Data in Self Funded Health Care

The Health Exchanges of PPACA entails the creation of a massive centralized database with detailed health data on all Americans that corporate moguls will use to speculate on your health care.

I've been working on an alternative to insurance which I've tentatively called "The Medical Savings and Loan."

The MS&L is built from the ground up around Medical Savings Accounts. The mantra of the program is "Those who can self fund their care should." It uses a combination of savings accounts and loans to help people who can self fund their care do so.

It creates a well funded system of grants for people who cannot.

One interesting aspect of this design is that breaking up the large internal pools of the insurance industry results in a radical change in the processing of health care data.

Data follows the money. With insurance and socialism, our health care resource are placed in massive centralized pools. The money flows from these centralized pools to large care providers.

To handle this flow, insurance companies have created a massive bureaucracy with an internal focus on the pool.

Insurance naturally results in a large centralized database maintained by a bureaucracy focused on that pool.

The Medical Savings and Loan breaks up the centralized pools.

Your health spending would flow from your savings account to your doctor.

Just step back and imagine a system in which all of your health spending flowed from a savings account under your control to the care providers of your choice. Information from your doctor would flow back along the same channel.

In this structure, your medical savings account creates a de facto record of all your health spending.

By simply enhancing the Medical Savings Account with a document management system, one would end up creating an extremely robust distributed health information system.

For four years I've been on my knees begging for patriots to have a meeting about health freedom. The meeting will be about the very dry issue of health data.

Group health care (socialism and insurance) necessarily results in massive centralized database and large bureaucracies with a central focus on the resource pool.

A system built from the ground up around individual Medical Savings Accounts would result in a distributed information system with an external focus.


To emphasize this fact, the Medical Savings and Loan transitions all of the workers in the insurance industry into a new position called "The Health Care Advocate."

If you would like to learn more. I have a wonderful presentation called "The Medical Savings and Loan." I am willing to travel to any group willing to discuss free market health care reform (I live in Utah). Sadly, I spent all my personal savings on this project. I would need to run a fundraiser in conjunction with the meeting to pay for the trip.

An Intrusive Health Care Database

ObamaCare entails the creation of a massive centralized database that will rival any data system on earth.

This closed system will record in minute detail the health systems of every American. The programs will be used by the ruling elite in Corporate America and the government to trade your health care on a centralized exchange.

The massive health database can easily be joined with records of your political activities, your business activities, your sexual activities, your web browsing activities, your reading activities and what not allowing the ruling elite to keep the people in check.

Since ObamaCare will be the largest and most intrusive database in history. ObamaCare rivals the East German Stasi in the intrusiveness and scope of the data that they will collect on every American citizen.

It is not surprising that the ruling elite want a massive database that they can use to keep the people in check.

Two millennia ago, the Roman Emperor demanded that everyone travel to the place of their birth for a census of the empire. The enumeration would be used for the allocation of military resources and taxation.

Being the day before Christmas, I might inject that the birth of Jesus Christ took place during this enumeration.

Maintaining massive databases to keep the people in check is not a new idea. ObamaCare is just keeping to an age old tradition of oppression.

If there is any group within 500 miles of Salt Lake City willing to discuss alternatives to ObamaCare, please contact me. I have a wonderful free presentation on free market alternatives.

If you are more than 500 miles away and have a group sufficient to fund a trip, I will be happy to travel to your location.  If someone wants to travel to Park City for a ski trip, I would be happy to combine my presentation and your trip.

I am ready to drive to Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego, Colorado Springs or Denver if there was a group of 20 plus people wanting to stand up for health freedom. Please use this contact form.

Quandary

Here's a puzzle for you:

Why is that progressive get all bugged-eyed and paranoid at the thought that a web firm might record click stream data from users while they don't bat an eyelash that the Health Exchanges of ObamaCare will give bureaucrats and big businesses intimately detailed information about their health?

For that matter, why is it that progressives don't seem to care that the ruling elite will essentially be engaged in making trades based on the health of the people on the health exchanges of ObamaCare?

Is is possible that people really are this naïve?

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PS: If ever someone wanted to engage in a fascinating discussion of privacy rights in health care, they could contact me about the Medical Savings and Loan. I have a detailed presentation which shows that a system based on self-funded care will provide better health services and protect the privacy of the people.

All I need is a group within 500 miles of Salt Lake or a group that is willing to pay travel costs and I will give a presentation that will blow ObamaCare away.

Taking Control of the Narrative

The "Fiscal Cliff" (which dominates the news) is a crisis manufactured by politicians.

The US Debt is real. We are likely to see a complete failure of our nation if our politicians fail to address the debt.

The debt is bad, the debt, in and of itself, is not the heart of our nation's malaise.

Our malaise is the result of our looking to the government for the answers and not to ourselves.

Yes, government debt is destroying our society.

Unfortunately, politicians have learned to use the crises caused by their malfeasance to demand more resources from the people.

The crisis caused by excessive government results in a never ending demand for more government.

