Ep.320 – Ted Giovanis

A man so powerful that he can make you stick your hand in the toilet.

Beneficiary of Doge.

And, uh, self-described compulsive sh**hole.

Yeah, I like it.

Also a translator of actual human English.

Ted Givonis.

If you could describe this dinner we just had in one word, what would it be?

Probative.

Probative, that is our first probative.

Yeah, I don't know what that means.

Wait, probative, not prohibitive.

No.

Okay.

You are probing subject areas.

Oh, probative.

Got it.

To discover.

Okay.

Yeah, okay.

Is that, would you want a different one?

No, no.

No, I uh...

You made it sound like we're giving you a deposition.

Yeah, I was like, with your history, we can't afford this.

Are we in discovery right now?

No.

I don't know.

Okay.

No, not at all.

I had a question.

But you, you were, you were had a probe with me in a way to try to find out where,

where, what you're dealing with, what are we thinking, where is it coming from?

Well, we're trying to, we're trying to get pay out.

Yeah, we're trying to pitch you on a research project we have.

Okay.

And now for Dinner with Racers, presented by...

Continental tire.

With your hosts, Ryan Eversly and Sean Heckman.

Play holder radio sound.

Radio sound.

Oh, oh, oh.

I've been driving on very angry.

This is the sound of a driver on the radio during a race.

What do you think I should do?

Welcome to Dinner with Racers.

I'm Ryan Eversly.

Hey, I'm Sean Heckman.

And this is our 10th year of making this podcast for you guys.

And man, has it been a ride.

My God.

So much so that here, 10 years in, we find ourselves doing these hostings at a Johnny

Rockison Hollywood.

That's right.

We said we're big Hollywood deals.

Yeah.

We're actually like 20 feet from that Chinese theater.

Was it that Grumman's?

Uh, Grumman's, man, what he changes every few years.

Yeah, right.

We're literally like within a stone store or that place.

So we're sitting here 10 years in and we're doing these intros for you guys

and trying to knock it out because we got a couple of weird projects going on

that we'll talk about a little bit later.

But when we were on our travels this year, we raced at Rhode Atlanta.

We did.

My backyard.

That's right.

And we were able to hang out with none other than Ted Giovannis,

who was in town for the race and decided to hang out for a day with us

and get a nice little meal at Folk Art.

He is the regular in the IMSA paddock, particularly in the MPC class.

Um, he is what we would consider sort of the classic gentleman driver.

He wouldn't mind you saying that, but his story while interesting as a driver,

what makes his story particularly unique is how he got to be in a business position

to be that.

And he has a one of a kind background.

That's for sure.

Yeah.

We definitely learned more in this episode than I think we normally learn in any episode

because Ted's so smart, more so dumb that we really learned a lot.

And some of those things that we learned about included, uh,

learning about billing neutrality, which is a, uh, a very big deal in the, in the medical field.

Yeah.

So you learn here on the motorsport podcast, you're going to learn all about medical billing

neutrality.

Yeah.

And then you're going to learn about suing the government, which everybody needs to know

about suing the government for a lot of money, a lot of money.

And then of course not having any of the rivalries that we wanted.

We were dreaming of some rivalries.

Maybe he has, we tried so hard in the MPC class.

Hey, he's too nice.

Yeah.

Ted's such a good dude that he was not having any of it.

And even the way he was not having any of it was like adorable.

So yeah.

Um, but we went down to folk art, which is, uh, owned by a friend of mine,

my buddy Randy Parks.

And we had a lovely, lovely dinner on a Sunday night and you had a folk art,

had a chicken sandwich, Ryan.

That's not what I recall.

It is though, but it is.

It's branding.

And I had Wavos Rancheros, which is what I always get there because folk art is one

of my favorite restaurants in Atlanta.

Love that place.

Please check that out.

But, uh, another thing you can check out is our Patreon, Sean.

Patreon.

That's right.

So if you go to patreon.com forward slash DWR show, we have a special membership called

dinner club, uh, where we put out some monthly reports and podcasts and all kinds of stuff,

giving you some background on the show, giving you some insight into what's coming,

what's, what's, uh, some behind the scenes stories, let you ask questions of our guests,

tell you some race reports, all kinds of stuff.

But it's, it's all the stuff that a special club membership would provide

beyond what you get here on the free dinner with racers.

Now the reason the show is free is because we have a wonderful sponsor that you guys have

been so supportive of none other than continental tire.

That's, uh, the, here in the middle of Johnny Rock.

It's got metal tire.

Poor people eating here.

They're like, what is that corner of that diner guy?

Yeah.

Why are they laughing every time?

Pavlovian response.

All of a sudden people are going to want to want the cheese fries every time I hear it.

They see a tire on the road.

That's a good thing we should do.

Yeah.

We should do that.

We should start working on.

Pavlov's tire.

Let's work on Pavlov's tire.

Pavlov's tire is our new sponsor.

Yeah.

So, uh, continental tire has been with us for 10 years now.

And so a lot of that is because you guys have been so supportive.

So please, if you're buying a continental product and you want to show that off or show

continental that you're supporting us, use the hashtag on Instagram or every else you post

hashtag dinner with Conti.

Also, you can go to our website dinnerwithracers.com.

We have a bunch of trackable links that tells continental that we are supported by our fans

and that we are worth sponsoring.

And you guys have made that abundantly clear.

But we've got to keep it going if you want to keep the show on the road.

Exactly.

You know who also would also kept us on the road, right?

Shane Van Gisburgen.

Shane Van Gisburgen drove us around.

What?

The best team that I ever had.

Yes, Andrew Davis.

Thanks, Shane, for your loyalty and enthusiasm.

Take it away, Ted Geavanus.

Now that I've been on this, we should ban Andrew Davis.

Meow.

All right, we're going to start in five, four, three, two.

You're racing, obviously, we want to get into.

But how you got to this place, you know, being, do you mind the sort of the gentleman driver

thing?

Does that bother you at all?

Not at all.

So you're like everybody's been cutie.

That's what I am.

Yeah.

And so, you know, I kind of, I'm a wannabe.

I wouldn't say that.

I would like to be Ted Geavanus.

Yeah, but you're pointing to me.

We could swap places, I think we all would.

Yeah, right.

I mean, I actually had, I was interested in cars very early.

And what, mostly like drag racing, just point and shoot.

And somewhere in the middle of 71, I bought a Corvette.

It was more autocross and a couple of track days.

But nothing, nothing really serious.

Then I sold that car.

I got out of the Corvette routine.

And then what I did was I went to, I started running on foot.

And that was how it got me competitively.

And so I didn't do pretty much car stuff at all.

And then what, what happened is I had to buy another sports car in 1991.

But it's a BC 3000 GT VR4.

Scared myself coming home from the dealership.

And then I said to my wife at the time,

maybe I ought to go to driving school.

So I went to driving school.

And when I did, I met a guy named Ed York who was on our team,

but he happened to be an instructor.

He happened to have a 2002 that he was trying to get rid of.

So I bought it.

So then I went through the SCCA stuff and we wanted to move up.

And when I moved up, I eventually wound up entering Grandin.

And that was the awakening because I drove with David Murray.

And I found out, at least in my view, that everything that I was doing was wrong.

In what sense?

My perception was all about breaking gas.

And it was not about what was happening with weight transfer.

And so that led to a metamorphosis of my thinking of what we were going to do.

And I still have that, a little bit of that now.

If I don't get my brake marker as late as I need to, I'll go into the corner and

I'll sense that I over slowed and I touch the gas,

which takes way off the front, which keeps you going.

And so at least to this jack and the weight around.

So that's what's very key with me is get the brake marker right for me.

And just for context, you're driving what's called the GS car in the pilot

challenge. So right now it's an Aston Martin GT4 car.

I'm still working on stuff.

I'm still working on trying to improve.

And I sort of realize where I am.

And I've even written about that and said I'd rather be,

I'd rather be the last place guy in this group rather than in another series.

And so because it's pushing you and you're pushing yourself to be better.

And that's sort of what we're trying to do.

So it's called dinner with racers, but we say racers in a much larger sense of how

people get here. So you started racing at 46, but that is because you've had

incredible business success getting to this point.

And that's kind of where you, that's why you're here now outside of championships.

And your specialty is really healthcare billing is kind of,

I think the best way of putting it, it's a complicated thing.

It's more amorphous than that. It's healthcare policy.

Yeah, sure.

The way I look at everything from a policy standpoint is the world is a gigantic incentive

system. So if you create incentives for something to happen, then it will happen.

But the key is what we don't seem to be able to do in this country now,

is to understand how people are going to respond to that.

And then you move forward to see if there's unintended consequences associated with that.

So you've got to counter bail them, if you don't want that to happen.

So I wasn't always in healthcare. I was trained as an accountant, went into,

when I completed my credits, I was immediately drafted into the army.

Okay. Cause you grew up in Maryland.

Yes. And I'm still there. And then, you know, got drafted in the army and then came out.

Well, you get drafted in 69 and you're worried about going to Vietnam, right?

Yes, sir. Yeah. Yes, sir. And Joe was already in.

Joe Vardy. Joe who works with us.

And we've got one of these with one of my favorite people of all time.

