Join host Leo Damasco and guest Samuel Hill, on Telemedicine Talks as he shares his journey from shadowing surgeons to building AI-driven health solutions. Learn how doctors can rewire their mindset for entrepreneurship, spot healthcare problems as opportunities, and leverage AI for transparent insurance—saving users hundreds on MRIs and more.
This episode is sponsored by Lightstone DIRECT. Lightstone DIRECT invites you to partner with a $12B AUM real estate institution as you grow your portfolio. Access the same single-asset multifamily and industrial deals Lightstone pursues with its own capital – Lightstone co-invests a minimum of 20% in each deal alongside individual investors like you. You’re an institution. Time to invest like one.
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Can AI make health insurance transparent and affordable for independent doctors and 1099 workers?
In this episode of Telemedicine Talks, Samuel Hill discusses his evolution from aspiring dentist and football hopeful to tech entrepreneur co-founding Molly Health Insurance with Wyatt. Inspired by a $900 MRI savings hack, Sam explains how Molly uses AI agents to demystify coverage, predict costs, and empower users with data-driven choices. He offers doctors practical advice on transitioning to startups: embrace vulnerability, network beyond medical circles, and separate clinical expertise from business risk. From failed ventures like Bridge Connector to acquisitions at Stepson, Sam's story highlights the grit needed to solve healthcare's red tape.
Top 3 Takeaways:
About the Show:
Telemedicine Talks explores the evolving world of digital health, helping physicians navigate new opportunities, regulatory challenges, and career transitions in telemedicine.
About the Guest:
Samuel Hill is a serial entrepreneur, product owner, and AI architect with a passion for disrupting healthcare. Co-founder of Molly Health Insurance, he's spent five years at the forefront of AI models, agents, and APIs, previously contributing to Stepson's acquisition and navigating high-growth (and high-failure) startups like Bridge Connector. A self-described "health guru and status quo disruptor," Sam draws from shadowing his orthopedic surgeon uncle to build transparent, tech-driven solutions for independent workers and physicians.
🔗 Connect with Samuel Hill:
Website: https://www.mollihealth.com
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/samuelgarretthill
About the Host:
Dr. Leo Damasco – Pediatrician and emergency medicine doctor turned telemedicine advocate, helping physicians transition to digital health.
Connect with Leo Damasco:
Leo@telemedicinetalks.com
https://www.telemedicinetalks.com
[00:00:00] Welcome back everybody to telemedicine talks. This is Leo Damco, your host, and we have a great guest. This is Samuel Hill. he is the co-founder of Molly Health Insurance. Now, we had his partner, here, a few episodes back, Wyatt. And he talked you up and said, Hey, this is a great guy to talk to.
Samuel is an entrepreneur, product owner, engineer architect, health guru, early adopter, status quo, disruptor and optimist with a strong technology background working with AI models, agents and API systems. And over the past year or past five years, excuse me, he's been in the cutting edge of technology, developing this passion for building product driven solutions and.
Wyatt was like, Hey, your audience is looking into technology, is looking into building businesses. You need to talk to this guy. So thank you for coming on. I definitely want to get your insight and reach where you are right now and your experiences.
So thank you. Yeah. Thanks for having me. ask this question all the [00:01:00] time. so is this what you wanted to be when you were growing up is this, Hey, I am gonna be this entrepreneur. I am gonna create this, healthcare, AI insurance model and, I'm gonna help startups and be in this technology space.
To start off, I wanted to be a dentist as a young kid. Smart man. There it is. Yeah. All the smart guys go into dentistry . There you go. and then slowly transitioned to enjoying sports. Wanted to become a football player to whatever degree I can. It was Driven by entrepreneurial spirit because at the end of the day, it was just to get a scholarship, see where you can.
Thrive in that space and take it. I, I didn't have a passion for football. I would say it was more of, I found an opportunity there, but once I had the opportunity to go to college and really just cement, my journey into business, I took advantage of that opportunity. Yeah. I shadowed my uncle at one point, who was a fabulous orthopedic surgeon out in Kenosha, and that was when I was in high school, previous to going to college.
And his wealth of [00:02:00] knowledge was amazing to see. When I shouted him, I learned a lot. I learned a lot about how insurance worked in that moment. I can get into that later, but you learn a lot when you go behind the scenes with the doctors on what they do in the day to day. I chose not to go now that route, and a lot of people can attest.
It's a long route. So I wanted to go fast and so I chose this route, but in theory, I found myself in the healthcare space because I wanted to help physicians. Nice. Nice. And so walk us through, walk us through your journey. So walk us through your experience and how you got to, the healthcare space.
