Today we continue the discussion between Yates Lennon and community health expert Randy Jordan, about how good health is typically achieved through a good clinical home, which has always been an insurance discussion but now should shift to a discussion about the uninsured who need the knowledge about where to go when sick, to increase savings in the cost of caring for the entire population.

OK, All right, Randy, thank you for sticking around. Our first conversation was fascinating. Looking forward to continuing that. I think you've touched a little bit on the next question I have for you, but we'll maybe expand a little bit more. Tell us about you talked about the health, the safety net and being that term being used pretty widely and you I think listed out free and charitable clinics, FQHCS, rural health clinics as sort of the network. I think I might have left one out. So fill, fill that in for me. But why is it so important? Why? Why is the health safety net so important? And to one of my earlier questions in the first session, why does it not get more attention than it does?

Well, I think added to the list Yates would be public health units and school-based health centers.

There you go.

You know it. It's a fascinating question that you're asking because I think to those who work in the space, it gets all the attention in the world. It's built around mission minded folks who want to see this issue of the uninsured being taken care of. If, if we just pause for a moment and look at all the energy that was brought to North Carolina recently about Medicaid expansion, it brought all kinds of groups together. But it was in that case, it was for the intention of getting a health insurance card in the hand of people in need. That same passion though, exists for those that are in the business of trying to, to provide healthcare services to uninsured patients. And so at one level there's a lot of attention to it, but at another level, there's, a real absence of attention. I don't think it's because people don't care. I think it's because we've not informed them well enough. And it's one of the things I appreciate, appreciate about the chance to be on your podcast today is when the message gets out, people are good hearted, they'll respond in the right way. But we do need to get the the message out. We need to get it out to policy makers. We need to find ways for that voice to be united. And that's, you know, those are some things that I'm also working on in my spare time.

Awesome. So you, you mentioned in the first session the hospital in Jacksonville that worked with the free and charitable clinic. Can you talk to us a little bit about how the Medicaid, the the health safety net can be strengthened? What, what, what needs to happen? What are some ideas and needs for strengthening that safety net?

Well, we mentioned a number of times Medicaid already today. One of the strong ideas that came out of Medicaid transformation was a recognition that social determinants of health are important for good health. And so we're talking about housing, food insecurity, transportation, and basically protections against family violence and other forms of interpersonal violence. So the Healthy Opportunities pilots that have sprung up across the state, three of them now have identified and brought together sort of the safety net of social services. It's a wonderful thing and we celebrate it. But it because it applies only to Medicaid, that access to that network is not organized in a way to also apply to the uninsured. And I think that that's one challenge that that lays ahead for us is finding a way to leverage what's being built in the Medicaid system and apply it to the uninsured. Now here's an interesting thing. If you look at the demographic of, of most Medicaid patients, it's very, very similar if not identical to uninsured patients. The it's all income