And so, you know, and I was worried about going, but right after I was in about 13, 14 months,

my father had a heart attack and my commanding officer said, Hey, I can think I can get you

out of here. Would you, would you want to get out? No, it was like, yes. And so I got out and they

let me out without serving full two years. Why you were there though, they put you to work with

your accounting background, is that correct? Yeah. So you got into the army and then had to do more

accounting. Well, no, but what was good because, because you're not on the plane. Yeah. But well,

if you're still training, well, you like helicopter stuff. No, no, no. What happened was,

during, we were at a time where it was later in the war and they were bringing body bags back

like crazy. So 8000 a month. That was when I immediately got drafted.

They, as I got out of basic, they said, I pretty much knew I was going to be late with

weapons infantry. Everybody was going and right at the end of that, they said, No,

we're sending you to Fort Eustis, Virginia to be part of the permanent cadre there,

paying people. And I'm like, okay, you can run payroll days. Yeah. And so, okay. So I went there.

And to be clear, the other option is light infantry, which is, you're going to go and be

basically on a front line and, which is a very, it's the highest percentage of, well, at the time,

there were, there were guys that were basic with me that had master's degree in business and they

went and then I got out. And when I came back out, the accounting firm that I worked for,

my job wasn't there anymore. So I was unemployed for a little while, but then I got a job at

a hospital. Is it a controller? No, it was a staff accountant. Okay. And that

started my trajectory in healthcare up those ranks. And so, but that was just coincidence that

this was just the job you got when you got out. It wasn't some huge desire, some family business.

No, no, no, no, no. No, my parents were not totally well educated. My father went to 10th grade

my mother had a sixth grade education. You're the first person to get a degree, right? Yeah.

Yeah. We didn't have money. Yeah, right. So I worked my way through college, but I finished

on my coursework somewhere around the 20th of August. I was at Fort Bragg, October 3rd. Wow.

They were waiting. Yeah. And so it's and you and you have if you if you fuss up and say I'm finished

my coursework don't done. Yeah. So that's sort of what happened to me. So I went in and I would

I would actually say I put this out there. I've said it many times. I do not regret that I went

because I learned so much about what we were doing and how to appreciate

why you have the military and why you have to train that way and why it has to be this way.

And so I'm not sure about the graph part, but it's like you you need these people.

There's a lot of fun in a way because you bond it with certain people. I was gonna say what I've

learned about you is that you really enjoy the camaraderie that comes with racing on the like

being a part of the team side. So I could see the the same thing that would come from the bond of

going through basic and learning that skill set and that life ahead of you. You're going to bond

with those guys the same way you do a race team. Yeah they and it was a lot of fun. I guess my

the message that I have is the key to my success was I got exposed to really good people and as

time went on I was in hospitals for a while and then I eventually left hospitals and went

to work in Washington which was a big change in my in the in the direction of my career.

And that that seemed like it was the biggest and kind of letting you on the path that you're on

now correct? So just to kind of put some perspective on it. So you go to University of Baltimore.

Yes. Flunk out. Is that when you flunked out? No high school I flunked out. Okay high school

you flunk out. You eventually get going back again on school. You get your grades going because

you you graduate you get a degree right? Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. And then I eventually got an MBA

after well after everything. Right and so this leads you to just sort of doing hospital accounting.

Accounting is putting numbers in boxes and stuff like that. Then you move up to finance and it's

more global. That's what those what those numbers sort of mean and what our direction is. Are we

making money or are we not making money? But you're on the hospital side so but it's like county

hospital. Well there was despite the name of the it was in Baltimore County but not a county hospital.

Okay. You're at a hospital to make money. You in the mid eighties you go to the the academic

HFMA. Correct. So what is what is HFMA for those who don't know? It's the Health Care

Financial Management Association. And this is a DC based group. It's an individual membership

association and it's all the people that are into finance all over the country. And what that did

for me was it got me and expanded my network. So I got to know all kinds of people all over

the country. And was this I mean I understand it's sort of a networking organization. Was it like

a lobbying kind of group? They were technically not supposed to be lobbying because it's the

American Hospital Association does a lobby. I see. But we did we did influence a lot of things

and it was on the regulatory side. AHA American Hospital Association is more on the legislative

side. So what we did is and that's where I got to connect with the Medicare Actuary. Okay. And so

he and I became good friends and again we're race fans. A Medicare Actuary if you're going to

say this the other way around in order an actuary is someone who lacked the interpersonal skills to

be an economist. Okay. They're they're trying their world mathematics. They're cerebral. They're

they can't put it in human language. Engineers are finance. And so well when I was I was there

there are economists that work for the actuary. Okay. And they're using a couple of actuaries

but there's only one at the top. That's a fellow at the American Society of Actuaries.

And there's probably like 150 of them in the country. Okay. Weird birds. No offense. This is

like the Christian Blay. I'll play Michael Burry in the big short. And so what they when it was in

the olden days when we used to have computer generated printouts where the green and white pages

to pin fed stuff. Well the the economists printed out this thing and stuck it on the inside of the

men's room dealer. And it said actuaries zip up. And so the because they're thinking like I'm thinking

like 35 years out. And so they're trying to figure out. Right. Meanwhile, you know,

deal with this mundane stuff. Yeah. And so but they were all but but they were

but the one one guy this guy his name's guy King his first name is Roland. But that's what he called

a guy. And he was he now became good friends. And I was one that figured out that the actuaries price

or cost every regulation six months before it gets published. So they know my future

in order in order to pick prices. And so I developed a very close relationship with him

where I knew basically in a six month window what the future was. And so that was a sort of a claim

to fame that I have because I could tell people this is what's going to happen. And it happens.

Yeah. I can't tell them why I know I can. Yeah. Basically, you can speak human English.

Right. So you have to step up. You know how to articulate something. After I went to HFMA expanded

my network. And then I got hired by a big public accounting firm, Tush Ross. And I was their healthcare

guru for the firm in Washington. So now this is this DC connected guy. So you've got all this

value. Right. So I'm now I'm exponentially growing my connections and what my knowledge base is.

Yeah. So the firm put me on as an example on the U. S. Chamber of Commerce's Health and Employment

Benefits Committee. Okay. So DPs Ford. Yeah. A lot of big weeks. Right. Okay. Chairman of the

committee was like Danny Bob Gil, who was the vice chair of JCPenney. It's usually no. Right.

So then while I was at the firm, my bosses were nine practice directors around the country. And

what those guys would do and girls, they would knew how to grow business, which I didn't know.

And so these are people that took a $3 million practice, a meter to $12 million practice in

three years. I'm like, these people never went to corn. And so that's so I learned that one. As an

example, one of those practice directors was a woman named Sharon Allen, who is was out in Salt Lake

City. You know where Sharon is today? She's chairman of the Board of Bank of America. Okay. So these

are the caliber of people that you around. Yeah. I mean, it's like I didn't write that down and say

I wanted to worry about it. It just it just these people were good. And they just evolved themselves.

But what I'm not hearing is a guy that's angling.

Oh, it sounds like you're just learning.

You're learning and just growing.

Doing the job you've been hired to do.

I don't believe like I must do this. And I'm not hearing that sort of entrepreneurial,

like I want to run my own thing, like it sounds like you are, you're seeing opportunities,

you're taking them, you're growing your network. You know, you start with doing basic hospital

accounting, but then you start going more global than that, looking at hospital financing that

leads you to the DC job, where you then start seeing this global network of business opportunities

that come out of the DC circuit, which then then puts you on the on the path with Deloitte and

two some groups like that, where you can really be involved on a much more global level of how

how this whole financial system works.

I want to work in a hospital in Southern Maryland. The guy that was another guy I knew

from Maryland went down there as a CEO. And he said, I want you to come to be my CFL. He said,

fine, I'll go. He was there four weeks. And I was there six weeks because guy was crook.

So they got to own the hospital, who happened to be a doctor. So I left and I went to be unemployed.

And because I was worried about me getting tainted. And so it was in the Maryland rate

setting. It was under the umbrella of the Maryland rate setting system. And I just want to

contain it. Well, there's a there's a unique system in Maryland, where

they have a state rate setting agency that sets the rates of hospitals. And

nowhere else in the country has this. It was done in a statutory way that

says hospital raises in like you can only pay like a you can only build this month or a doctor

can only make that you can only it's not the doctors. It's more of the hospitals. You can only

charge what the the the rates in the agency sets.

So if I go for a standard physical for it's more for you're like a room rate,

Europe. Okay, how long someone's gonna need a lab test? Well, it's no, it's not how long it's more

per day. Okay. And so that has evolved now to something much bigger where it's a

what's called a global budget. But that's not where I'm going. But all this is say Maryland. And

this is late 80s? Yeah, between 78 and 83. So early Maryland was governing governing some of

the billing rates that hospitals could have for a bunch of the sort of facility related

organizational things. Gotcha. Okay. So what happened in the 80s, one of the one of the things that

all rate setters know is something called the bus bears index, which you don't need you don't

know it's an economic pricing index. Okay. However, it underpins budget neutrality.

Which that's a big that's a phrase I read about a million times. Which comes later. Yeah, 20

years later. It's gonna be very important, guys. And so that's sort of budget neutrality. It's really

let's say instead of the three of us, let's say there's 10 of us. And we are we're each

spending so much money, let's say the total that we're all spending is 300 bucks. And so but look

at them as as a rate or a payment. So we got 300 bucks for a payment, some kind of payment adjustment.