'cause you started out technology, right? Not necessarily in the healthcare space and yeah. So walk us through that. How did you get where you are now? Yeah, very high level. Joined a lighting industry. blog that had a lot of success where he was stealth mode for a while, just Getting into conversations with all the CEOs of that space.
And I was just blogging, putting it out there for him. Started in marketing in that space. Eventually I was his everything guy. Just having to [00:03:00] do everything. and that's where I learned about how to get into web development, web management, learn how to, build things essentially. And as a generalist there, and then landed my first job with this.
Company called Bridge Connector out in Nashville. That's a crazy story. You should look into that. raised a lot of money and then a couple months later, completely done so, grew really fast. I was like the 70th employee there. Went to like 1 56, Wow. And then, just shut down at one point. So I learned a lot there from my venture capital route.
That was super interesting to see. Always had, a knack for wanting to go out to the big cities, New York, San Francisco. So after college saw that COVID hit, uh, joined a company that I was actually working with called Stepson when I was at that company, and it shut down. And I told them, I'm not interested in using your product anymore.
We are no longer a thing. And they go, okay, just come join us. So I joined them while I was in Nashville. They're in San Jose. I ended up moving to Miami. Because I wanted to still live in that same environment. I've always wanted to live in a big city , but I chose Miami, because of the time period as [00:04:00] well.
It was a great option. It was a lot of fun In Miami. and then, yeah, I'll get into that company a little bit, on how we had a lot of fun, with some absolute geniuses over there. and then I ended up wanting to go back to the startup route after we got acquired there, and, found this as an opportunity to start Molly with Wyatt.
Yeah, no, that's amazing. That's, it sounds like. you've been involved in a lot of different steps,throughout building businesses, throughout startups, technology, marketing, so forth and so on. And, one of, one of the big draws of bringing you on this podcast is, we were talking about this before we actually started recording, was a lot of doctors here, right?
a lot of the doctors in the audience here, want to gain freedom,are going into the telemedicine telehealth space. And start up their own business, right? Start up, maybe, a telehealth website. maybe even just go,a hybrid model where they keep their brick and mortar, but also, start up, a practice on the telemedicine space.
But a lot of us, dunno how to do that. there is no [00:05:00] class on. How to create a startup in med school, right? There's a lot of different things, but we were never necessarily taught that, as,a course and we just don't know how. And I think we don't know how to approach it.
We don't know the mindset that's needed. So can you comment on, how, just give us advice on, how to dive into that space from what you've learned. There absolutely has to be a rewiring that occurs for individuals after 12 years of school. School is very structured. It there takes a lot of discipline there, but it's by the rules and it works very well.
When you are in your own practice, you are looked at under a microscope when you're doing practice of performing to the highest your ability, and you want to be a very risk averse when it comes to doing your own practice to ensure you're doing everything properly step by step. That's where doctors succeed and excel very well, and they're very good at it.
And then they come to this space where now they go, I want to have this entrepreneurial side of myself, [00:06:00] and you have to rewire yourself and create this whole left right brain mechanism that you have of now I have to find out how I can take on risk without feeling like I'm destroying my own brand and finding out that this is who I am.
And rebranding yourself to have this belief that you can do it. And. It comes with everything. So when a computer science degree is obtained from any university, you were learn the foundations and you weren't taught to take risk for the most part there risk is always learn by just going out and doing it and taking action, and that's where you usually learn.
No one learns how to, for the most part, go on to Wall Street and take large bets. No one learns crypto when you're in college . For physicians when it comes to being able to translate to this space, it's just a willingness to understand that you can separate business from your own practice and your own day to day of what you do and operate.
And just know that it's okay to have a learning experience and to not know the next step you're going to take, and you can have [00:07:00] success And just always be willing to ask other people in your space, how can I do this? I learned that from other individuals. Always be vulnerable when you're doing business and act like you need help all the time.
'cause people want to give it to you. See that? That's the hard part. I think, a lot of us, right? when we go through school, a lot of us have been outta school now and practicing as attending doctors for a long time and we've reached a point where we are the bosses and now we are,
leading things, leading, you know, we are in charge and getting to that point where now we're going back and really going back to the very beginning and now asking Right. And being vulnerable. we're trained not to. we're trained we to show a strong face regardless. And, asking a seasoned doctor to be vulnerable to, show their weaknesses, show and admit that maybe they don't know everything is gonna be tough. And,and how important is that? what's the best way to, in [00:08:00] your mind, to get outta that mindset and say, Hey, I really need to admit that yes, I may not be the know all in this space. See problems, what doctors don't see is problems within their own practice. 'cause everything's perfect there 'cause they're the boss, right? So when doctors are operating outside of their own mechanism of their day-to-day practice.