To truly solve our problems, the freedom movement needs to counter this game of action/reaction and restore the narrative that a free society is a strong and prosperous one.

IMHO, health care is the most important issue of the day.

The most productive thing the freedom movement could do in 2013 is to avert its eye's from the train wreck in Washington and engage in a substantive debate about free market health care reform.

Health care is a fascinating subject that will draw people into the freedom movement.

I contend that, if a small group of patriots engaged in an authentic conversation of free market health care, the freedom movement could capture the narrative and put America back on the path of freedom and prosperity.

Unfortunately, as long as conservatives are content with the game of reacting to actions engineered by the ruling elite, we are doomed to stay on the road to serfdom until we experience national collapse.

But if a small group of people were brave enough to discuss free market health care, that group could turn the narrative around.

Unfortunately, I am stuck in Utah. Utah is unique. The state was founded by a group seeking to create a theocratic socialism. There is no freedom movement in Utah. Notice how every prominent Mormon is for a version of ObamaCare. Harry Reid sponsored ObamaCare. Mitt Romney imposed RomneyCare in Ma. Governor Mike Leavitt's insurance company is selling Health Exchanges. Jon Huntsman supported socializing health care via health exchanges. The Republican Utah legislature was among the first groups to adopt ObamaCare. The Sutherland Institute supports socialized health care run by a State Compact.

Every attempt to discuss free market health care is suppressed in Utah by the ruling elite.

I am willing to travel, but I have to be certain that, if I drove 500 miles to talk to a group, that there would someone there.

The fact that I've been unable to find anyone interested in engaging in a substantive talk on health care reform is so incredibly frustrating it makes me want to scream.

A Traveling Show

The primary focus of the "Health Care Advocate Association" is to host meetings about free market health care reform.

There is a critical need for this function. Let's face it, we will lose all freedoms if no-one ever talks about health freedom.

The focus of the projects is the assertion that the problem in health care lies with our use of group funding of individual consumption.


Health Care is a complex subject. It takes about two hours to lay a solid base for discussing the differences between group-funded and self-funded care.

The meetings start with a presentation of a business model I called "The Medical Savings and Loan." This model uses a combination of savings accounts, a loan reserve and grants to reverse engineer an insurance pool. This business model transforms insurance agents and claims adjusters into a new position called "Health Care Advocate."


I then contrast the advocacy model for administering health care to the litigation model used by insurance. I show that advocacy achieves better results than litigation.

This is a beautiful model for financing health care that strikes at the root false assumption of PPACA (ObamaCare).

I believe that a traveling show that attacks the root assumptions of ObamaCare would be beneficial to the Conservative Movement.

I travel cheap. The expenses of a traveling show are: Gas, hotel rooms, conference rooms and food. Cheap hotels average around $60. Conference rooms seem to cost about $80. I eat cheap. $5 a day suffices. Gas is expensive. My car gets 32 MPG. Driving from Salt Lake to Phoenix costs $75 in gas plus wear on the car.

To make the conference idea work. I would probably need to make $200 to $300 at each stop. Each show would include a fund raising community event.

A traveling show that crossed from San Diego to Florida would cover about 3000 miles and have about 16 stops would cost about $10,000 (that includes the cash to get back home).

Each meetings would include a fundraising activity, which is likely to pay for the meetings.

My presentation is substantive. It could help arm local Tea Party groups to fight against socialized medicine.

The reason we are falling into socialized medicine is because our sound-byte driven media is not engaging in a substantive debate. The antidote is to engage in such a debate.

There are hundreds of traveling trade shows. These shows exist because it is an effective format for conveying messages.
 
The impossibly hard part is getting the first meeting going. It would take a group of four or so people (within a day's drive of Salt Lake) willing to commit a few days to exploring free market health care reform.

NOTE, I could drive to Las Vegas, Phoenix or Denver. Or, people could come to Utah. Park City has great skiing.

A traveling show that presents a substantive argument for health freedom could play a vital role in defeating ObamaCare and restoring health freedom. The program simply needs a little support and a push.

Programming for Two

It's absurd.

Conservatives burn up the political capital of the freedom movement on frivolous issues such as land grabs, the gun culture, fiscal cliff debates and unabashed defense of a corrupt financial system.

Meanwhile they ignore the most critical issue of our day: Health Care Reform.


The freedom movement would win the day, if only there was a group of people with enough courage to discuss free market health care reform. There is no such a group within 500 miles of Salt Lake City.

Unfortunately, what I've been doing is even more absurd.

I believe that the key to defeating ObamaCare is for a group of people to create a viable alternative to insurance.

The weak part of ObamaCare is the insurance mandate. This mandate hinges on the false assumption that insurance is the only way to fund health care (socialism is insurance at a national scale).

The key to defeating this concept is to create a viable alternative to insurance.

To do this, a group of people needs to create a business model formed on the concept of self-funded health care.

Yes, I said the solution is to start businesses. Financing health care is a business problem, not a political problem.We need new businesses not new government programs.