If we wanted to give Ryan three bucks more budget neutrality says that that three bucks

comes from the rest of us. So each one of the rest of the nine of us would lose a smidge

to make up the three bucks that went to my okay, you magnified in a in a big program like the

Medicare program that has been spending $150 billion a year. And so you got it's what Ted

refers to as the pie slicing tools. And so so if I increase certain ones, if we increase California,

the money slashes there, everybody else loses. And so there's all of this in budget neutrality,

all those pluses and minuses literally just trying to keep the number the same. But if

someone else needs a little bit more help, you send them a little bit of help and everybody

else loses a little bit. Right. But the number stays the same on the overall. Okay. That's an

effect what budget neutrality is explained in English. I'm trying to yeah. And so

in the best English that could be explained. Yeah, but I mean, well with Medicare on the

hospital payment side for hospital discharges, you got 11 million discharges a year, you got

$150 billion. So there's a lot of complexity. But it's almost like you if you understand

budget neutrality, you can't really you it's like squeezing a balloon on the one side, you kind of

know where it's going to pop out. You know, it's kind of it's almost like a feel. Okay. But

then later on, this comes into play. But this is something I learned and I knew. So so you're

you're learning and dealing with this back in the early 80s as your career starting to really get

going. So when budget neutrality later in your life becomes a massive deal, you're actually

pretty well versed in what's happening and how to take I wouldn't say take advantage of it, but to

like take the people taking advantage of it to town. Yeah. And that was just fortuitous, I guess

you could call it. It's like because this sounds like it's just one part of a lot of other things

you're learning and working in when you're dealing with hospital finance. Right. Okay. And I've learned

from, you know, pretty good people. And so this is a principle you're really coming to grips with

back then, Sean, it was a tool that I used in my work at sending the rates of hospitals. Okay. And so

so you learn it. And now you're you're later on, you just use it. When I went to work for Washington,

you use it for understanding things. And that is probably one reason why the the the fellow that

was the chief actuary at Medicare liked me because he said he understands my stuff.

Or the dimension of what I do. And so that's what you're and I'm not doing it because I need to do

that to get close to Ryan, let's say, because I'm trying to talk about stuff Ryan likes. It's just

I'm very fortunate to have done what I've done. And so then

Tush Ross, I'll play it forward. We're kind of going in chronological order.

But we are in a way. And so Tush Ross decides to merge with Deloitte. And actually, they were

sort of taken over. Okay. And so there was all this turmoil inside of my what I was doing.

So my wife said to me, I was thinking about starting my own firm. So my wife said to me,

how much do we spend a year on health care in the United States? I said, I don't know, maybe

900 billion, which is how come you can't get to or 300,000? And I said,

that sounds easy. So I jumped out of the boat. And I love to firm create my own firm.

But you know, it was all because I had I expanded my network going to each of

me learn how to grow and grow business through the guys at Tush. And then so if those dominoes

wouldn't have fallen, I wouldn't have been able to do it. So up until this point, at no point is

there the a lot of times with some of the other folks we've met with who come from the business side,

there's usually like a lifelong entrepreneurial spirit. They were, you know, selling pecans at

eight years old or whatever it is. It took your wife to go, Hey, you know how much money is out

there that you're not touching? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was like, it was more like,

I created my own firm for more of the freedom of delivering services the way I wanted to do it.

And in my practice was in sort of a niche where it's like helping hospitals get the most out of

medicines and what you're, what you're allowed to do. So it's all sort of like that. And so he

just was able to scale it. And then I focused on different, different aspects of the payment system.

And so I created product or service lines or like, but so what, so if it's 1992,

what like am I, and you're going to do business with me? Am I a hospital? Am I a medical insurance?

Mostly hospitals. What are you doing for me? If I'm mostly what I did for individual hospitals

is to get them to report their data properly. Wage, they have to report wage data and you have

to report it. I'll say properly. And that goes into the wage adjustment, which goes is overlaid by

budget neutrality. Yeah. Okay. So just to make this as dumb as possible for me, because I like,

you see, you pay for guys like me to have jobs, you know how smart they are. It sounds like you

are, you are basically making sure that people, because they get an X amount of money from the

government for their hospital to run the way it's supposed to run, and they have to report properly

to get the number the right way. And if they don't, they could get money for something that

didn't actually happen, and then profit profit. No, what will happen is there's a standard rate.

Yeah, for a discharge. Yeah, that somebody getting out of the hospital, right? For whatever for

for appendicitis or for a cardiac, cardiac. So as part of that, there is a wage adjustment.

So this is there's one rate like a thousand dollars. Yeah, it's not really that that thousand.

And about 65% of it is deemed labor. Okay. So sure. The hospitals in New York City, yeah,

get more. It's more expensive to live in New York City, so that they're there. It's accomplished

neutrality in New York is here. I was this expensive. Yeah, right. It's called it's called an

area wage index. Okay. And what it does, it would, the one from New York City looks like 1.32.

So we take the labor portion of the payment, multiply by 1.32, add it to the non labor

bingo, you know, often, whereas hospitals in hospitals in Iowa make it less.

And so that's sort of all the you understand. Okay. So but the again, back to dumb race car

drivers or strategists who are supposed to understand math. I give you $50,000. I've run

Sean Heckman and associates San Gabriel. And I give you $50,000. But in theory,

what you bring back to me in terms of how I can clean up the the billing side to take it,

I don't want to take advantage, but to maximize out of that system is going to bring me whatever

multiplier of that back. Could be an extra million. Okay. That's worth 50 grand. And the problem is

you, well, it's but it's hard getting a pick on pick on Sean is hard getting Sean to cognizized

that by changing this data, that once it does all this, it's going to come back to him a year

and a half from now. You're specifically telling me that I'm stubborn? No, no. And I've never

heard this in my life. It's in a minute. No, it's more about that. You we tend to look for immediate

payoff or immediate reward. Right. And so I'm and with like hospital systems that have probably

worked a certain way, you know, sort of especially just going to digital or whatever it is in that

time, like, yeah, it's a whole thing. Yeah. And so it's not, it's just, I don't mean to make it

complex, but I mean, it's basically it. Well, you're not making it complex. It is complex.

That's not a, it's the other way around. I'm just thinking that there's got to be like a fan of ours

because we have so many awesome fans that probably does work in this industry. Like idiots don't get

it. Yeah. It's a totally different topic. But one of one of our favorite movies is the big short.

Yeah, that's all I'm thinking about. I'm like, who we're going to get to be an actress in the

bathtub to explain what Ted said. So it's like making it. The reason the big short is so well

done in my opinion is because like the idea of what led to the 2008 collapse and shorting the

stock market and how tranches work and all that is wildly complicated. And so they do a great job

of succinctly putting it in a two hour movie that idiots can follow. So like, this is not easy to

explain. I totally understand. Well, that was, to be quite honest, in the book, Beyond Fear,

that was one of the roles of the guy that helped me with that guy, Matt Reese,

is he who happened to be one of George Bush's speech writers years before. And so he took that

and made it intelligible to more more normal people, but not. But so it was really incredibly

complex. So for the sake of time and editing, let's get into the trial because it's it's we've

established now that you are a hospital professional that knows how to handle the budgeting and

operation side of all these things. You've also worked in accounting. You're you're pretty good

with math sounds like. And you're also very astute, which I would say applies even today,

because all I know you is as the race car driver to motor guy. So fast forward to 1990, you start

15 years, 16 years later, 2006. You send an email. Yeah. What leads this email?

It's it's kind of a funny story. There was a there was another consultant out there

that thinks he knows everything. And he does. And so he keeps on saying that to many of my clients

that a competitor, basically. Yeah. Okay. So he says Kevin Buckler out there.

Yeah. So so he basically was like, if because the average of what was how he said, because

the wage indexes weren't went down in a particular state, how to be Connecticut,

that they got shorted in payments. And I'm saying not necessarily so because

the way budget budget would have increased the rate. If everybody's wage indexes went down,

right, the rate would go up. Exactly. And that's there's a there's a balance. Idiot over here

can even know that. Yeah. So so so he I keep telling my clients, don't worry about it. It's

okay. He's he's wrong. Yeah. So then he asked one one more time and it came back to me through my

client. So are you sure? And I'm like, okay. So under the premise, even a stop clock is

right twice a day. Did you do diligence here? So I send this email to somebody I know at America.

Was this also to provide sort of a documented proof that like, hey, client, here's a no, maybe

like, okay, if I'm here to the many times, what if I am missing something? Yeah, you never know.

What I just said was like, maybe they know something. Yeah, I was worried about maybe I'm

not right. Yeah. And so so I go back and then I send this email to them, to somebody I know

at there. And I at Medicare, and I'm always corresponding with them. And because I tell

them stuff was the way it worked. So I would tell them stuff that was wrong all the time.

Right. And they fix it. Yeah. Just fix it. And you're saying that you're reaching out to a person

that works for Medicare, like the government, right? Effectively. Yes. Okay. And so I said,

I asked them an opening question. How do you calculate budget neutrality? And what data

elements do you use and whatever, you know, just spent just, I didn't want to coach them any

particular way. And they sent it back and said, you know, this is how we do it. We use these,

these just charges these wage and wage. They actually said wage data, which was a key.

And then that's when I email them back. And I said, I got it. When I emailed them back,

I said, well, what about specifically? How does this affect the rural floor?

It's got something called the rural floor. And sort of the lower wage areas. What it does,

what the rural floor is, it's actually a provision in the law that benefits urban hospitals.