There's plenty of problems in healthcare, and when you see those problems and look at them and say, I can solve those, I have a belief in myself that I can solve those problems that are around me in my day to day. Those opportunities are there for you. You can solve them, and there are much needed solutions in this space.
I guarantee I would not be in the place I am today going after solving healthcare problems if I became a physician. At my age, right? I would still be practicing to become a physician, and then I'd have to understand that I can expand myself outside of my practice [00:09:00] and I can go and solve these problems.
We've met with doctors that really are frustrated with this space. They look at this and they say, you know what? I'm so sick of this. I'm so tired of it. You want to make society better. You see the problems that persist. That's your driving factor. Yeah. and so when you talk to those doctors, do they actually go out and do it or.
do they have a hard time saying, Hey, I have a problem here. There's a problem it should be better, right? Is one thing. But actually going out and changing that and being an agent of change takes a whole new level, right? Have what's, when you talk to those doctors and you see the doctors that are actually aging change versus the doctors that are just, I guess just, talking.
What's the difference that you see in the people that are actually making change? Your network is probably all doctors when you are a doctor yourself, yeah, you have friends in your neighborhood that aren't doctors, but when you want to tap into this space, take your [00:10:00] doctor hat off. Do not walk around as a doctor when you are networking with individuals at these, business meetups.
Take it off for a bit. Play dumb. 'cause you're not. You have to play dumb, play it for a little while and then when you find an opportunity that you think you can seize on and learn an additional skill, which is always gonna be, there's plenty of skills in business of being a generalist. that's nothing to brag on.
That's me. I love everything. I love economics. I love tech. I love fixing individual industries that are being predisposed to all these politicians around them. Everything like that, And to that, tee Healthcare has a lot of red tape through that. So you have to really dig in and find out where the opportunities are.
'cause there's a lot of barrier to entry to actually make a difference in this space. So you need to meet people that are out of it. Take your doctor hat off. But at the end of the day, when you learn and adapt those new skills and say, I'm invested in this. I want to take on this problem and fix it.
Put the doctor hat right back on and use it as leverage. Say I'm a doctor. people love hearing that a doctor is on their team as well, because [00:11:00] they've seen the other side of the house. And they definitely wanna fix that. Actually. That's a great point. And I've been able to talk to a few CEOs now on this podcast, and they've mirrored that point is that they love having doctors on their team, especially on the product side.
Where doctors usually aren't comfortable being right. they love being on the clinical side, so forth and so on. But a few of the CEOs already mentioned had, Hey, the most successful teams I've been on is having a clinical guy on the side. using their knowledge, using LD leverage, but not necessarily truly as a doctor, but using what they know.
As a doctor and applying it to the business side, to the start of, to that side. So that's awesome that you say that because, yeah,it's meant to be repeated. the people listening to this podcast, they really want to break into this space, and a lot of the questions that I get is, how can I be more than just a clinician?
and so when you've met these doctors that have played a role like that, what advice can you give our listeners? [00:12:00] And how they approach it and how they tackle that role. And there's tons of different roles here. There's a role where you may want to go start your own practice, right?
And those are doctors I've talked to and you decide you want to go continue your own practice, but you want to take it on and take on some of that risk, right? But then you want to go join a business like ours where you are still in the healthcare space, but you're solving problems exterior to the day-to-day practice, right?
But either way, you're taking on risk. You're going to have to move differently because you'll learn that there's such things as called burn rates. There's things where you only have so much that you need the revenue. If the money's not coming in, then, and if no one's interested in your products, then you need to figure something out tomorrow super fast, right?
So then you change the mentality of, I'm a scientist, I need to be very granular with my day-to-day operations, and I need to move fast and break things. Sometimes we work with doctors and scientists and we say, Hey, can you give us just a demo of what you think is going on here? Can you dig into this data that we're seeing and really see if we can provide value to our [00:13:00] customers,in our ideal customer profile, and be able to actually drive something here.
And they go, yeah, absolutely. And then it's just we're moving so fast and we're just like, come on. Come on,move. it's okay. Don't be embarrassed to throw it at us. Everyone's wrong Off the rip. 90% of what we do is wrong. 10% hits. So move fast. Break things is definitely something you have to get used to when you move into the space.
