Why do so many people stay on top of vehicle maintenance but put off their own health?
In this episode of Pivot with Darryl Lyons, Darryl explores why preventive healthcare is one of the most overlooked long-term investments we can make. Using the analogy of routine vehicle maintenance, he explains how delaying checkups and treatment often leads to greater financial, physical, and emotional costs later in life.
Darryl also discusses the four most common reasons people postpone care: inconvenience, confusion around health insurance, cost, and fear of receiving bad news. He shares practical ways to overcome each barrier while encouraging listeners to think beyond today’s discomfort and focus on long-term well-being.
You’ll learn:
– Why preventive healthcare mirrors routine vehicle maintenance
– The four biggest reasons people delay medical care
– How telemedicine can reduce barriers to treatment
– Why understanding your health insurance matters
– How fear and cost influence long term health decisions
– Why small actions today can prevent bigger problems tomorrow
Whether you’re navigating rising healthcare costs, avoiding a checkup, or helping a loved one make healthier decisions, this episode offers a practical perspective for thinking long-term.
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Transcript:
But the point that I’m making is quality car care and vehicle maintenance matters long term. And you know that, many of us are willing to invest in just marginal improvements and of course, getting our oil change done.
That same behavior doesn’t translate to healthcare for some reason. And I’m going to talk about those reasons. We disconnect in our mind the importance, the critical importance of changes and checkups.
Hey, this is Darryl Lyons, CEO and co-founder of Pax Financial Group. And you’re listening to Pivot with Darryl Lyons. We’re going to talk wealth leadership in life. Remember, this information is general in nature only. It’s not intended to provide specific investment, tax or legal advice. Visit Paxfinancialgroup.com for more information. And I believe that better money decisions happen in conversations, so consider this the beginning of a conversation.
I hope it helps you today. I like to start off the segment or the show with pondering with Pax, and these are questions I get from social media. And the question I pulled aside today is the question about and I’m paraphrasing. It’s what do you Darryl, What do you think about these apps like Robinhood? And so there’s apps that are available now in the marketplace that allow you to invest.
I think they’re good. Generally speaking. They give people a really frictionless way to be able to invest and save for retirement. And I believe there is a savings and retirement crisis that we have in our country. People are living longer, and so we need to create tools that allow people to save. So I like them, I’ve used them.
I’ve used three, four, five of them. Customer service on them are horrible. So that’s the downside. There’s some other downsides, so much so that I thought it might be a whole another podcast. And they’re not they can be material. So I really need to spend some time unpacking them. But generally speaking speaking I think they’re good. I want to encourage you to use them, especially if you’re just starting out.
I want to encourage you to use them. And then if maybe even if you know, you having an account there with some money, that’s not like a ton of money might be a good idea. You definitely can’t put it on autopilot. You can’t just wake up in five years and take a look and make sure and assume that it’s doing what you thought it was going to do.
So there are some downsides. Much of it is rooted in human behavior. Us just getting busy in life and not paying attention, not asking some of the questions. And of course, like I said before, me having specifically worked with these apps before, there’s some frustration I have with the customer service experience, which is a lot of today’s economy at large.
Whenever you’re dealing with somebody or some institution that’s a tech heavy, the customer service is often poor. So there it is. My my overall macroeconomic view is very good. And but I probably need to do an entire show to help you understand the bugs that exist in that ecosystem. So I’ll do that sometime. So I want to talk today.
Today’s commentary and show is going to be about health care. And I’m going to state the obvious, but it needs to be stated. And here’s what’s happening all the time now. And it’s happening more and more is because health care costs are so expensive. People are not they’re deferring, they’re not getting health care preventative or even they’re not getting their situation addressed.
This is happening all the time now. And I was doing some research on some other health, health insurance industry outlook things, and I came across the statistics I want to share with you. That kind of inspired me to share this commentary. So I’m going to share the commentary. I also have four reasons why people are not getting their health care preventative maintenance done.
So there’s four reasons I want to unpack. Not overly like I want to say they’re pretty obvious. You’ll know, but I think the commentary is very important. But generally speaking, this this particular segment is going to be about the the problem of delaying health care, the problem of not getting preventative checkups. And it’s just like a car. I mean, the the analogy is very similar.