Okay. It says that no hospital in a state shall be paid less than

what the rural hospitals are paid. And so in an area, which you guys may not be familiar,

but like like up in New Hampshire, you have Dartmouth Hitchcock, which is a major teaching

hospital that happens to be located in a rural area. So absent the rural floor,

the the urban hospitals in Concord, Manchester would be paid less. Well, this brings them up to

that to the level of Dartmouth Hitchcock in theory, right? Because it's high level people that are

and because of the budget neutrality, that money comes from all rest of the hospitals.

So you do this enough, you've got $50, $60 million flushing around the country or more.

And so what happened in their formula was in the initial year, their formula was was okay.

And that is they removed amount, I don't know, it was about $6 or $10 million out of the system.

So that's the first year. Then the second year, they never changed the formula.

They they took the whole thing out again. It should have just been the differential between

the first year and the second. Okay, right. Okay. And so that's what started the duplicate of nature

of it. And so what was happening is so they took, if it was $10 million first year, and they stood

should have taken out another million, they actually took out another 10.

Okay, I'm seeing that. And then they took out another 10. Yeah. Rather than just that incremental,

it doesn't need to be. And that's why I use that thing, that what Albert Einstein said,

the most powerful force in the universe is compound interest theory. So next thing you know,

this thing becomes a billion dollars a year. Yeah, yeah. It's growing, growing, growing.

And improperly allocated, basically. Well, yeah, well, yeah, well, it was, they were shorting

the system. Yeah. And because of the way it was happening, a bunch of neutrality, the rate kept

coming down this image over time. So it was out for everybody. And so that's sort of what led to it.

And because they never respond to me when I sent the email about the rural floor,

right? They went on radio silence. I said, Nope, they're wrong. They know they're wrong.

And so that was when I started. It's a saga of the budget neutrality appeal where I worked.

I thought I was going to get 100 hospitals. I started soliciting through my consulting

relationships and even competitors. Ryan, can you bring me your hospitals and

Sean, can you bring me your hospital? But what are you doing, though? So you're basically like,

you've seen you've seen this flaw in the system. You're now you're pissed because they're not

addressing it. And you know that it's not right. What do you say you're coming to Ryan's hospital?

What are you doing? Well, when I can't, I'm, we as consultants cannot bring a cause of action

against the government. And I need to get to your hospitals.

I need to get to hospitals. So Cedar, Ryan, we got messed up. Right. So you're going to,

you're not going to Ryan's hospital. Cedar, Ryan. I'm not giving you that.

Wow. So Cedar, Ryan, you need me to basically be like, Hey, I'm not getting my money. And I was

supposed to be getting my $10 million and I'm not because I can go. I can go back against the

government. Exactly. You can leave and then you come over to Sean Hopkins.

Yes. Sorry. Jesus Christ.

I love where I play so much. So you come over to Sean Hopkins and you tell me the same thing.

The manager's laughing from all over there. And you basically say like, Hey, here's,

I'm noticing the disparity. This might be affecting me. I need to open my books up to you a little

bit. No. So you just need to say in this particular situation,

you just need to sign on to let us represent you. Okay. And so we had, by that time,

we had formed a legal team. We, we had a couple of, you know, key attorneys at the beginning.

And then we pulled them together and then sort of like things.

He gets a larger class action. Yeah. But how many, how many hospitals do you initially get?

Because you said you thought you were going to get hundreds. We got 100. Initially,

the target was 125. Yeah. And you have to file the appeal within so many days of when the feds

published their final rule. Well, what the feds did, they had to make a correction to it.

Well, so that gave us more days. Yeah. And so we got to get more help on you. Yeah. Well,

originally it was like 125 hospitals. Next thing you know, 350. And the next thing you know,

because it did late again, it was 730. Yeah. And we're basically,

because now I've already seen there's an opportunity.

Ryan probably will be able to identify this. There's only my wife and I. Right. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. That's your company. That's it. Yeah. Okay. So now over 700 hospitals

on board. Yeah. I mean, we were, we were like, it was like paper all over the place.

Holy Smully, man. What about your, what about your regular business?

Well, I'm doing that too. And so it's not going well. Because none of this is making money. This

is just no, this is a side puzzle. Yeah. It's almost like taking on a podcast. Yeah. Right.

So what we did was we, all of this was done on a contingency basis. And so, and how this evolved

was, I had a good friend up in New York, Charlie Pandola, who used to be with me at Tush Ross.

And so I called, I called Charlie and said, Hey, can you help me sell this up in New York?

And he said, Well, maybe I'll do, do something better. And he said, You need to come up and talk

to Don, this guy that owned a company that he just had recently sold for 1.2 billion.

Okay. Got enough. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So now I get on the phone with this guy, Don,

and he said, Look, how much, what if I give you some money? Would you give me some of the

a cut of the take? Sure. Okay. So now you have sponsorship? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it didn't,

but he's funding the lawsuit, essentially. But he only, he only funded, we only got a

million two from him. Okay. Okay. Yeah. No, no. Well, we didn't know this very hard to grasp.

We're sitting there with a hundred hospitals when I cut this deal. Yeah. Right. Next thing

we lose to a million two and six months, nothing for a cut because this is going to be a massive

case. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And so it's like, can I ask you a personal question? Sure. What were you

roughly valued? Like, what was your rough value worth you personally, you and your life at the

time this started? I don't know. Maybe a couple of million. Okay. Okay. But that's still not enough

to take on the US government. Oh, no, no, no. Like, because they could just won't burn you down.

Well, yeah, that was mostly in my retirement plan. Right. If I took it out, I would

get taxed. Sure. Sure. Yeah. But this is my point is, is that like, you can't just go and do this

on your own. You need help from people. Well, yeah, we need it. We certainly needed the law firm.

Yeah. And because this is basically a legal argument. It's not a technical argument. Yeah.

The way we structured this, this case. So that's sort of how it started to progress. It was really

kind of, I don't think the attorneys would took would have taken it on. If it wasn't,

if we couldn't make it a legal case. Because if you take on, if you take on the government,

and the argument is it's your data versus their data, you lose. Because the judges are going to say,

this is way too complex. The government must be right, because they haven't done this. And so

we had to keep it in a certain sphere of a legal argument. Because I'm assuming

if it goes one way, it just becomes a correction to the system versus the other. It becomes an

actual lawsuit where you get paid back. Yeah. Yeah. And the way it works is that the hospitals

get paid, and then the hospitals pay us satisfying whatever contract we have with them. So you have

to collect on 730 different hospitals. It was pretty,

my nemesis consultant, he got in the game. Of course.

But they were... Wait, wait. So is he right initially? No. Okay. So he's still wrong,

but that's what triggered you to go ask. And that showed you something else.

Yeah. He showed me something else. So he's just trying to figure out...

Yeah, screw that guy. He's just trying to get his surfboard out, and I'd say, wait.

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And it happens all the time. Yeah, right.

And all this litigation. Yeah, he's an ambulance chaser.

But what they normally do, the ones that are smart, will ride your wave, and they'll stay on

the sideline. They'll ask if they can help. And then just stay out of the way. Don't mess it up.

Well, he was working with a different law firm. We worked with two of them,

and those other ones wanted to be on the field. And I'm like... And so they were... And they would

tell us every time they read one of our briefs that they learned how much they don't know.

And we're like... And they were trying to get in front of us in the courts. So this was a serious

problem. And so we went through all this, and we lost it to district court because the government

worked with their brief to coincide with something. So from that first email in 2006 to that first

district court ruling. It was 2008. Okay, so that was 2008. And so we didn't get what's called

oral argument in that case. The judge decided we weren't going to have oral argument. So it's just

Shawn, your brief, I look at it. Your Ryan's brief, I look at it. And then I make a decision.

It's brief, brief, brief. And so because they wordsmithed that brief in a certain way,

the judge ruled for the government. So we were done. But he allowed... There was a fight over my

comment letter. I wrote a comment letter. And so I was the only one in the country to write one.

Now, while the majority of our fans, the majority of our fans are in fact attorneys.

But for the handful of our fans who are not attorneys, what is that? What is the comment

letter? Okay. It basically says if the government needs to be put on notice that they were wrong.

And so you do so by following a comment letter within a certain comment period.

As part of the case or a separate thing. No, just normal. Just normal in order to...

What it is, it's a process or anything. You have to file a comment with the agency that says

you did something wrong. And then if they don't fix it, then from the date they were supposed to

publish the final rule, if they don't fix it, then you can bring a case. But you first go to an

administrative proceeding and appeal board. And then once the appeal board says they either hear it

or they say it's out of our jurisdiction, you've got to go to court. And that's what we wanted.

We wanted the trajectory to get to the court because we knew the agency's not going to do

anything about it. So is that helpful? Yeah, I'm just trying to grasp it. So because you had kind

of systematically put this letter in with the way they were doing it, that was something you

could then draw from later to then bring this back to life. Well, yeah, we had to fight the

final comment later. And then they argued they never got it.

Okay, that's how I got out of doing my homework. I never got it.

Well, it's kind of like that in a way. And they're saying, well, and so what do you mean?

So I had a hand delivered the comment letter to a particular person at Medicare. I met her

outside the building and said, hey, and she signed it. And it was actually two copies.

And so she took it and gave it there. And so the government came in now.

An old adage in law is if you got good facts, you argue facts. If you don't have good facts,

you argue technicalities. So they said, well, she shouldn't have accepted the comment

letter because she's not the right person to accept it. Okay, yeah.