Versus that very granular scientific process. I, that, and just hearing that makes me a little nervous. Because that's not how we're trained. We are trained to be very deliberate with what we do. And moving fast. it's, it is funny. There's a saying that, a lot of us say it's smooth is fast, right? And getting through, if you rush it, you're gonna mess up. You don't want to do that. You want to stay slow, deliberate, smooth. But what you're saying is, hey, sometimes you just gotta do the exact opposite. Sometimes you gotta take that risk and sometimes you, yeah, you have to accept the fact that yeah, you're gonna end up wrong, right?
and in the medical space, if we end up [00:14:00] wrong, then maybe somebody dies. And that's probably not the best thing in the world. But, taking a risk in that space, you know what, what's gonna happen, right? what's the worst that could happen if you take a risk in that space?
Yeah. and is it easily changeable? can you fix it? Yes. And there's a clear differentiation between building a computer and moving fast and breaking it and selling the computer and then it breaks, and then. Moving fast and breaking things in your Theranos, and you did blood tests and 50% of the blood tests were wrong, and now people are running around thinking that they don't have something when they do, right?
So when I say that grain of salt, know when you need to stop yourself and decide and like grain of salt because more so just where you are currently at as a business. Understand. Can we move fast and break things here? The majority of the time, I'd say yes. go ahead, test things, break it. Learn.
Again. Iterate, but fake it till you make it is also a motto that people live by and you can fake it till you make it at Steve Jobs, but you can't do it when you're Theranos and. You're running [00:15:00] around giving blood tests, right? So at some point you have to sit down and that's when you really get into the details and say, can we pull this off?
But I trust you. I promise you, there are people out there that are happy to test your product. And as long as you are transparent, which in this space is something we're trying to provide, as well as transparency and pricing, as long as you're transparent with them and saying, we're trying our best here, please know that.
But if there's anything here that you know, we don't have a hundred percent conviction in, we will tell you. We are just here to try it out. No, that's amazing. 'cause again, it's that mindset, right? It's that mindset that Yeah, it's okay. to take that risk. We were talking about that earlier too.
Before we get on is this risk profile, getting into this space, the doctors may have to change a risk profile, when we practice medicine, a lot of us, we're, there's a pressure. To bat a hundred percent right to bat, straight a hundred can't miss.
But you know what you were saying was that Yeah. You should be [00:16:00] able, well, what were you saying about risk? you said it a lot, way better than I could. Yeah. I think. On top of taking on risk, which has been a topic of today, is know that the industry around you is going to be continuously moving fast, right?
Yeah. So these doctors have been moving and practicing to a very detailed oriented way. And then at some point the industry around them moves and they have to adapt very quickly, and usually they're rushed into it, right? I always use the example of when everything had to godigitized in the early two thousands.
And everything had to be electronic records and they almost forced it onto the industry because tech was such a boom at the time and tech moves unbelievably fast that these physicians had to adopt. It was an inorganic way of pushing it onto these doctors, and now you see that it's almost harmed the industry more than provided any good, right?
So just know that if you want to stay up to speed, just being informed of what this other industry is doing. We'll allow you to understand that hey, they're continuing to [00:17:00] move at the speed. I want to keep up. I wanna understand what's going on. AI scripting is coming out to be right. I want to come to understand this stuff and you'll learn how fast it's moving.
And then you'll come to almost manifest, there we go. Using a perfect manifest risk into your own profile and be like, you know what? If they're doing it fast, I can adopt this stuff too and using in my own practice. And they just have to know how when you go to your patients, 'cause you care about them.
You're adopting this new thing and we're all here to try it together. 'cause I care about you. Actually, that is a very important concept, I think, gosh, I work with another telemedicine platform and we were talking about this doctor that, is.
stuck in his own ways, his old dog, new tricks kind of thing, right? And not really necessarily adopting to the new, technology that we're asking him to adopt to, right? and what you just said reminded me of that, right?
Like you mean we can't just turn a blind eye and say, Hey, this technology, I forget it. I am, I've been practicing for 15, 20 years. [00:18:00] This new technology's coming up. Maybe I'll practice 10 more years. Who knows? I don't need to know this. I, who cares? Who cares about ai? That's not gonna be a big deal.
I'm gonna be retired by the time it really makes sense for me to figure it out. what's the harm in just, living life that way. That's hard for me to answer on a level of doctors in their day to day. But if I could look in the eyes of a consumer and a patient that comes in and I've seen other individuals using the information that they're getting from AI and their day to day, and whether it was right or not, you're gonna have people coming into your practice.
Wanting you to acknowledge that they're looking to this resource, and you either need to tell them it's right or wrong, but the way you go about understanding if it's right or wrong is to understand it, right? Yeah. So you don't need to adopt it at first, but you need to be informed of what's going on outside of your own practice.