Please note. Talking about business does not imply a commitment to that business. The discussion is about creating business models to replace the insurance model.

Most people refuse to go to meetings that talk about business. Since people refuse to talk about ways that business could solve our health care problems, we are left with only government solutions.


The group would discuss business models. Ultimately, the solution to health care would involve people creating new businesses.

I know. I know. I know. People hate and despise business.

If Americans hate business so much that we absolutely refuse to talk about business, then we should give up on the American experiment in self rule and adopt the Soviet model ... which will happen inevitably if people never discuss ways to solve problems with business.

I spent four years trying to find a person who is willing to discuss free market health care. The conversation would be about how a new business model for financing health care would change the face of health care.

I find it absurd that Conservatives slam the door in my face every time I talk about creating business solutions to solve a business problem.

But what I am doing is far more absurd.

After four years of being unable to find a group willing to discuss free market health care reform. I am still trying to figure out how to get three or four people in a room for an afternoon to discuss free market health care.

The latest absurd step I took was create a thing called Health Care Advocate Association.

The mission of the HCAA is simply to discuss alternatives to standard pooled insurance.

So, I now have an association with a single person in it.

I've been trying to figure out what an association with a single person in it can do.

I can host meetings in which I talk to myself.

Being a computer programmer. I spent two weeks trying to write computer programs.

It is stupid to try writing a computer program with no user input.

One of the biggest mistakes one can make in computer programming is to let the programmer design the tests for the program. The programmer will simply write tests that mirror the code. The tests will not reflect the end user's experience.

Because what I am doing is absurd, I end up just staring at a blank computer screen and decide to play computer games instead.

Demoralized

Yes, I confess, I am demoralized and becoming despondent.

For years I operated under the false assumption that the "liberal left" was preoccupied with the image of liberty as the cost of the substance, while the "conservative right" was interested in the substance of liberty.

For example, a free society tends to be both diverse and open. The progressive left believes that if they took the images of openness and diversity and applied these images to the political structure of the monarchy, that they could created paradise on earth in brave new socio-economic system socialism.

The Classical Liberals on the right are interested in the substance of liberty. Classical liberals love to engage in the conversation about how a free society achieves the objectives of a nation better than the totalitarian methods of the left.

Classical Liberals, of course, are only a very small contingent on the right.

The bulk of the Conservative movement is about preserving a corrupt social order with powerful conservatives at the top of the social hierarchy.

My love for the classical liberal view blinded me to the sad truth that conservatives are as mindless and image driven as the left.

The 2012 election should have been about the profound differences between the visions of the US Founders and radical social change.

Rather than having a campaign about substance, Conservatives engaged in a shrill non-debate about which candidate fit the image of conservatism.

Republicans nominated the father of RomneyCare to run against the father of ObamaCare failing to notice that ObamaCare and RomneyCare are the same things!

My simple objective for the last four years has been to find a group interested in spending an afternoon talking about free market health care reform. I spent four years, $10,000 and drove over 5,000 miles trying to find "conservatives" willing to discuss free market health care reform.

That wall all wasted time and effort.

All I learned is that Utah Conservatives have zero interest in free market health care reform. Every popular Mormon politician is for socializing medicine via health exchanges. Harry Reid, Mitt Romney and Mike Leavitt are all on the forefront of the scheme. Jon Huntsman, Gary Herbert and the Sutherland Institute actively support socialized medicine and suppress debate about alternatives. The squabble is over who holds the ring of power.

This world in which no-one is willing to do the hard work and actually discuss the substance of health care is depressing.

Professional Associations v. Unions

The news of the day is that the Michigan Legislature is considering a "Right to Work" law.

I applaud those who are standing against the corrupt centralized unions and who are standing up for the rights of workers to choose their associations.

Unfortunately, a right to work law on its own does not address the fact that most Americans are stuck in dead end jobs with little hope for a bright future.

While standing against forced unionization is a valuable short term measure, to restore the free market, conservatives must move beyond base reaction and start constructively creating alternatives to unions.

IMHO, the best alternative to a union is a professional organization.

Both professional organizations and unions are forms of association. The difference is the focus.

A union is built on the Marxian idea that workers must unite against the evil capitalist. The focus of the union is amassing power in a centralized group that then forces demands upon everyone.

The focus of a professional association is the lot of the individual professional. A professional organization provides resources, educational opportunities and guidance for the members of the profession.

While a union has an internal focus and is primarily concerned with amassing political, the professional association has an external focus. As such it ends up aligning better with the desires of the individual worker.

So, yes, on a political level, we need to stand up for right to work laws. However, to win the war of ideas, conservatives need to move from base reaction and do proactive things like creating professional associations.

Moving beyond the simple creation of professional associations, conservatives would be wise to actively encourage membership in professional associations.

I understand employers wanting to avoid unions. Unions seek to create a centralized power structure that bosses people around. One of the best ways to avoid unionization is to actively encourage workers to join professional associations that focus on helping individual workers and promoting professional standards. Standing against forced unionization is not enough. We need to create alternatives to this corrupt centralized power structures that are destroying the American work place.