And then they argue that in order to have delivered properly that comment letter,

I had to call a certain phone number, which nobody ever answers. And so that's where they

argued that the comment letter wasn't in. We had asked for the rulemaking record,

which is something called discovery. We can ask for it. And our comment letter wasn't there.

We're like, what the hell is going on? Because I know I gave it to her and I have a signed receipt.

And you have yours? Yes. And so anyway, so the judge eventually says, okay,

I'm going to rule against you because the brief because he thought it was fixed.

Right. And he thought it was fixed. What, what they did fix was they kept it from duplicating.

But they didn't put back all the money that had taken out of that book.

Literally fixed the glitch from office space. Yeah. No, we just fixed the glitch.

Yeah. So, so in any way, but he allowed the comment letter in the record, which was the key

for appealing forward. Right. Because it's like, now you were, now we know you were put on notice.

Yeah. Okay. And so that's sort of what it was. So this, this district court rules against you,

but this comment letter gives you the out that you can still appeal. Yeah. The very next day,

we appeal. We knew we were going to do it. Yeah. And how much money would you say you've spent on

this lawsuit at this point, two years in? Yeah. A couple of million. Out of your pocket? Yeah.

Well, just out of every, yeah. Okay. So then we keep going. Right. And is there any fear that

if this doesn't work, you're not going to be able to pay this back or you're going to be on hard

time? No, no, no. The way it was, I had to go through and I had, all my relationships were with,

with the hospitals. Yeah. We're on a contingency basis. Okay. So what I had to do is restructure

the relationship with the law firms. So they're on a contingency basis too. So we're all at risk.

Okay. Okay. So in other words, you're saying you owe them this much and they collect it back?

No. No. I'm saying what we, I'm, you, I'm just trying to give Ryan an idea about how much the

burn was. Yeah. And it was probably about two million. But we didn't really spend two million.

Okay. That's what I'm asking. So basically, but you have the right to collect it if we win. Right.

Okay. So what happens is the, the, the hospital is only paying us if we win. Right. And we only pay

attorneys, if we win, and we only pay all the consultants to help us bring people to the dance

room. Everyone has to win to validate their time. Yeah. Only incentives are aligned. Yeah.

Only incentives are aligned. And I haven't been in enough lawsuit. And I'm assuming that's,

that's possible because everyone can see the writing on the wall that you've got them. They did

do something that can be punished. Well, yeah. But, you know, still the government wasn't, wasn't

agreeing to it. Playing fair. And hospital is fairly low risk because they're not doing the work.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's you and the lawyers. Yeah. What, what, what it was,

what we were doing is we were doing the front end, my firm was doing the front end prep for the

lawyers. And we had narrowed what the hospitals needed to do to giving us literally four pieces

of paper. One was an estimate of how much it was worth to them, which we calculated and gave them

a copy. And they just had to look at it and say, we agree and said, okay, the next one was a letter

that say, said that they appoint us in the law firm to represent them on this issue for these,

this year. And then we had, there were, there were four certifications on another page, which we had

all combined it, that they had to sign. So it's bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. But these estimations on

where the hospitals, financials are off. You have to do this seven, 800 times over. Oh, yeah.

At basically for free. Well, yeah. But I mean, we, we, what we did is we, we, we had partnered

with somebody who was also on a content as you guys said, who had the capacity to generate this

by computer that had all the data is a push button. And you get all the answers. And so we just send

them to each and every hospital. And so it's, it's, it's kind of, you know, it's kind of, it was good

that the, the law firm had relationships with the appeal board to, to get all these certifications

put on one piece of paper. It's just, they're usually on four different things. So, and then

they also, we were also successful in getting them to accept it, not with live signatures,

but with PDF. I mean, so, so we're just four pieces of paper, pack it up, shots, boom,

Ryan's boom, and we're sending it in. And so it's a, it's trying to, yeah, yeah, we tried to convert

that to a production function to get it moving. Right. Right. So high volume. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And so, so you guys appeal the next day. Yep. And then, you know, we eventually go through,

it goes to the core of appeals in DC, which is, you know, the way the federal courts are divided,

they're all in circuits. Yeah. And there's the DC circuit, which is the home venue of everything

that's in the government. So we were there, we're, we're appealing it. And there was,

we had to do oral argument. And we got oral argument. There's, in this time, there's three

justices, two conservatives and a liberal, the liberals presiding. Insert here. 2001, Jane had

breast cancer, got resolved, were way late. And 2008, it came back. Right. Right in the middle

of it. Yeah. Well, now it's, it's basically 2010. Now, we're oral argument. November,

November 8th of 2010 is the date of the oral argument. It's also the date of Jane's

first treatment for radiation, radiation treatment for brain mets, because metastasis has

to a brain. My daughter, Christina, who Ryan probably knows, went with her and Jane said,

no, you got to go with the attorneys. And so we go to the oral argument. So that's happening. So

we've got that going on. And so now we're your argument. And it's, it's, it's really, it's really

fascinating. We had hired a guy to argue the case, a guy named Paul Clement. Clement was listed,

previously solicitor general of the United States had like 60 or 70 Supreme Court cases.

So he, he's like, yeah, he's the guy. Yeah. So we get in there, we get the oral argument.

Great stage presence. He's like, he only gets 15 minutes.

Let's say an oral argument in 15 minutes to people not from this background.

We've been here for an hour and a half, and I'm only pretending like I get it.

Doing a great job. Yeah. Okay, this is a hard sell. Yeah. Yeah. So Paul gets in there and he's

got great stage presence. And he says, okay, okay, I'd like to like to preserve, you know,

a minute and a half of my time, my 15 minutes for, for a rebuttal for whatever they say.

And then before he gets anything out, it's like, when they start asking them questions,

you know, why is the sky blue? How's the, why is the wall green? How many lights are in front of the

clock? Why is that one dimmer than this one? Yeah. And they're dealing with it. So it's while,

while, while Sean's asking me questions, you're thinking up stuff. And then you got a third one.

It's like, and so, so I'm like, holy moly. Paul has got so at the end of this, Paul's got so many

dents in this shield. I said, this is probably not going any good. So then Paul manages to preserve

25 seconds of his time for a rebuttal. So then the other guy gets up, the government attorney,

all government agencies are defended or represented by the Department of Justice. So you've got an

assistant AG representing a guy named Jeffrey Clare. And so what happened there was he starts.

And he gets all the right questions, right? Well, no. Then they start one of the, the

Justices, Tatl, who was the presiding judge. He used an exhibit from our brief, which was an

example of an hourly wage, wage kind of a thing to show how the rate would go down if they did.

Okay. And this guy, Tatl is asking him questions about this. And, and the attorney's dodging it.

Because this is the linchpin. This is the key. So about,

they just, he just keeps beating on him and beating on him about this. He won't let it go.

And, um, 55 minutes later, see, the time doesn't go for that.

Yeah, they get what they want. Yeah. Yeah. 55 minutes later, it was over. And he was like,

basically destroyed. You could almost tell. And all because it's the one presiding judge just

peed in. Well, it was, and then the other one started to get on it. Right. Because basically what

the Just, Justice Tatl was saying was this, I understand this exhibit and I'm going to give you

a shot, Sean, if it's you, to debunk it. And I'm giving you shots to, because you make up my vote

if you could debunk this. Yeah. But he, he just, he just didn't have a way to get around it.

So if, if you've seen this exhibit and gets that, why are they so quick on the initial argument

to pin them down with being able to talk? They don't want to give up. I just want to say,

to my, and they're arguing technicalities. Right. Yeah. They're trying to, to me,

didn't use the phone number. So they're trying to get, so by doing this, they're not giving

them anything to rebuttal on a technicality. And they can't admit it. Right. They can't say,

yeah, I was wrong. Right. But too bad you can't do anything about it. You can't say that. So

what happens is after the, after oral argument, we all go outside. There's, there's nine of us

that are together and we all vote that it's, we all take a vote of where they are. And it's

three to two. I mean, excuse me, at least two to one, excuse me, meaning, and we all pick the

same two. And it was the presiding judge and one of the conservatives. And so, and then I asked Paul

who knew the conservative Randolph. And I said, what was wrong with Randolph? And he said,

he's having a bad day. No, no, he, he comes down to that. No, he watched every one of them. Yeah.

And he knew how they behave and what they were doing with finished oral argument,

not to be Debbie Downer, December 31st, 2010, a little bit more than seven weeks later, Jane dies.

Two weeks after that, we win. It's three zip. So then it's more like we have to pivot to work

with the government to try to collect. And so, and then that ensues the whole process. So we never,

you know, we had a, we had a ceremony in January, but now we're on to how do we calculate all the

dollars. And it took us the better part from all of 2011 to actually understand what this thing was

worth. Because where I was off is I was awful when it started. I thought it started like in 2000.