Because if they come in, and maybe sometimes you do need an unbiased doctor that has no idea what's going on in the world, [00:19:00] maybe I'm wrong in that, but the majority of the time I'm gonna want a doctor that knows what's going on in the day to day so that they can give me the best advice. So maybe it's not as much of force yourself to implement it into your own practice, but at least understand it to see when someone comes in expecting you to at least know you can tell them, I haven't brought this in for X, Y, and Z.
Nice. Nice. Now, speaking of ai, I hear you're somewhat knowledgeable of it, right? No. You created this whole AI based, the health insurance system. speaking of that and speaking, building businesses and building startups around ai, I think. we're not gonna escape it.
it's only gonna get, more ingrained in our practice as we do that. What are your recommendations, if a doctor wanted to start integrating that in their practice slash telemedicine practice, what are things that they need to know, need to be knowledgeable [00:20:00] about and There's a lot of things we don't know that we don't know, what advice do you have in terms of approaching that? Yeah. I will say, I think AI is going to have the largest influence on healthcare and education, and I think it's going to influence those two industries the most because those two industries were solved the least.
During the SaaS industry, software as a service. software as a service, and we'll use two examples here. Salesforce. Salesforce is the Golden Egg Golden Rooster of the perfect software for all the sales CRM systems, right? Yeah. And it solved every problem for sales teams tremendously. That was a good example of SaaS that enabled a certain sector very well, and it's because it was simply logging and understanding the stage of your current customer.
If you then take other systems that you know, you don't want to name drop too much in this industry, but you take other ones that are like epic or things like that, they don't have as good of a name in the industry. A [00:21:00] lot of it is, we always talked about the word interoperability. They always talk about how, we can't move data too fast in the space because there's a security protocol going on, and that's great and that's really important and you wanna make sure everything's safe and secure as it moves through.
But physicians felt burdened by the fact that they had to go through all these extra steps just to treat their patients right. Yeah, you some, you wanna go back to the, Robin Williams used to say it like what happened to the doctor that used to come to your home and just check in on you, right? Yeah.
Because now it's become more of a day-today, like now I have to use all these systems. You feel more like you're a business operator than you are just someone's caregiver and making sure that they're getting the best treatment. So to that sense, AI is changing the space because it's very difficult to solve.
And I think AI finally can solve some of the problems that doctors are afraid to use tech to solve. They're going to finally have enough confidence and conviction in this technology to want to adapt it and still have time. It will save them time and give them confidence in the tools they're using to continue treating their [00:22:00] patients to the highest standard that they live by.
give good examples of, how we could do that, on a day-to-day or even in a macro level. Okay. So if you were just using machine learning data sets. Six, seven years ago, at some point things just broke. So if you went in and you typed in, a lot of it is natural language when you're having a conversation with your patient, right?
And you try using natural language six, seven years ago, even the output of that you would not have trusted. Obviously we've seen how much natural language has improved to where there's a higher confidence, right? Yeah. But it's transparency into, okay, if someone asks, lemme think of a good physician example of like.
Should I prescribe this person X, Y, z for what they're having going on with their head. You've assessed every other scenario, and at this point it still is going to give you a very basic foundation of what you need to assess with a headache and giving someone a migraine, a migraine pill. But what happens there [00:23:00] is you've assessed everything else.
The migraine pill itself now is the only final thing of, okay, you have a baseline of this person has a migraine. The migraine pill is being. Provided I've assessed all the other variables, right? That's gone on with this individual. I feel confident that this is something I should give this individual at a very basic level.
I don't want to get into the granulars, 'cause physicians will probably just rip me apart. But you're just checking causes and effects, right? And if you're going down a road, Google Maps for a long time was just taking in all the data of every single driver, every single day.
And computing the estimated time it would take you to arrive to a location. Right now we use AI to simulate scenarios where if a biker cut you off, how long would that biker delay your process? So now you're taking in different causes and effects for arrival of time through AI because it's able to simulate scenarios that are very realistic, right?
Not possible before. So now you're just still trying to determine that cause and effect of. I start driving. [00:24:00] Now, what will cause me to arrive at this time? It's the same with physicians. Someone has a headache cause and effect. It still provides you a lot of baseline for you to understand. You add on the last little check.
So you need to have confidence on top of its confidence, and then you can make that assessment very high level. Yeah, no, and it's, definitely sped up the decision making process, just the day to day, just getting there and, it's a lot of doctors are afraid that it's gonna take over the practice and.