You know, I think about synthetic oil. I don’t know if you do you guys use synthetic or synthetic or a blend. So my dad always used synthetic growing up. And he had his F150 or mainly the Ford F-150. They lasted like 300,000 miles. And my dad listens to the show. My mom listens to it more, but my dad, if he listens to it, I don’t think he’d mind me saying he’s a pretty cheap guy.
And for him to spend money on synthetic when it cost, you know, 50, 12 bucks a court, whereas regular cost, what, 5 or $6 a quart? That says something for somebody who’s really, really thrifty and cheap for him to say, I’m willing to spend more money on synthetic because he knew that he could get his trucks to last 300,000 miles.
He knew that. And he had experienced that over and over again. So synthetic, a synthetic or even, I guess a synthetic blend for that matter, makes a significant difference in third party research. Supports this mobile one has tested engines 250,000 miles that have used synthetic, and nothing was wrong with them. Consumer reports have third party research is validated the benefits of synthetic.
But the point that I’m making is quality car care and vehicle maintenance matters long term. And you know that many of us are willing to invest in just marginal improvements and of course, getting our old change done. But those that same behavior doesn’t translate to healthcare for some reason. And I’m going to talk about those reasons. We disconnect in our mind the importance, the critical importance of health changes and checkups.
And and we suspend the reality that we know is that we’re ultimately putting it off in such a way that it’s going to be more damaging down the road. We suspend that idea. We don’t address it. I tell my kids this and they probably hate hearing it. But, you know, everyone suffers from one of two pains in life the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.
I’ll say that again because it’s worth saying again. Everyone suffers from 1 or 2 pains in life that either the pain of discipline and the pain of regret. I had somebody the other day tell me that they tore their ACL and it’s validated, but they don’t want to get it fixed because of the cost of. And they didn’t say the cost, but they just told me they just just not getting it repaired.
It’s just going to continue to be a problem. And older folks and by the way, I’m creeping into that category. Are notorious with this. Right. That’s especially your pre Medicare because you don’t really, you know, you don’t really it’s a little bit more confusing pre Medicare because you have company benefits. And in a lot of times their deductibles are high.
And it’s a challenge and it’s inconvenient. Again we’re going to go into that. The statistic that triggered my thoughts on this which I’ve been spending a week about, just kind of thinking about this is one from a survey done and I saw it validated. I say validated, there’s a medical economics website that has some good content on there.
If you want to get nerdy about, health care and money, it’s a good collision course for that content. But imagine 360 had had a only done this survey a couple of years, but it was a it was a health care costs survey. And they, they, they asked 2500 people. They were between 18 and 64. So pre Medicare.
But I don’t know if this this also applies to Medicare holders I guess as well. But this survey was between those between 18 and 64 and nearly half. So this was 44% of respondents said that they had skipped or postponed necessary health care or medicines because of the cost. And.
Of those people, nearly half said that their medical condition worsened as a result of skipping the necessary treatment or health care. And, you know, it’s just it’s just us not willing to get all changes or, by the synthetic blend or synthetic oil. Why do we do this? You know, I said I alluded to cost. That’s one of the four.
But let me talk about the for reasons why people are punting or deferring or just frankly, avoiding the realities. You may not be that person, by the way. You may be a family member of a person that’s not addressing this.
So pass along this show to them. But let’s talk about it. Let’s just put reality out there for a second. First of all, many people avoid going because it’s inconvenient. You guys take time out of work. Sometimes the the, the physician or the treatment center isn’t convenient, especially with today’s traffic. You’ve got to travel across town. It’s going to take 30 minutes.
You may even feel like there’s long wait times. This, this, this is this is very real. And I’m not discounting that. I do want to say that telemedicine has come a long way. Most plans offer some element of telemedicine. It’s accelerated since Covid and the the benefits of telemedicine are very, very real. I know that years ago I want to say five years ago, but I’m probably off a little bit.
On Christmas, my daughter woke up with strep Claire, and on Christmas. Obviously this is not a fun situation. Very inconvenient. We had telemedicine. I always get a little nervous when I go on to, because I put the telemedicine phone number in my phone as a contact, and I always get a little nervous when I have to use it, because I don’t know if I missed an email where they updated the telemedicine phone number because sometimes they’ll change providers.
But it worked. And I got the telemedicine phone number right, called the doctor up and got the medicine I needed that day. They, you know, they they were able to do a little video conversation with my daughter, took some pictures of her throat, and he validated, sure enough, looks like strep. Let’s let’s get her to the treatment she needs.