I, for something like that, it actually started in 2000. So it's more community. That's the

Albert Einstein. Yeah, right. The power of the compound interest area. So it's bigger. It's much

bigger than we thought was a Holy Rock Moley. Yeah. And so then we, in settlement, we had to go

through all these calculations because the government, the government's always better off

if you tell them how much you're owed. So it's kind of like me, you know, I'm going to buy a car

for Ryan and I say, how much do you want? And he says $10,000. I said, fine, here it is. And he came back and said,

wait a minute, it was worth 15. He said what I gave it to you. And so that's sort of how it

sort of played out. And so the government told our attorneys that their preferred option is for us

to give them the numbers. So this will just, well, so we went through and we figured out it's a laborious

way to calculate it. Yeah. Two different ways. It's like a whole year. And they both came up with the

same version. However, we knew the other guys couldn't calculate it. Right. The other attorneys. Oh,

I see. So that's how we shafted them. So now they have to tell, they have to take the government's

word for whatever it is. Yeah. And so and we're like, and so they even went to the people that we had calculating

our numbers and said, can you use Ted's formulas to calculate our stuff? And they called me and said,

and said, what do you think? I said, no, yeah, that's a pretty short answer. Yeah. So they were,

and then we wound up getting paid more and then to play it all forward. That was,

we were trying to, we were worried that the hospitals wouldn't pay us as soon as they got paid.

Because this stuff is, there, I mean, there was one hospital in New York that got 28 million.

There is electronically sticking it in our account. It's like, here it is, here it is, Sean. And so

we were worried about us getting paid. So we needed to get our invoices out. Well,

the government told us they were going to get paid like in August. And then

they said, I think we're going to get paid, pay you earlier. We'll pay in July. And that's because

we gave them the numbers. We all agreed to it. And then next thing you know that our hospitals are

calling us to say, they just paid us in May. We're like, holy smoke. So we got to get invoices out

because we weren't, and so that was sort of, and there were a lot of other things that happened

there because they were, in the beginning of it, they were, in the beginning of 2012, they were

beating on me to settle because we hadn't finalized the agreement with the government. Well, we weren't

ready to settle and the government couldn't settle with them until they settled with us because

we were what's called a first mover. We were the ones that moved the case. And so, but, and there

were some activities going on where they were trying to get us to settle or say we were going to

settle sooner. And it's because some of the companies that owned hospitals that were publicly traded

were involved. And they wanted the money in the first quarter of 2012. And I'm like, no, we're

now we're getting paid. And that was at a point in time. And I was like, what, what else am I

going to do with my life? I'm probably not going to do this. And that was when the idea of the

foundation came up. And so then we were, and I, you know, created the foundation right at the end

of 12. The Jane Koskinus. Ted's here on the Foundation for Health and Policy. So this is in

honor of Jane, who passed in the process of all this. It's her best friend. Right. And so then

we moved to that. And I, we were all told we had something. Now, you got to remember, there's a

lot of stuff even going on now, because I'm trying to do a, now I got money. So I'm trying to do

estate planning. I'm trying to figure what's going on. If you don't mind these numbers being out

there, the publicly disclosed amount in the lawsuit, which isn't what you collect, but the

publicly disclosed amount was $3 billion. Well, yeah, they got, there was a little bit more than

that. But yes, but yeah. I saw another one that said $4 billion. Yeah, what's a billion? Yeah,

exactly. But basically, you, you, you and, and your group in this, this network of hospitals

won a $3 billion lawsuit for, for how this budget neutrality was, was done improperly.

And of course, then you, once everything goes away, you, you then collected from a big portion.

And that's a big part of what started Jane's Foundation. Right. Yeah. And so, so what I wound

up doing was I, we, in the middle of September, we applied to the IRS to get a tax exemption.

All the legal Eagles said it would take nine months. So then a regulatory is between us.

Well, they approved us in December, nine weeks later. So we said, oh, crap, we got to do something.

So then we moved into doing the foundation. And we, because it was, we were in the policy space

before that might background. So we started doing policy stuff. And in the middle of 14,

we switched more, more into health and cancer and whatever. So, so the, the main, if we're

going to look at sort of what an ethos of the foundation is, it's, it's on the policy side.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the beginning. Yeah. And then we moved to, I mean, we did a couple little things

that dealt with health, but it was on, it was in public health. And so it wasn't anything big.

But it's, it dealt with mathematical modeling and the migratory health, Lyme disease

migrates from ticks in the southeast and six in the northeast and how the different differences.

And so, and so we were, we were doing that kind of stuff and we were doing other policies stuff.

So then in the middle of 14, we did, we switched into a cancer research, which is kind of,

we're in hyperspace on that right now, because that has continued to evolve and get deeper and

deeper. So we're pretty much exclusively in metastatic breast cancer. When you, when you

put that deal together to go basically be the front runner or the, the front line of taking

this to the government, does it work on a person? Do you go like, Hey, we're going to do this and

I'm going to want X amount percentage back? Yeah. Okay. Well, what, what I did with it,

we, I had agreements with every hospital. Yeah. Well, like a standard agreement.

Pretty much standards with, with some minor exceptions, but pretty much it was standard

and everybody paid pretty close to the same percent. And so that's why we have these pictures,

you know, we have some of the hospitals are in systems. So we have it with the system,

but it's the same essential agreement. And a lot of them are like how much the percentage

were, percentages were the same. And it was basically, we don't get paid. We don't get paid,

do you get paid? And, and we wound up at the end of the day, we went up, it was like

95% of the hospitals paid us and the ones that didn't pay us weren't bankruptcy. And we were,

we were, we were unsecure creditors. So we had no cause of action against themselves.

And they tended to be on the small side. So

Yeah, but if 95% of them paid you, then you did very well on something that,

that was that, that magnificent. Yeah, most of them, most of the hospitals

picked us because of the quality of the wall team and the fact that I found the air and stuff like

that. So they're saying, well, these guys are smart, you know, and they found it. So they're

probably the right ones. What was the guy's name that was the billionaire that gave you 1.2?

Don Rubin. Don Don. So what did Don get for his 1.2?

He got good investment. He got two pieces. Yeah. Well, that was because you brought it up earlier.

I'm like, there's a reason he's telling us this. Well, well, he came back after

my friend Charlie up in New York, who was still working with Don after all this is over with

him. We got and so Don has a call with me and Charlie's on it. And Don says,

okay, Ted, so, so what are we going to do now? Yeah, what's the next move?

And Charlie says, Don, he doesn't need you anymore. He's got his own money.

And so he was like, yeah, I get it. But um, but no, it's right. It was pretty high.

Yeah. And, and at the end, I mean, I agonized over that because I said, I tell people that

the biggest issue was the splits. I said, so I got a dollar, okay, 50 cents of that dollar,

I had to give to all my partners for the law firms, the hospital associates, the people that

so now I'm down to 50 cents. And up that 50 cents that I have enough now, 25 cents,

I had to pay in federal and state taxes. So now only got a quarter. And I'm like,

they didn't do anything. And what, what, and so what I decided to do was not playing games with

the tax side, just clean the slate and move forward and not worry, which may turn out may have turned

out to be a little placed because well, that's the title of the book that came from the idea from

it came. It's beyond fear. It came from a conversation I had with Stephanie, one of our

attorneys. And she said, you know, most people wouldn't have done what you did.

And I said, why stuff? And she said they'd be afraid of what the government would do to them.

Well, I have been audited for 1417 21 and 22. You know, reason I'm not audited for 22 is the

order to got doged. I swear to God. Yeah, okay, right. Yeah. So I'm like, it is what it is.

So I don't know if they're connected, but yeah, it's highly coincidental. Right. Right. So then

what also happened to you? Huh? Charity or you? What do you mean? No, no, me personally.

And so what what that also did, when it got one of the appeal got monetized, that allowed me to

recreate racing and the race team. So I'm not coming back full circle. Because you were racing

before this money you're making managing hospitals. Yeah, but not at that level. Of course.

So that's when that's what got us into. I was I'd gone to David Murray track days. And I was

going to Dave's track days. And so when I decided to do this, I said, Dave, could we, you know,

and so that's that's what happened. And that's why the shop is in Brazzleton, because he lives

in common. And so we, we originally had a shop in Oakwood in Dickie Barbers old shop with H H Smith.

Yes. I don't want to I want to be able to afford to maintain them very well. And not so that's why

and as we move up the ladder costs go up. So I didn't go up the ladder

before that. So then, but that sort of you always want to stay a little where you know you can do

it right. Yeah. Yeah. And let's say I'll give you the credit that you now have enough money at that

point to run at the time the top class of Grandin. You could have run a dates on a prototype program.

No problem. And and people like you have come into our sport that have the means to do so and

thought, yeah, I'll just do that. And then we like we see him for about three years. Yeah. And then

they go, wow, I'm not that good at this. And they're spending tons and tons of money and not having

any more fun. But you did ST for two years. Well, I came in, I came in with a different car, Ryan,

in 2006. And then I ran ST until 2016. Yeah, right. So maybe eight years. Yeah. But even at that point,

you can run, you can do anything you want. Yeah. But I mean, I was I'm not sure we were ready.

No, that's my point with the infrastructure. Right. Right. That's that's my point is I'm

giving you the credit that your financial status meant that you could have picked whatever you

want. You still pick the least sexy class in the field to try to get your skill set, get the

people around you properly and grow as a driver first. Right. That ladder piece is more important

because I tried not to. In my BMW days, it was like 2002, 325, 330. So there's some kind of like

incremental and moving up in speed and handling capability. So, you know, that's sort of what

we were doing. And now it's more where we what platform we think we can win with. So you broke

your Tilly Achilles at Mossport by basically was it like an ST car? No, no, no, no. I won't use

names. No, no, we will. We will. Yeah, we were coming. We were we were going on official practices.

And so as I came through the last turn, now I'm still learning now, I don't look and so

as for whatever reason, before the last turn, Spencer came through. That's from belly. Yes.