I think, I don't necessarily think that's the right way to look at it. I think it will augment and make us better, make us more efficient. But you're right. We just need to learn and understand how to use it right. and how to make it a tool for us, It's your foundation, but like at the end of the day, I'm always gonna want someone to know how I feel.
in 20 years we can worry about if it can actually assess, if you can feel, but tomorrow I'm gonna wanna make sure my [00:25:00] physician knows how I feel. That's. Actually, that's a good point. That's they truly feel like they can see it in your eyes when you're sitting across from them. Feel, yeah. Not what is written on paper feel.
they can see it. They can take, you have your scripting that could be done for you. That saves you time to be able to assess the patient more. That's a bonus. Absolutely. Yeah. Then you have image processing where they can detect things maybe on a scan that you didn't see. That's a bonus.
Does it make you feel like crap, I'm not as good as this thing? Yeah, it will make you feel that way. But at the end of the day, if your responsibility is to take risk on behalf of your patients, they're going to look to you and not an AI model to make that risky decision for themselves.
They're not going to look to an AI model if you are in the world making decisions for people and taking on the risk because you are, when you're sitting there across from 'em and saying, yeah, absolutely, yeah, this and that. They're gonna look to you to take that risk. There is no confidence level from an AI model.
I look at confidence scores all the time, where if it says a hundred percent back, the first thing I look at the [00:26:00] AI model when it says I have a hundred percent certainty is that the evaluation is broken.when you look at an eval and it says a hundred percent, I feel completely confident about this answer, unless if it was two plus two, if it was a open question, query going to an AI model.
If I see a hundred percent back, I'm looking at the eval and saying, why is it not good enough to actually properly evaluate this answer? And I can guarantee you physicians if the problems they're solving, if it says a hundred percent certainty coming back. I'm looking at the eval actually, that, that's an interesting point.
wow,that's a powerful statement because that's exactly what we do right There is, I'm trying to think back. I'm trying to think about my assessments and stuff. there is never really a point where. I could be like, Hey, I'm a hundred percent certain this is gonna work, or this is what it is, this is my best medical guess.
And sometimes I do a better job based on the data that I have and the knowledge that I have. But you're right. wow, that's a, that's an [00:27:00] interesting way to, that's approach that, and it's interesting that, the computer model will spit out that a hundred percent confidence interval and you're like, no, that's.
if there's true 100% confidence occurring, we're living forever. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Because could we can fix everything, right? We can fix everything and Yeah. Make, yeah. Nobody's gonna die. No, like, you know everything about me to the point where you can tell me right now how long I'm going to live.
Amazing. A hundred percent confidence. Everyone's living forever. So no, there's risk in everything when it comes to sitting in a physician's room. And there you go. now you understand risk. so like if you have risk I think if physicians can take anything away from this, it's that you now understand you're taking more risk on than you thought in your own practice.
So stop being Meticulous about who you are and trying to be a hundred percent with everything you do, because you might be taking on more risk than the other companies out there that are trying to build the solutions around you in the healthcare space. [00:28:00] actually, that's a very interesting way to approach it.
No, that's, I don't even know what to say. that's amazing. That's amazing. let's flip a little and let's talk about Molly and what you built there. we talked to White before. And,but tell us your take on it and tell us your experience and,and how you built it and why it interested you so much.
Yeah. what got me first, I was in Miami. I injured my knee. I didn't know what happened. Went to a specialist. Specialist, recommended I go to an MRI. The specialist, and now I'm on like a large group plan at this point, self-funded health plan, like good healthcare. I'm not paying for my health plan, right?
I paid for that, which wasn't expensive, but then I had to go get the MRI, which taps into the deductible and they reckon recommended I go to the same hospital system to do it, and it was incredibly expensive. $1,500. I go, this is crazy. I don't wanna [00:29:00] drop $1,500 on an MR. I called Wyatt, I go, where can I go for cheaper?
He goes, go to this facility, tell them you don't have insurance. And I did. And I paid $400. Shut up. Yeah. A $900 turnaround. Yeah. What was, and the $1,500 is your deductible, right? Because they charge way more to the insurance. That's just what you were responsible for. I was.
I was a healthy 26-year-old. I was like, I'm gonna take a high deductible. I don't know what that means. Like I'm, yeah, I'm never cared about my health insurance because I'm healthy and I am more concerned about my job than with child plan. I picked when I joined the company, so I had a high deductible, whatever it was, I didn't even know.
I couldn't even tell you. I just knew that I wasn't covering it, so I looked and then I ended up doing the MRI was fine. I found out it was like cartilage, let it heal a little bit. No tears. And I didn't have to go anywhere else. I saved 900 bucks. Yeah. And so you said, Hey, we could build something like this.
