Unfortunately, many veterans and active members find themselves left behind when it comes to access to affordable testosterone therapy. We're discussing how we will improve access to care for active military and veterans, and why we feel it is important.

TRT is a major therapy that can improve the lives of many of the active military and veterans in the USA. This video is an effort to change that by discussing the importance of TRT and how it can help to unlock your potential.

Transcript

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Brian Mckinley: Yeah, this is Brian from Alpha MD. I'm here today with Garrett, one of our main providers. He's the medical director here as well. We're talking about veterans today, and essentially how poor we think the care for them is especially when it comes to TRT. We have had a lot of active military members and veterans come to us who transfer their care from specifically the VA itself or from other civilian structures that just were not really willing to help them with their trkey concerns. And It's not just small things, it's that they've been really. Treated poorly and almost.

Brian Mckinley: Humiliated for their desire to have actual hormone levels. So we have a lot of examples of that that we'll talk about today, just to kind of go over our thinking on it. But, first and foremost, what we're going to say is, as of today, we're going to be starting a discount for all veterans, and that's going to be a flat 20% discount on all of our services & baseline medications. if you've been following us for a while, that we do a monthly fee that's going to be 20% off that as well. So we think that, a lot of the time is veterans or active military members have a hard time finding medical coverage and we're hoping that this helps them and enables them to find the TRT that they really truly need. Because we feel passionately about it, not being right to really disrespect current and past service members.

Brian Mckinley: So that said, when we talk about some of the examples of why we feel this way, maybe Garrett if you want to Share some recent experiences you had as to why we feel this way yourself.

Garrett Soames: It's interesting because I am an actual contractor for the VA. So just this very morning I was treating veterans at the VA and so it's an interesting experience kind of working kind of out in the community and then working in the VA setting because they're very drastically Mainly the main difference honestly with the VA which again in a lot of ways is a great system. I'm not gonna knock it completely. However, there are much more strict guidelines follow with treatment protocols when it comes to the VA in veterans in particular, they're

Garrett Soames: Trying to save money and I get it that, the VA is trying to make sure that, care is distributed amongst a very large pool of people. However, that also technically leaves means that they're gonna be very stringent on, specific guidelines. You must meet these very specific guidelines in order to pay for a treatment. And so unfortunately one of those treatments that Follows those guidelines. I think a little bit too strictly is in particular working specifically within the veteran population that I'm working at. Now, they're pretty much all, 65 and older. A lot of them actually would benefit from TRT, they're losing energy muscle mass, things like that.

Garrett Soames: And almost all of them qualify they've got low numbers across the board, but even just getting the test. Sometimes is not covered. They won't even allow me to test for low testosterone, And it's an interesting thing. working in where insurance companies VA or Medicare, or whoever They are essentially your boss, whether you're with your doctor PA and respect, or you don't work for the hospital, you work for the insurance companies because they're the ones who pay you. Right? They pay the hospital and…

Brian Mckinley: Yeah.

Garrett Soames: then they pay you and the hospital pays you. But if you really think about it, you're employed by the insurance company. and they get to dictate the care that's given to the patient because they are the ones that are paying so,

Brian Mckinley: And that when it comes to the government, that's essentially one in the same at that point, right?

Garrett Soames: Yeah. Yeah. I mean again I'm not knocking the VA because they've made some drastic improvements over the last decade or so they were really abysmal before they've made. Leaps and bounds. As far as improving the care, they give veterans, which is great. But at the same time, again, they've sort of made this 180 very recently and in particular with opiates, because fortunately They were essentially writing opiate scripts left and right. Can cause a lot of addiction. And you can see it in the homeless veteran population. A lot of them essentially became addicted because of the pills that were prescribed legitimately by their doctors, And so they tried to rein in their controlled substances, which of course includes testosterone.

Brian Mckinley: Yeah, that very frequently happened so it really tied together. Even some of the legislation happening right now, in the rest of the country is really hurting the TRT service. Just outside of the legality and the finance side of it. We've just had so many veterans come to us with core experiences when seeking TRT care, not just denial.

Brian Mckinley: But outright ridicule, they have to get it approved, they have to go see someone for it if you don't have the tests covered like Garrett was saying and when you finally do get to talk to someone about it, if your ranges are what we would consider treatable and low. If they're not super essentially abysmal, we've had patients, get talked to buy endocrinologists sometimes sometimes female and essentially just call them users Laugh at them and tell them essentially, Get out of the office. you're just trying to get steroids or something like that, and I don't know. It really bothers me that people especially who have served the country are treated that way.

Brian Mckinley: When it really doesn't need to go that far. If you just say, We're not going to cover it. That's one thing but it is a surprisingly common occurrence that they get the ridicule with the denial of care and so we just really hope that This discount helps us treat those service members who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford it if they're on a fixed income or something like that. Or, I don't think any other Cherokee company in the market does it right now. So, we're hoping that we end up making a difference for those in the military.

Brian Mckinley: and so if you have any questions about the discount that we're doing, if you have any questions about care, or you want to share some of your personal experiences with healthcare in the military, leave a comment below and tell us about it. We can talk back and forth with you, come to our website, send us a message, ask some questions, we'd love to hear from you and work with you. So yeah, thanks for watching today, and we hope to connect with more veterans and active military members soon. Thank you.