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On an end note, I should mention that my goal for the Medical Savings and Loan is to create a professional association called the Health Care Advocate Association.

Insurance is a Professional Whipping Boy

When  engaged in the health care debate, it is extremely important to remember that insurance is a professional whipping boy.

A whipping boy is a person that one pays to take the abuse for their misconduct.

The whipping boy is related to the professional straw man. We see professional straw men on TV all the time. Fox News hires ugly creatures Alan Colmes and Bob Beckel, then heap abuse on them. Professional pundits often actively seek abuse because it gets their precious brand in front of the public. Rush always gets a huge surge when his radio show is the focus of controversy.

I was looking at a site by a Wendell Potter who made a tonne of dough in PR for the insurance industry.

He now heaps abuse on insurance and gained even more money and more influence in his new role as watchdog, regulator and pundit.


PR (Public Relations) is a game in which professionals spin arguments to gain influence and achieve a variety of political objectives.

PR tends to have a negative effect on discourse, because the people "playing the PR game" are playing the discourse and not genuinely involved in the discourse.

Wendell Potter's associations page says he is  proud member of both the Public Relations Society of America and Society of Professional Journalists while being a contributor to the Huffington Post ... a rag dedicated to spinning the news.

He attacks the PR of insurance while proudly maintaining the role of PR specialist. This type of thing makes bells ring in my skeptical heart.

The fact that someone is heaping abuse on insurance does not necessarily mean the person is genuinely pro-reform. A PR specialist who whips a professional whipping boy might actually just be gaming the system from a fun new angle.

Health Care Advocate Association™

ObamaCare (PPACA), RomneyCare and the Health Exchanges are all premised on the false assumption that insurance is the only way to fund health care.

I contend that the easiest way to challenge this assumption is to create an alternative to pooled insurance.

So, I created a mathematical model called "The Medical Savings and Loan." This model proves that it is possible to provide modern health care on a fee-for-service basis through a system of health savings accounts supplemented by loans and grants.

The Medical Savings and Loan restores the pricing mechanism in health and will lead to tremendous cost-savings along with a tremendous improvement in health care for the working class American.

The central feature of the program is a new position called the "Health Care Advocate." This position replaces the insurance agent, claims adjuster and medical transcriptionist position in insurance.

The primary difference between an insurance agent and the advocate is an insurance agent works for the insurance pool, while the health care advocate works directly for the clients in the MS&L.

This structural change comes by restructuring the accounts. With insurance, people place their health care resources in a pool owned by the insurance company. With the MS&L, people directly own their health care resources.

The positions follow the money. In standard insurance, a large corporation owns the resources; so insurance agents work for the insurance company. In the Medical Savings and Loan, people keep the bulk of their health care resources; the advocates work with their clients ... the people.

The Health Care Advocate Association™ is still in its organizational stage. If you wish to join the organization, please contact me for instructions. Joining the organization will cost one dollar (as defined in the Coinage Act of 1792).

The initial goal of the organization is to host an organizational meeting. Members of the organization will be polled and asked when and where to hold the organization meeting. The official web site of the HCAA is HCA.me.

Thrown for a Loop

I have to apologize. The complete lack of sales for cyber weekend threw me for a loop.

I sincerely believe that health care is the most important issue of our day.

Conservatives completely choked on the issue. The Republican Party played a snide game in which they sought to capture ObamaCare and have suppressed discussion of real free market reform.

If a group began discussing real free market health care reform, that group could have a profound impact. But I've been unable to find such a discussion.

I've spent every last penny I had trying to find someone willing to invest the two hours to discussion the most important issue of our generation.

I find it bizarre beyond belief that Conservatives immediately slam the door when a person brings up the topic.

I spent every penny I had trying to find anyone willing to discuss free market health care. The conversation involves the mathematics of funding health care and what if scenarios. The conversation requires feedback and cannot be done on a blog.

The argument is that we would get more and better care if we restored the concept of self funded health care and fee-for-service medicine. To make this argument, I must develop a model for group-funded care and a model for self-funded care and compare the two.

This simply cannot be done in a blog post!

Blogs are great for agitation. They are not a good format for developing ideas. Developing ideas is best done in face to face conversations with instant feedback.

Sadly, I live in Utah (which is renown for its closed-mindedness). The LDS Church is 100% committed to the idea of socializing medicine through health exchanges. Every major LDS politician favors a form of ObamaCare. Harry Reid was a primary author of PPACA, which was based on RomneyCare. The Leavitt Insurance Agency by former governor Mike Leavitt is heavily invested in health exchanges. Former Governor Jon Huntsman and current Governor Gary Herbert are committed to implementing the Health Exchanges of PPACA.

Utah is a closed society which reviles open discourse. This picture shows the sum total of people at the Utah Stand Up for Freedom Rally. This rally was well publicized by Glenn Beck, the national and local media. Only about 200 people in a metropolitan area of two million showed up for the most publicized Health Care event of 2012. The speakers, families of the speakers and media made up half the total.