We could use AI to help. and what challenges did you have? melding AI with this business model? Yeah, so. [00:30:00] Health insurance is difficult to get into. And they do that on purpose. They don't want it to be easy to get into, right? So we found a really good way to being able to get into this health space and be able to offer insurance.
And then we thought, okay, who can we benefit the most in this space? And we noticed that a CA marketplace over the years has been slowly going up and up. And we found that those individuals, it affects their bottom dollar the most. They are most inclined to also face these expired subsidies coming up.
And we've seen a huge spike in the amount of 10 90 nines. Just because everyone's becoming an entrepreneur yeah. You have physicians here that wanna be their own. A lot of people that are in the medical space, anesthesiologists are actually their own 10 90 nines. So it's growing everywhere because people want to take control of their own life.
They feel like they can be independent. And so that's growing a lot. So we saw an opportunity there and I looked at the space and I said, the easiest space that can. the easiest space that can. Benefit from agents, AI agents specifically I [00:31:00] felt was this industry because it's so disparate of information and agents benefit the most of industries where information is scattered all over the place and it brings it all together.
And you have little brains deciding, okay, this information is beneficial here, this is beneficial here. Let's give a final answer here. This is where you can go find a doctor and this is why we think it's the best price and you're able to bring all these little things together. And provide the most value to the individuals.
And it finally gives people transparency into the space. Because when you see a plan doc, for example, a plan doc is just a generated PDF in this industry. It's not beautiful JSON that you can look at. and also a lot of it is up to interpretation in this space, which is why AI benefits a lot, because interpretation, which we talked about, where there's a little bit of unknown, it comes down to confidence in whatever we're trying to provide an answer for can be done in this space.
So if I ask. am I covered for an MRI right? In this space? Yeah. And we show this as an example on the site, but [00:32:00] what we'll do right away is an AI model that's actually strategic on your behalf will go out, find the plan doc and see if you're covered. The second thing you'll do is go check your previous claims.
It'll be okay. You've been pre-cert, prior auth for an MRI. Great. So then the next thing we're gonna do is, okay, where are you at with your deductible and your copay based on your SOB summary of benefits? And we're gonna go, okay, here's how much you're probably gonna pay. And then we're gonna actually go out and find out all the areas that you can go on the network and be able to get the price from them to a certain degree, right?
And there's an estimate there because there's also confidence there. And then be able to stitch all that together and be able to tell you what we think you're gonna go pay if you go to a certain area. Like all those things coming together. Super beneficial. for individuals to be able to see. And the benefit that you have there as a member is transparency.
You finally get to know what you're going to have before you go to a facility. That's what we're trying to offer. No, that's amazing. 'cause Yeah. shoot, coming from the military system, right? we didn't pay a thing and now that, my family's in the [00:33:00] civilian system, we have traditional insurance.
And we just go do our, do our own thing, get our medical stuff done, and then we get these bills, right? And it's just like you said, it's just a surprise. It's oh yeah, I didn't know it was gonna happen, but it'd be super beneficial to know going in and being able to have choices, right?
Hey, this is, plan a, plan B, this is my alternative, instead of paying $1,500 for a deductible, let me pay $400 out of pocket. Same thing. So that's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll layer on top of that, that right now, if you are interested in getting into the AI space, what a lot of AI models don't do right now is act on your behalf.
So what a lot of models out there are doing right now is. You have to put something in to get something out. Yeah. It takes effort on your end. So if you can find something out there where a model in any field, I mean for any physician that wants to get into your, where you're getting information in from some other systems and you know that it would provide value to someone, that's where a model can really come in and [00:34:00] benefit.
And if it has a high confidence that it can help this person, then you're all of a sudden taking the load off the individual and you're working on their behalf and now they have their own little personal assistant. Yeah. So it's fun. No, that's, we need to talk more about this too and how to build that.
so if you're a doc going in saying, Hey, I want to build an AM model,where do we start? where's the best? How do we educate ourselves? Where do we look at, ground zero, pre-K level knowledge? What's a good way to start this? yeah, I'll keep it high level.
That was probably the most. granular, I'll get with it without getting into the actual packages and stuff like that. But that's the beauty of models too. You can just go ask 'em where I can start with this, But the thing I would do first is find the problem that you wanna solve.
Yeah. Ask what data would help solve this problem? Where do I get this data? And then the last question you ask, just go to an AI model. It's better than me listing outline for life. And then after you get the data that you know would help solve this problem. Yeah, put your own insight [00:35:00] into it, whatever you have an understanding of, and then ask it, okay, how do I actually launch this thing out there for people to test and see if they like it?
