Many people assume insurance should lower the cost of healthcare services through scale or negotiating power. In reality, insurance-negotiated rates often inflate the price of routine care compared to cash or self-pay—commonly by 40–60%, depending on the service. This isn’t abuse; it’s a predictable outcome of third-party payment, administrative overhead, and distorted price formation. FLOW restructures healthcare financing by using cash or self-funding for routine care and reserving insurance for true catastrophic risk, allowing care to be purchased on a fundamentally lower price basis.