I've written to every conservative and libertarian group I can find in Utah. There is not a single group in this state willing to discuss free market health care reform.

The Republican strategy in Utah was simply to vilify Obama, with hopes of capturing ObamaCare, which would be rebranded as RomneyCare.

What the Republicans did was insidious. The campaign to capture and rebrand ObamaCare was not real debate it was simply the cunning strategy of right wing rogues.

I want real debate and have been seeking to find a group to discuss real free market health care.

This means I must travel. I figure the best bet is Arizona. Phoenix is about 663 miles away. 40 gallons of gas to get there and back. It is warm and I can sleep in my car. I also need an oil change.

I would love to take one last shot at getting people together to discuss free market health care reform. I am certain that if a group of liberty leaning folks would see my presentation, that the argument I put forward could help defeat ObamaCare.

I was really hoping that I would make something off my web sites this holiday season. Seeing that it won't happen was extremely disappointing.

Site Launch

I've been filling out forms and paying registration fees for the new association.

While I wait for the wheels of governance to churn, I am updating the site HCA.me in preparation of the new association.

The site uses the Community Color user database (register). The site will include a calendar, directory, messaging system and features specific for the Health Care Advocates.

How to Start an Association

Happy Cyber Monday!

The weakest part of ObamaCare is the insurance mandate. The best way to defeat ObamaCare is to create a viable alternative to insurance.
 
Funding health care is a business problem, not a government problem. To restore the free market, we need a business solution!

Creating a business solution to a problem as complex as health care requires more than a single business. It will require a network of businesses.

The best path to creating a network of businesses is to create a business association.
 
The proper way to start an association is for a group of like minded people to get together and form an organizing committee that would then register and form the legal structure for the association.

There is a catch here.

Lets say a group is getting together to start an organization. Any jokester who hears about the effort can throw a wrench in the works by registering the name of the association as a business.

For the last couple years, I've tried to take the tact of hosting a meeting with people angry about ObamaCare. The meeting would end with the primary action item of starting a business association and publishing a book. The group would select a spokesman, chairman, etc..

(The book is mostly written, but needs editing. I would have given co-authorship to anyone wanting to add a chapter or help edit the book.)

Starting the association and publishing the book would cost a couple grand. The group would

Unfortunately, there is one big catch to this plan.

If I announced the name I wanted to use for the association, anyone wanting to throw a wrench in the works would simply run out and register the association name as a business.

This is a common tact used by progressives in Utah. Progressives give a badge of honor to anyone who creates legal challenges for Libertarians or Conservatives who try to start businesses.

So, I did not want to tell people my agenda. I wanted to have the meeting that spoke about free market health care reform. If there were people at the meeting wanting to stand up for liberty, I would take them aside and we would start the association.


Anyway, I decided to take one last shot at starting a conversation on free market health care reform.

I am registering all the trademarks needed to secure the business name.

This process is expensive.

A few years back I created a coupon site to test affiliate marketing called AFountainOfBargians.com . The commissions from any sales will go toward the association and the defense of free market health care.

I will announce more about the association later this week.

Ok Surgery Center

I just watched a wonderful video about the Surgery Center of Oklahoma which engages in the radical process of publishing prices for its services online.

Publishing prices is unheard of in the modern medical industry which has learned to keep such information secret from patients.

The video by Reason TV claims that many doctors are wanting to take this route. The Association of American Physicians & Surgeons (AAPS) in Tucson also advocates a return to fee-for-service medicine.

Unfortunately, the problem in health care is not coming from the doctors. As wonderful as they are, doctors are unable to fix the problem in health care.<

The problems in health care come from the financial sector. For the last half century, corporate America has attempted to use group funding for individual consumption. This experiment in socializing medicine at the corporate level broke the pricing mechanism and led widespread abuse.

The solution is to restore the concept of self-funded care.

The only way to restore the concept of self-funded health care is to create a structured program to help people self-fund their care. I have worked for many in great detail on this subject and have a mechanism to restore self-funded care.

Because the problems lie in the financial sector, there needs to be a financial solution to the problem. I've been trying for four years to find people brave enough to discuss free market health care reform. I hope to take one more stab at this problem. I will make a big announcement next week. Enjoy the video. If you are doing Black Friday or Cyber Monday shopping, please visit my affiliate site aFountainOfBargains.com any commissions I receive will go to the project.

Happy Thanksgiving & a Last Ditch Effort

I decided to make one last ditch effort at hosting a meeting on free market health care reform.

To get the engine rolling, I had to file some legal documents earlier this week. I will give details on this effort next week when I get the paperwork back from the State.

Personally, I think it absurd that in this last four years of debate about health care that not a single Conservative has been willing to invest an evening to discuss free market health care reform.

Albeit. I live in Utah. Utah sports a different brand of Conservatism than the rest of the nation.