And he was more here was more here. And he went like this. And I was like, I nosed to the left and

went into the wall. Right. So basically, he was on a certain part of the line and you as you kind

of came back to break, it hooked you over in the break zone. Right. So so it was probably could

have been partly my stupidity. I didn't take my foot off the break when I hit the wall. Okay,

just like. Oh, yeah. So but then, you know, my foot was I couldn't I couldn't walk. Right.

And so Spencer Montpellier tried to kill a guy. No, no, I didn't say that. So just to set the

stage real quick, you had this big crash at Mossport caused by Spencer. You caused by Spencer

Montpellier. No, he tried to kill you. You tried to kill you, Ted. So so you have torn your Achilles

tendon. No, yeah, torrential. Yeah, which is that's a disastrous injury for anybody. What are you

70 years old when this happens? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And instead of going like, Hey, guys,

I'm going to just stay at home and ride this out. And we're not racing. You keep the team racing.

Yes, you go to the races in a wheelchair and crutches and everything you can to make it happen.

Right. And why do that? Why keep the team going if you're not having fun?

Well, I thought it was a great thing to do because everybody we had everybody together. We were

pulling together the right group of so we think, you know, we thought we're building the team

and where you can't say, Okay, well, we're not going to race next four races or whatever.

So so we went there and everything was tried to gear to for more of the future. Yeah. And keep

everybody together. So you you you made a commitment to a crew and a team to do a season. Oh, yeah.

And you stuck to it. Yep. And so and we had the picture we're trying to paint here is that

everybody does not a lot of people do that and stands your character. So so kind of just because

of you and I know each other for a while now, when you first showed up, especially when you got the

GS car, you'd be a problem for us in the front running TCR cars at times at the start of the race.

Oh, yeah. And I was I was I was just like, but you're always like aware of it. Oh, yeah. I was

like, I was like, I don't care how fast or slow he is. He's trying his best. But more importantly,

he's paying for a lot of people to stay in racing. And not only that, you've always had good pros.

You know, you like you've been good for the sport as a person. And so when you rip your ankle apart,

and you keep going with the racing team, to me, that's something that the sport needs. We need

people like you that are like so passionate about this. They're like, just because I can't have all

the fun I want to have driving, I'm still going to keep my my guys going. We're starting to keep

us going. We don't have that many people like you, Ted. So we need to celebrate the ones that do

that, which is why I want to tell that part of the story. So you keep the team going. You've got

good guys driving your cars. You've got one of the greatest of all time running your program,

Joe Barty. And you go to run America on crutches and wheelchairs and everything. And it's raining.

Yeah. And I would point out that the wheelchair was less for me, but more for the crew to make it

easier to go through the airports. Yeah, we bought this wheelchair for like a hundred and

a couple of 20 bucks at Walmart so that Ed York could wheel me through the thing. Otherwise,

I'd be going pig leg. I did six months on crutches. No, I put like welts in the NASCAR team

trailer that I was working with at the time. Like, yeah, it's bad. Yeah. And so we go there.

And so I just put Cosmo. He won the car with Cosmo. They're racing. So we're there. And I'm

there, you know, or it's like four months, four weeks after, maybe last. I came back from Canada

and I had surgery like 13th, 14th of July. And so the first weekend of the second,

third, fourth of August. I'm in America. I just had surgery. So they're there. Now it's raining

again. And they're worried about me falling. So those two dudes are mother hands. And I said,

well, I got to go to the bathroom. They said, oh, so we go to the bathroom floor is totally wet.

Yeah. I mean, there wasn't a dry spot. So I go into the bathroom,

up by the medical building, and I'm strategically waiting. So I'm kind of,

I'm waiting for the one year old next to the wall. So I can lean up against the wall.

Right. Right. So I got because you need to answer again. So I'm so I'm leaning up against the wall

and we got one leg. Right. So I'm not weight bearing. So I got my and it's my right leg.

So I can't. Yeah. So I'm standing on my left leg, leaning up against the wall,

got my hand through the crutch. And so I'm sort of doing my business with my other. So I get

finished and I'm wearing a rain jacket. So my crutch goes like this. It slips. Use like two

urinals down. He thinks you're going to fall. Because if I try to go like this, I certainly will

fall. So my crutch pad rubber does appear wet. It goes into the toilet. It goes in.

Like the perfect store. Damn it, Spencer.

And Hughes looking at me like, I guess I got to get it for you.

I mean, finishing this otherwise you'll surely fall. Right. Right. So next thing you know,

we fish it out. We're over at the sink. We should be in Hugh fishes.

Well, he fishes. Yeah. Yeah. So we hit that. Great. Great. I mean, but it was that's why it's

in there. It's like, yeah, what I what I told you, Brian, it's like, there's no limit to what we can

do for each other. Yeah. Because we we're part of a team. We're part of a family. Yeah. And so we

that you actually care about each other and you don't want anything to happen to each other.

Yeah. So, so that was that was sorted. I do love that you have now won. You're the oldest

winning instant champion. You just won the bronze championship a couple of days ago.

Your team has won multiple championships. They're one of the staples of like the best teams in

GT four racing probably on the planet. And you chose to use the urinal story as the team works.

Well, you said to me, you didn't put that in a book.

Of course. And I said, I said, I said, it's it's in a positive way. It's not like

Hugh Plum fishes stuff out. So it wasn't like that.

Anybody will take the shirt off their back. Put your hand in a urinal. Yeah.

I had a racetrack. Yeah. Right. It's guaranteed. But I guess I got and the the the follow on

message of that that I try to tell people it's like in November, I'm back driving a race car.

Right. Right. Yeah. Book aside. Your Instagram has a lot of posts, but you're your big fan of

putting out quotes and charts about, you know, what makes somebody, you know, a winner versus a

victim. And you are you are very anti victim in the way you think, you know, in terms of like,

if you're going to be successful, you have to take these sort of caveats. And this is a good

example of that. Yeah. I mean, it's I don't mean I don't try to be mean or anything. And a lot of

I have somebody that helps me with the Instagram, the LinkedIn, the Twitter post. And but all of it

originally, a lot of it's coming from beyond fear, or it's coming from focus forward. So

after I did that, this probably tell you how much kind of a compulsive all I am. So I mean, but

with the guy to help me write beyond fear said, why don't you write a book about your life? I'm

like, Matt, I nobody read in nobody knows who I am. And so I mean, if you have to have a name or

whatever. So I took what Matt said. And I said, Okay, maybe he's right. So I made an outline page

in a quarter, a lot of white space, bullet, bullet, but I looked at them, I said, I'm going to have

to think in chronological order doesn't to give each piece weight. And I said, No, I'm not going to

do that. So one idea was I started writing short stories of different things that have happened

to me, things that have done incident situations I've been into. And I'm up to 350 now. And those

are feeding some of the Instagram or LinkedIn posts. So they are those are copy and they take

this and they shrink it down to something that you can have an eight bullets or whatever the

heck it is. And tries to convey a message that but it's trying to be, you know, trying to convey

a message. So you mean rather than looking at it all and getting overwhelmed, you took

short increments and just went one step at a time, right? Never heard of that.

No. And well, I mean, it's like, but to be honest with you, that's that was actually the story of

my life. Because it's like I realized early on that I didn't have any money. I didn't have anything

if anybody was going to make anything of this, this existence that I am, then it was going to

have to be me. Your superpower is putting the right people in charge of the thing and letting

them do the thing. And so I mean, like on the racing side, we've obviously seen that be successful

for you. You clearly managed to make some success on the professional side of life. But also now

you're doing a lot with your foundations, you know, to the tunes of millions and millions of dollars

of funding for research and very important things. I mean, that's like that's remarkable.

But the good thing about that or a bad thing, no, it's the good thing. It's how you invest.

And what I think it might have been opposed to, but it's very similar

to what we're doing in cancer research. It's very similar to what we've done in racing.

It's all data driven in cancer research. I'll give you the football example. You know where the

red zone is? Okay, that's where the drug companies are. From 20 back to the 50. That's where NIH is.

I'm down the other end zone. I'm trying to figure out how cells talk to each other. What are they

saying? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? What are they telling your immune system?

And why this works? And one of the things that we've done is we've invested maybe pushing eight

years ago into certain people that have evolved mathematical models and collaborations that

are now coming to the fore that have really shown the promise of significantly to be able

to advance how fast we learn and how much we learn through the models. And so that's moving

this way. And so that's sort of a different philosophy. But because I'm down this end of the

field, I'm not in a position to score. Those other folks will. You're setting up the next series of

and so it's more of it's a it's a different it's I guess the only thing I can say I think like

we're gonna have our annual symposium Wednesday when I get back. And so it's a lot of what is

happening is purposeful. Yeah, it just takes time to percolate and you don't know where it's

going to come from. And your focus is you're putting a lot of your your efforts and financing it into

what we call translational cell biology. Right. And and I'm not at all in this world, but but

basically like you say it's how cells talk to each other. So it's it's one of the processes

from one cell to another that creates these sort of cancerous issues. And the the operative word

translational is we're trying to get things to be different than they are. And then it will also

translate into the clinic to affect people's lives and how fast people can get cure or not.

I'm not sure there's going to be a cure for a long while, but I mean it's how we we manage things

and how we treat them more effectively. And so that's really the key. Prior to coming into the

fortune that you have now, how much would you say you put into charity? You mean prior and all that?

