driven to a price where it would get cut in half 5 times over the next year. The sheeple might lose interest in an endeavor where the "crypto value" is declining from lunacy levels. :-)
I and my family are currently smack in the middle of this healthcare mess. Enbrel is 1000/week for my husband. We've literally been told to sell our vehicle and home until we are on the street in order to pay. I am intereted in your ideas. Wondering how you will handle HIPPA and security? Heres the post I made about our struggles, its not a long read and we are definitely not alone trying to afford meds (Medicare wanted $5,000 up front to cover it for the year):
https://steemit.com/steemit/@farmandadventure/the-most-important-blog-of-my-life
Good luck...hope this works!
My heart goes out to you and your family.
I'm sure you're aware of the new biosimilar out there called Erelzi. It won't be out until late 2018-2019 due to legal battles with the patent holder of Enbrel.
Here's what makes me furious. There are legal loopholes that pharmaceutical companies have been taking advantage of for decades now. Called "Pay to Delay," these companies are using legal tactics to delay other companies from bringing cheaper generics/biologics to market just so they can profit a few more years off their original patent. This happens for EVERY drug. How many patients & families have faced the financial struggles because of greed? This is why I'm taking a stand and doing something about it.
Here's reference to the loophole I mentioned: http://californiahealthline.org/morning-breakout/drug-companies-use-loopholes-in-hatchwaxman-act-to-delay-generic-competition-ftc-report-says/
As for HIPAA & security, well, that is one of the strongest benefits of blockchain technology. I'll get into detail with this when I release the technical whitepaper. I've also been dealing with HIPAA for the past few years with my previous company. Those outdated laws are seriously hampering innovation.
Thank you for your reply. I actually had not heard of Erelzi as we ask all the time if there are other biologics in testing or approved and we're told no by drs, pharmacy, and labs.
Im sure HIPPA was engineered that way for a reason. Good on you for getting this idea hatched..cant wait to see where it leads!
I will follow your posts on this subject with great interest.
I wrote about this type of corruption that the Insurance Companies in particular are involved in. He says that Doctors are being attacked by legislation. Doctors are being asked to break their Hippocratic Oath.
https://steemit.com/health/@canadian-coconut/dr-phan-speaks-out-a-medical-doctor-who-actually-follows-the-hippocratic-oath-bravo-vaxxed-stories
You are right that something has to be done about this.
Welcome to Steemit Brennen and congratulations on an excellent first post.
Myself, and a number of other steemians have been doing our little bit to raise awareness about the negative impact that the healthcare system (amongst other things) has on our lives.
You have taken on a far bigger challenge but I believe that you can do it. I sincerely desire you to make a great impact.
I'm following you and I've resteemed this post. I look forward to reading your next post and wish you all the very best in achieving your stated goals.
P.S. You have a beautiful family. Cherish them everyday!
Thanks @steemtruth!
Let me know how I can contribute to your awareness campaign. I have years of research just waiting to come out!
And thanks for the comments about my family. My son is actually playing with my feet right now as I type this :-) I guess that means it's time to put the laptop away!
Thanks for replying @brennenhodge
Right now I am most interested in the fraud that you may have witnessed whether that be bogus research and medical studies, bribes, blackmail (eg loss of license or work for non-compliance), on-going attempts and tactics used to silence whistle-blowers, pay-offs etc.
By way of background here are some of my posts on similar topics:
The Harmful Parasite that is Living Inside of 250 Million Americans - Part 1
CONFESSIONS of a BIG PHARMA (Rx) DRUG PUSHER - Gwen Olsen's Story!
Big Pharma Spends Much More $$$ On Marketing Than It Does On Research
Boy With 46 DD BREASTS that Sued Johnson & Johnson & WON!
DOCTORS EXPOSED - Doctors are Bribed and Compromised by Big Pharma - Get the Facts!
Welcome. Come join us on Discord!
https://discord.gg/HYj4yvw
I really agree with this paper, anyone who has power must exist in the midst of the weak
It is not good if we just watch a failing healthBecause health is very important in life, without good health will affect the social culture and the order of life.I like things like this
welcome bro :)
I believe we do not have a "Health" care system, we have a "Sickness" care system. The goals and incentives are designed to keep people functioning while requiring continual medication. It's very similar to a drug dealer with his users, keep them from OD'ing, but needing their next fix. I would like to see a large focus of this be on preventative care and natural treatments.
A system similar to Steemit with reputation and user rating would decrease the need for the exorbitant levels of malpractice doctors, surgeons and hospitals need to carry. It would reward the good doctors and weed out the bad ones.
I look forward to following your progress.
You hit the nail on the head, @swenger. The core mission of Citizen Health is to keep people healthy. I think everyone is too concerned with the 'care' part of health. How about we focus on getting our bodies to a point where we don't need that 'care' at all? Seems logical to me.
We haven't been asking the right questions. Out of the $3.4 Trillion we spend on healthcare, what should be the main objective? The answer is to keep people healthy, not to make people money. Keep them out of the hospitals.
Once we ask the right questions, we can get to work on producing the correct answers.
Exactly. That's exactly what we have. Because God forbid we actually heal someone and then they won't need their doctor or drugs anymore. It's a great system if you're immoral. We've got to start taking care of ourselves. Doctors have gotten rid of their Hippocratic oath. They do plenty of harm. Let's see, we'll use some thing that causes cancer (chemotherapy) to cure cancer? Brilliant!
Today's Hippocratic oath, "Do no harm... to your wallet".
Nice one.