The plan still involves a trip to either Arizona, Colorado, Nevada or possibly Southern California. Since it is winter, I am inclined to go to Arizona since I could sleep outside and avoid the hotel cost.

I figure the cost of travel plus renting a meeting space in Arizona would cost from $500 to $750. Travel to Colorado or Southern California would cost $1000 to $1500.

Driving to Texas would probably cost $1500 to $2000. Driving to Florida would cost upwards to $3000.

I spent my every last penny in 2010. I am dead broke.

But today is Thanksgiving.

Which means that tomorrow is Black Friday.

The commissions on any sales from my e-commerce site A Fountain of Bargains will go to paying for this last ditch effort to promote free market health care reform.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Resisting the Health Exchanges

The health care debate for the last four years made me sick. From day one, the Republican establishment played a snide game in which they hoped the Democrats would burn their political capital creating health exchanges that the Republicans would capture with the 2012 election.

This game reached absurd levels when Republicans fielded the father of RomneyCare against the father of ObamaCare, hoping Americans would not notice that they were both the same health care plan.


Both RomneyCare and ObamaCare social medicine via state run health exchanges. The exchanges differ only in the band of rogues holding the ring of power.

The health exchange is premised on the flawed assumption that your health is the property of the collective and that your health care should be traded by massive centralized banks (pools) in a Wall Street like exchange.

The state run exchanges have the same basic structure as Enron. Enron, as you may recall, was a multibillion dollar fiasco built around a centralized energy exchange. The Enron sold the poison that its internal exchange would eliminate the risk associated with energy and reduce prices. Enron's exchange led to rolling brownouts in the community and ended in internal financial collapse.

Founding our health care on the business model of Enron is pure insanity.

The Republican Establishment loves the idea because it concentrates wealth and power. The far left promotes the exchanges because they see them as a step on the path to the true objective of socialism.

Unfortunately, during the health care debate. The Republican establishment actively suppressed real discussion of free market reform in the gamble that they would be able to discredit Obama and win the presidency in 2016.

This whole thing makes me sick.

However, I am an optimist at heart.

The Republican ploy to capture the health exchanges failed.

For the very first time in this four year long debate, I am seeing Conservatives questioning the health exchanges.

Republican run states are hesitating in the implementation of the health exchanges.

It is still possible to beat this beast.

If a group of patriots actually physically sat in a room to discuss real free market health care reform, that group might make a difference.

I live in Utah. The Utah Republican Party is run (lock stock and barrel) by "The Establishment." Utah Republicans actively repress any debate about free market health care reform.

I am a computer programmer/mathematician. I am not a pundit, nor a politician. I worked for several decades on the issue of free market health care reform and have insights that could be of value to any group wanting to resist the exchanges.

I love the American experiment in self rule. I do not want to see this experiment fail. I spent every penny I had driving thousands of miles trying to find even one person willing to discuss free market health care reform.

Freedom is not lost. If there is a group of patriots interested in saving the American experiment in self rule. I'd be happy to travel to your group to discuss ways to resist and turn back the health exchanges in ObamaCare (and RomneyCare). I have a presentation on funding health care that takes about two hours.

The presentation includes a step by step plan on how small business and free people can stand against ObamaCare. All is not lost.

The forces of freedom could easily win the health care battle if people approached the issue from the correct angle.

The Republican game of trying to discredit Obama so that they could capture the health exchanges (ie, the Mitt Romney campaign) was a snide and sinister strategy from the start. A direct campaign against the health exchanges with the eye of restoring health freedom could still win the day.

Multidimensional Data

Health Care is a fascinating multidimensional space. The Insurance industry (and socialism) attempt to project the complexities of this multidimensional space onto onto a two dimensional surface from which a corrupt impose their dictates.

When I worked in health care, I began seeing the complex dimensions of health care and realized that the free market approach will produce better results than insurance or socialism (insurance is privately owned socialism). To explore the concept I created a fictional entity which I called the "Medical Savings and Loan" as a simple tool to start exploring this space. With the limited data I had, I was able to show that the MS&L outperformed insurance and socialism.

People following this blog notice that I keep mentioning that I have an approach to health care reform that I desperately want to pursue. I don't produce data because it is time consuming and costly to get the data I want to display.

In the video below, Hans Rosling explores data dimensions. Please watch this video. You need to right click the video and select watch in couch mode.


Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen from TEDTalks on Vimeo.

The Medical Savings and Loan is a data driven approach to health care. The key component of the plan is a new position called health care advocate. The advocate is a clerical position. There would be thousands of advocates spending forty hour weeks accumulating information about health care. These advocates would be sharing their data through a structured publishing system.

Actuaries would study the data in detail then report back findings from the data back through to advocates to the people. If you were an advocate, your job would be to accumulate data while periodically giving your clients presentations like the one on the video showing their expected health costs.

Clients of the MS&L would keep the bulk of their health dollars. Each client would have a dedicated advocate who accumulates health and financial data. The advocate would give presentations similar to this presentation of Hans Rosling that would help people understand their health and how they can improve it.