Oh God, not a whole heck of a lot. And so

but it's the it's the right investment. Yeah, it's back to the people it's and what we usually do

there's typically funding happens where you have fundraisers within some institution. Okay.

Ryan University and they're going out and trying to get the research hospital.

So so you're trying to get that. But what what we do is we say and then and then they get credit

for doing that and all that kind of stuff. So what what we do is we say, okay, where do we want to go?

And we're always down the center of the field. So it's it's it's kind of esoteric.

And then we look for who's the best person to do this?

Then we go to him unless as I say, it's Sean, Sean. All right. We'd like to

investigate this area. What kinds of things do you have that are unfunded that nobody will fund?

Sure. And you say, well, we could do this or this or this. And we say, okay, well, how about this?

So what usually happens is Sean, give me a proposal for that. And you send us a proposal

and we go through it and say, okay, we want to do it. Then our foundation, we come up with the

agreement. And Sean takes it to the university. That's the first time the university has found

a knows about this. So it starts with the person before it ever gets to the group.

So and one of the things that we want to say to you is we we want to for you.

We ask you, is there anything we should put in this agreement that keeps the university out of

your hair? God bless you. How do you keep the middle managers out? Yeah, right. Yeah. And so

the man who who won a huge lawsuit with the government. There's there's so much I can tell

Jane passes away. Before you ever had the kind of financial status that you have now,

you've since donated a ton of money to things like that. Was that something that you and her

discussed prior? Not not really. Yeah. And I've even said to my

I know if Jane knew what I got out of the appeal, I know exactly what she'd say.

What have you done? Right. And I was like, I would have said,

seem like the right thing that I mean, how could you do that? Now we got problems with this.

When some many problems with everybody wants to come and ask you for something, you know,

it's like, I understand. Yeah. So but no, she would she would have said that. Yeah. And

if you ask Christina, she would have. Yeah, it's probably right. Okay. So we do a

pass along question on every episode. And we were in Indianapolis after the Emsa weekend,

a couple couple moments ago now, right? We had dinner with Christian Rasmussen,

who is a Indy car winner and also was racing this weekend at Petite Le Mans.

His question for you was, what's one thing that you've learned in your career that you could

pass along to a young person or a young driver in their career, carrying cancer? No,

haha. Learn to become introspective. Look at yourself and what you can do and change to be

better. And I used to say that when I had my own firm, I used to have my board meetings when I was

shaving in the morning, that's all the, all the blame was there and all the credit was there.

And so once you do that, which is the essence of what you do in driver coaching,

you, there's a reason why my line is less than yours. And how do we, how did that go? So it's

a more of an introspection. And so if you do that in business and in life as a driver and

in anything you want to do, I mean, it's more of a, you'll, you'll, you will improve tomorrow.

We're going to have dinner with Anthony Lozaro. All right. One of my favorite buddies. Yeah.

Yeah. Why, why would you say that?

You can guess that was sarcasm. No, no, it's true. Anthony. Okay. I registered for a challenge in

18 and 19 and went to actually went to Mazda and one of the things that we did while we were at

Indy, we had the opportunity I did to test a GT three car. And he was riding with me and I crashed

it. He was passenger seat in a GT three car. Yeah. And he, and you stepped it and you stepped it.

Well, yeah. You were, you were what's called an example. X and a turn three. It was the X and a

turn three. And, and there was something where they diagnosed it where I had my,

because the pedal boxes cramped up, I had my foot slightly on the gas and on the brake and

confused the hell out of the car. Yeah. And it didn't know whether to engage TC or the brake

or whatever. And so it just, I slid on off and went to the wall that way. It just went pancake,

decided one. Right, right foot or left foot? My right foot. Pumpelly. Yeah. Yeah. You had full range

of motion. You'd only hit one pedal. Spencer. Spencer. That's pro cancer. Pro cancer. I

tried to ruin Anthony Lazaro. Yeah. I tried to take out another competitor. And, yeah. So

did you get your question in? Did I try to answer your question? No, no, we made it about us.

But a question for him. Yeah. What's the question for him? No, no, no. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm

talking, I was trying to answer your question. You know, Anthony, Anthony are good. He said,

we're like blood brothers now. Yeah. So if you could pass any question along to him,

I mean, the same way Christian Rasmussen had a question for you. Yeah. What's the top number

of women you can date at the same time? I'm glad we came.

You do know anything, Lazaro. What's your answer, Ted? But for me, I'm a monogamous guy. One is

enough because it's like, I mean, I can't. Well, you say you have no game, no, you know the phrase

game. Game. Have you heard of game with like the ability to talk a girl up? Oh, yeah. No,

yeah. You have zero. Yeah. When I was, I guess I was pretty insecure with women and that's probably

why I started with humor because it gave me a set of needs. I understand you. It was me at ease.

It was not sort of the way I was. Again, in business, I don't think this is the case for you.

Like what you may have lacked of women you didn't lack in terms of walking into a rum and selling.

Yeah. When I'm getting in business, I'm pretty strategic. I'm fairly analytic and

good or bad, I have a killer instinct. As we're wrapping up here, we ask the legacy question a

lot and yours is a little bit different than most people we talk to because you've done some amazing

things for others outside of racing. But what would you hope that someone would take away from

this episode if they heard it 10 years down the road and didn't know who you were?

Be somebody that wanted to make a contribution and appreciates life and enjoys living it.

And I think you need, everybody needs to, we all need to have purpose. And so I picked the

purpose that I want to achieve and move on to something else. But it's basically, I don't

know if that's a good answer, but I want people to say, he's trying to go somewhere. He's trying

to make a difference. He's trying to change something for positivity. And so I think that's

we all should try to do. You're 80 years young. You just won a championship.

At what point do you think you'll have had enough behind the wheel? That's a good question. Well,

a non answer would be, if you believe my doctor, he said that there's no reason why I can't keep

doing this for 15 more years. And I'm like, Bill, are you crazy? But he's basically saying,

if you take care of yourself or whatever, I think the more important question is,

um, with what, um,

it will, it will not, it will be the, the, the, the ancillary things I need to do

to allow me to drive that will become more burdensome. It'll be, uh, the workout routines

become more burdensome. It'll be trying to get, get, get a, get a fitness trainer. I mean,

that's sort of what the discussion is right now. And so it's how to, how to do that. But, um,

I had even thought of moving on to, um, out of my peripheral vision, I want to move on to doing

podcasts more, not, not for this, but it's more for, don't ruin us, man. No, no, no, no, no, no.

Not in your space. It's more in, uh, more to be for, for longevity and fitness for older people.

Yeah. Yeah. I had another idea. How about dinner with translational cell biologists?

Yeah. I don't think that's going to work. Okay.

But that's what they said about this, but, but I don't, I don't know if I mentioned it earlier,

but I, I do have, um, the, the scribbles, uh, of fitness routines that are, that are varied by

year, by age. So, um, you, you, you can't like take the routine that I'm on and get a normal

80 year old to do it. You got it. You got to have some, but something else. Sure. So those,

you need to get these people moving, doing something, which is, you know, body weight

oriented or something like that. And so, I mean, and some of them are, you know,

stupid exercises that include, you know, they include physiology, but also mental exercises.

But like, um, I mean, everybody's on maintenance medications. Here's a, so you have a pill box.

Try putting baby aspirins in a pill box back with both ends. Yeah. Right.

Dexterity. Yeah. Merging left and right pieces of brain. So it's dumb stuff like that. Right. I

have no idea. Well, one thing I've been doing, especially on this show and, uh, in person is

when I speak to someone like you that's not done anything for me, like there's no gain in this,

what I'm about to say to you. Thank you for supporting our sport because guys like you are

making dreams for guys like me come true and you're keeping the sport afloat because we don't

always have eras where there's factory support out the wazoo. You know what I mean? And a lot of

this comes down to Sean and I talk about this all the time. Someone like you liking this enough to

want to support it and be a part of it. So thanks for your participation and what you're doing for

the sport because literally like, I don't know if enough people tell you thank you, but like

legitimately thank you. No, no, no, thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Ryan and Sean. It's like a work.

But you know, to be honest, but I'm not doing it for this sport because I love it. Yeah. And

it's, you know, it's appreciated all the same. Yeah, I get it. Yeah. So it's like,

well, yeah, I appreciate the the financing and economics of racing is predicated on

gentlemen drivers. It's a terrible business model. Well,

yeah, it's absolutely is. And so, but you know, we've, well, this is, we've gone down this path

with, I've told our friends, I said, we want, we started to go down this path

when we went to homologation. Yeah. And so you've, you've increased the price of anti for a GS car

from 150,000 to 300,000. So, so now you have to get in the game, Sean, you're gonna have to have

300 grand. Yeah, just to start. Yep. And you can only buy it from this and then it does. And then

you've got certain you're in the land of right $2,500 fenders with but no, you are. And and

with except for a couple of manufacturers, right? You're you can get a bit getting a lot of hand

regular dues. But you know, that's what it's become. That's that's the economics of how the series

respond to something. I'd say on that note, Continental's got the check.

I still hold you in my arms when he says it.

So time goes by when we keep head around the circles, never letting go, never letting go.

Ep.320 – Ted Giovanis

About this episode

Ford Ranchero

Continental Tire

Chevrolet Corvette

autocross

Mitsubishi 3000 GT VR4

2002

SCCA

weight transfer

brake marker

over slowing

Aston Martin GT4

BMW 330

BMW 325

Indy

Porsche 911 GT3

passenger seat

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