That was on Christmas and that was because of telemedicine. Look, things aren’t convenient today, but you need to have telemedicine on your speed dial, especially if you’re, Well, really, even if you’re a Medicare, if you can, you can find telemedicine and pay for it yourself. But these platforms that are available now are really, really good. And it reduces that inconvenience that a lot of us use as a really valid excuse for not getting the care we need.
Now. It doesn’t work in all situations. Of course, when you have some specialist needs and other stuff, but for the most part you need to start using telemedicine. You need to make that just a regular part of your life now going forward. The second reason people are are not getting their change or getting their health care taken care of is because it’s complicated and ignorance is not an excuse, but it is because sometimes when those enrollment meetings are taking place for health insurance each year or you’re revisiting it, it’s boring.
It’s some of the terms don’t make sense. Deductibles and POS and HMOs kind of like it’s it’s all the the peanuts teacher kind of want want. And and so I get that I think that’s at a certain point in life you’ve got to just you really have to just be an adult and figure those terms out. I do know that early in life, you know, you’re trying to get a handle on the health insurance world is complex and overwhelming.
But when you have kids and you’ve got a family, you’ve got to start navigating those terms. The good news is it doesn’t take long for you to chat GPT it right. And so now your your ability to look these things up and, and you can ask AI stupid questions and the questions that you might have been afraid to ask in your enrollment meeting or, or, you know, you forgot to ask.
I think we can overcome that through just AI now. So let’s not make ignorance and excuse. I know it has been excuse because it’s complicated. Is that in net work out of network? I’m afraid. But let’s not let that one be an excuse for quality healthcare. The third one that this one actually was addressed in the survey was the cost and that it’s expensive.
And and that is true. Let’s say even if you’re going for a checkup, I’ll use the oil change analogy. When I go for an oil change, it’s not going to be too expensive. You know, it’s going to be I know what it’s generally going to be. The only problem is, is then they’re going to check my cabin filters, they’re going to check my wiper blades, maybe my tires, and I’m going to come out spending more than I thought.
It feels a little that way with health care to, I know you may not admit this, but going in will probably likely trigger other issues that you’re going to have to address, and there’s going to be a price tag to those issues. I still think you got to do it. And even if you recognize that, or even if you are made aware of some other issues, I think you just take one step at a time.
They may do a checkup and say, your blood pressure is high or you know, you mean you’re going to need a hip replacement just one day at a time, one step at a time. Getting that information is not a bad thing. Getting diagnosis is not a bad thing. But we do oftentimes or I’ve seen many times over the years, people not wanting to get the checkup because they’re afraid that the doctor is going to tell them to do something else, and though something else is are going to have price tags associated with it.
So it becomes overwhelming. But my suggestion to you is that go anyways. And.
Don’t face them all at one time. Just take one step at a time. The fourth, and this is kind of like the third one. The fourth reason people don’t go to get their health changes because they don’t think it’s going to be good news. It’s the fear factor. And like my friend who has the ACL issue, you know, if it’s not treated, then you’re going to continue to have instability, chronic pain.
And for of course, it could lead to other things meniscus tears or damage to the cartilage or, you know, reduced mobility could even have some degenerative issues. And so the idea of.
Of just kind of being blind to what no maintenance might look like, I think is not living in reality. And that’s just me being an adult to you. So the fear of not getting good news is true. You may not get good news. I don’t want that to stop you from going in and getting getting the help that’s needed, because long term it very likely could be worse again.
And I’m going to go back to the same quote I said earlier. Everyone suffers from two pains in life, either the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. So let’s just be very honest about how we’re avoiding things. We may not have the words to articulate why we’re not getting our checkups. But I can tell you that the long term ramifications of not getting your checkups or getting issues addressed is much, much more costlier than than the checkups themselves.
So what I encourage you to be honest with your with yourself, recognize why you’re not doing it and get it done. Hope that helps you today. If it doesn’t help you, please pass this along to somebody else that you know is wrestling with this, and hopefully this nudges them to get the care they need. And remember, you think different when you think long term.
Have a great Day.
Resources:
Full Synthetic Oil Benefits: 8 Reasons It Pays Off
2026 Healthcare Cost Report: The Deepening Affordability Crisis Free Report
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