We would replace insurance (or socialism) with a system where people had a dedicated advocate and access to quality information.

A group dedicated to free market health care reform could destroy ObamaCare if they just sat down in a friggin' room and created a program for publishing health data.

The people who are willing to take a chance to sit in a room and explore health data might find themselves owning businesses in which they made a substantial income.

Instead we have an idiotic Republican Party that spends its entire wealth parsing electoral information to pieces and FoxNews that loves to present news as conflict.

For four years, I've been begging patriots to meet and talk about free market health care reform. The goal of the meeting is to lay in place a structure that can accumulate quality health care data. With the quality health care data, we can prove that that a free market health care system would outperform a socialist model (aka the Health Exchanges).

Watch the video through, the first part of the video shows that our learned college professors have a studied ignorance about health care. The end of the presentation shows how countries changes through time. The first meeting would be to create a structure that can start accumulating data. Once we have some quality peer reviewed data, the group would start giving presentations that show health care is a multidimensional space and will argue that the free market, not socialism, is the source for multidimensional solutions. But I am stuck in a hole living in Utah where people simply refuse to talk solutions. I would be happy to travel to a location where people are willing to put in the effort to put together quality analysis like the video above.

Defeating ObamaCare

It is still possible to defeat ObamaCare.

The method involves something that Conservatives seem to be completely unwilling to do. It involves thinking out of the box and discussing ideas.


The weak part of ObamaCare is the insurance mandates. The way to beat ObamaCare is to create a viable alternative to insurance.

Please notice, I am not talking about a political program. I am talking about a business model. The idea is to create a new business model, once a group of people is happy with that model, then they can then argue for making that business model legal.

I called the business model "The Medical Savings and Loan." I am more than happy to change the name. The point of the program is to build, from the ground up, a method for self-financing health care.

The program uses a radically different system of contracts and a different mathematical model than insurance. For example, the program supplements care through a system of grants, rather than a system of legal contracts. The program will have the same amount of money. Replacing contracts with grants breaks the allusion that health care is a right.

The program is a business model. It is not a government program.

Fortunately, it is still legal for people to meet to discuss creating businesses.

To get the program going, all that is needed is for a small group of patriots to sit down for a weekend, discuss free market health care and to create an association for defining the business model. No money, beyond the cost of travel and hosting a meeting is involved.

Unfortunately, I live in Salt Lake City. I need to travel a great distance to find people interested in free market health care reform. I would be happy to travel a great distance if I could find a group interested in free market health care. Here is my contact form.

The Only Way to Beat ObamaCare is for People to Talk

ObamaCare (PPACA) is an attempt to socialize health care through a network of health exchanges implemented at the state level. Yes, that is right. It is Federal Legislation that requires the creation of RomneyCare type health exchanges in each state.

The Health Exchanges are premised on a bizarre notion that large capital pools should own the health care resources of the nation, and that a large centralized mechanism should do the thinking for the people.

ObamaCare was built on the basic structure of RomneyCare. The ideas for RomneyCare, ObamaCare and Health Exchanges flow directly from a work called "Das Kapital" from an 19th century psychopath named Karl Marx.

The heart of Marxian thought is The Material Dialectics. Dialectics is a game in which the ruling class presents the people with false dichotomies.

We are currently at the end stretch of one of the most shrill political cycles in U.S. history. People are more divided than ever but are choosing between two candidates who are essentially clones of each other. Republicans are somehow convinced that Health Exchanges imposed at the State Level is somehow the free market in action, while Democrats believe that Health Exchanges imposed at the State Level and regulated by the Feds is social justice in action.

This is a false dichotomy. The only real question this election is which band of scoundrels will hold the ring of power.

Millions of Tea Partyers and Libertarians will march to the polls on Tuesday believing that voting Romney might somehow make ObamaCare go away.

What they fail to understand is that PPACA is simply the legislation that created the Health Exchanges. The creation of theses beasts is already underway in every state.

The one and only way for us to rid ourselves of the mistake of PPACA is for people to discuss real free market health care reform for people to come up with an alternative to the health exchanges.

Unfortunately, the power brokers in the parties and media have such a myopic eye on the ring of power that it is unlikely that anyone will ever in the few hours to discuss free market alternatives to insurance and the health exchanges.

Personally, I will be voting for a third party on Tuesday. My thoughts are that, if enough people reject the false dichotomy between ObamaCare and RomneyCare, both parties will be forced to rethink their platform for 2016.

Voting Romney will not get rid of ObamaCare. There will simply be a token repeal followed by the imposition of Health Exchanges (RomneyCare) throughout the states. Voting Obama won't lead to a repeal of his namesake legislation.

PPACA is a bad law that will make health care worse. If both parties are forced to rethink their platform in the wake of a split vote, we might see some brave soul stand up and take the effort to contemplate real free market reform.

BTW, any group interested in discussing real free market reform is welcome to contact me.