And that's really the whole piece there is you find a problem, you find the information that you can give someone that they currently don't have access to. Then fine tune it a little bit here and there, and then you just give it to people and say, do you like this? What don't you like about it? I'm trying to solve this problem, and I know you have.
It. Sounds so easy. Yes, the development is getting very easy. Sounds super easy. You get into the space, but then after someone says, yes, I like this, but you said this, and I asked here I just fell off of, My balcony, can you please prescribe me something? And you gave me this drug.
You probably should have told me I should have called 9 1 1. maybe, like that's where you, that's where it comes into where now you can get very granular. I think physicians would love this part is you have to get [00:36:00] very detail oriented when it actually comes to already solving the problem.
You've already solved a problem that someone's having. Now you need to get very granular, making sure that it's an open-ended book. So if you're really building a model that can take any option, you gotta make sure that it can answer any option to the best degree that it can, right? Yeah. So when we're building our models in an insurance company, we have to tell our model that it's an insurance company or it'll go say, go talk to your insurance company, and then your trust is gone, right?
Yeah. That's the biggest thing is people are immediately trying to find out, how can I not trust this AI model? So you have to establish the trust that this model actually knows what it's doing. And I have high conviction there. Easy to do is have transparency and say it had high confidence in answering this.
Yeah. But we can get in the rabbit hole of how confidence is wrong. So at the end of the day, it's to your interpretation of if you truly trust this thing or not. Yeah. No, that's great insight there. Thank you so much. we are getting into time, but I do asking one last question, before we wrap up.
thinking where you [00:37:00] are now, going back to, baby businesses yourself, day one after college, what's the best piece of advice that you could give yourself knowing what you know now and doing what you're doing now? Back then, that's a great question. After college, what would I have done differently? wow. I answered everything else pretty well, but this is a real stumper. I wish you didn't ask this. I don't know. Part of me always wishes I became a physician, don't do it. No. Yeah. There's a part of me that always wanted that and I was like, I go back and I go, that would've been so nice to every day.
the one thing that. I think you have to come to accept is that you're gonna be uncomfortable and the one thing I'll advise again here is I would look back on that person and say you have to constantly feel like you can ever do enough. Because if you start business, you always feel like you can do more, right?
Yeah. Whereas other jobs, you, if you're a bartender, the bar closes and you go home. If you are a server, you're done serving. When I was a server in college, the day would end and I truly would feel [00:38:00] like my work was over. Never ends when you're starting a business. So know that. Yeah. I would tell my version of myself that I think I still would've done what I'm doing today.
I'm glad I did, but I would've at least told him that. Yeah. No, that's amazing. That's amazing. thank you so much. you told wealth and knowledge, smart man, dude, A lot of insight here. Thank you so much for sharing. if people have questions, just wanna get in touch with you, If you don't mind, you know what's the best way to get in touch with you, ask you questions, ask you about Molly, getting on the service, so forth and so on. at this point, we're so open to talking to anyone that has interest in what we're doing. we're going to market right now.
We're getting people on our plan in the next couple months, like we're doing enrollment. So I'm totally okay with talking to anyone that has any interest in what we're doing. You're probably only gonna hear about what we're doing in my conversation with me, so just know that I'm not, so if you're interested in what I'm doing, I'm gonna be very like, yeah, this is it.
What do you think? Yeah, I'm gonna want feedback, but if you're open to giving it to me. and then I can give something [00:39:00] back as well. LinkedIn, x I'm on there. And then I can even give someone their email if they really hit me up on there. I'll give you an email. We'll schedule a call, we'll sit down.
Got it. Got it. So LinkedIn, Samuel Hill, right? x do you have a handle or anything like that? Yeah. Samuel Garrett. H. Got it. Perfect. G-A-R-R-E-T-T. Thank you so much. hey, thank you for taking your time. Totally appreciate it. This is a great conversation, man. a lot of great insight. yeah. Thank you.
any final thoughts, words before we take off? No, it's just the questions you asked kept me going, so I didn't even look at the clock. I think we did pretty good here, but Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Could have gone on forever. We can talk economics next time. Yeah, absolutely. Would love to get you back on seeing how you guys are doing in Molly too, and really just pick your brain and in all things business technology, ai.
I love the way you approach things, and I love just the thought process behind it. it's definitely not intrinsic to doctors, or [00:40:00] at least me, I don't know, I can talk to for all the doctors, but at least me. So it's interesting to hear different ways, approach things and see where that fits into my model.
So thank you so much for educating me, enlightening me. you've been a great guest. Thank you all for joining Telemedicine Talks. We'll see you again next time. Thank you so much. Awesome.