Creating a Viable MS&L

Once again, during the Presidential Debate, Mitt Romney reiterated that his position on health care is to force everyone to buy insurance. In Romney's plan the mandates are at the state level instead of the Federal level. Other than that RomneyCare is identical to ObamaCare.

The health care debate is premised on the false assumption that the only way to fund health care is with group pools (insurance or socialism) and that challenge for government is to figure out how to force everyone into the pool.

I contend that the problem in health care is the use of group funding for individual consumption and that the solution is to create a viable alternative to insurance, which I've done.

What I need now is for a small group of free market thinkers to engage in a peer review process help creating a finalized accepted version of the program. With intense peer review, the plan can be presented as a recognized viable alternative.

I gave my project the campy name "Medical Savings and Loan." I developed this program in the 1980s, prior to the current HSA/HDP program of the Bush Administration. At the time people used the term "medical savings account."

The MS&L is different from an HSA/HDP program. The HSA/HDP is simply a high deductible policy with a savings account attached. It is still an insurance policy. The Medical Savings and Loan is built from the ground up  around the savings account.

My program starts with the claim that the problem in modern health care is the use of group funding of individual consumption, which creates inequity and distortions. The solution is to restore the concept of individually funded care.

The program starts with the statement: "Those who can self fund their care should."

Those who can self fund are expected to directly pay their expenses. We will then create a well funded system of grants for those who can't.

The first step is to separate those who can self fund their care from those who can't. To do this we will perform a full lifecycle analysis of individual. Imagine that we looked at a large random population and compared their lifetime medical expenses to income. If a person had lifetime earnings of $1,000,000 and had $150,000 in medical expenses, their ratio of expense to income is 0.15. If a person had earnings of $100,000.00 and $300,000.00 in medical expenses, the ratio is 3.00.

The first person could easily self fund care. The second person cannot.

If we graphed these ratios from low to high, we'd see some sort of hyperbolic curve similar to the following: Health agencies report that the US currently spends some 17% to 19% of the GDP on health care. The hyperbolic curve will have two legs with most people consuming less than average with a small number of people experience health expenses multiple times their earnings.

The graph of expenses to income shows that most people can afford to self fund care. A small number of people need supplements.

Policymakers in health care tend to start by looking at the people who cannot fund care and then makes the mistake of muddling the health care of everybody to pay for the care of a few.

The Medical Savings and Loan starts with the observation that, if everyone who could self fund care did so; the public policy issue would be much smaller and could be handled through private grants.

To help those who can self fund care, the Medical Savings and Loan creates a system of savings accounts with a loan reserve carved from the savings.

The program sets aside a massive amount of money to supplement care for those who cannot self fund their care. We would determine the amount to set aside by the real world experience of the population.

Imagine that we looked at a population that had an expected $10B in health expenses. Our analysis showed that $7B of the expenses could be self funded, while $3B of the expenses could not be self funded. Mitt Romney's health plan would want an insurance company to take $10B plus 10% profit from the group to fund health care. The MS&L would let the workers keep the $7B in savings account and hold aside $3B  for the grants.

Administering grants is less expensive than administering insurance. The key element of insurance is that people have a legal claim against the pool. This involves expensive law suits. In contrast a grant agency will hold funds with a legal obligation to dispense the funds. Both programs disperse funds, the grant process is more efficient and more equitable.

Of course the real difference between the Medical Savings and Loan and insurance is that that he MS&L allows people to keep the bulk of their money.

Like insurance, the program is scientifically oriented and data intensive.

For this plan to work there must be a large number of professionals who help people record their income and expense data. So, I created a new position called the Health Care Advocate that replaces the insurance agents, claims adjusters and medical transcriptionists of industrial health care.

Advocates will work one on one with each member of the Medical Savings and Loan to set up record keeping system and maintain records with a document management system. The program will include simulations of expected lifetime health expenses and income projections and will encourage preventive care and fitness. The advocates will help clients set up and maintain a structured savings program to prepare for expenses.

The advocates will be familiar with local health offerings. When a person needs care, the advocates will help clients find care providers and help negotiate expenses.

Payments to providers will be on a fee for service basis, which would eliminate expensive medical billing.

If a client does not have sufficient funds for care, the advocates will have the ability to approve loans.

If a client has health needs that exceed their ability to pay, the advocates will apply for grants.

Note, the grants are based on ratio of health expenses to income. The grant system is structurally means tested. A person with a lifetime income of $500,000 might only be able to self fund $50K in care while a person with a projected income of $10,000,000 would be expected to pay $2,000,000 in care before receiving grants.

If you are rich, you will pretty much be expected to pay for all of your care. It turns out that the rich are the ones that set the trends. If the rich are paying for their care directly, we would see a quick restoration of the pricing mechanism in health care.

A casual reader might notice that this program is substantially more "progressive" than ObamaCare. It lets the middle class keep more of their money and forces the evil rich to pay more for care.

My direct observation in life is that insurance is the primary driver of the growing gap between rich and poor. Insurance takes all of the health care resources of the workers, put the resources in a pool and the people who own the pools get immensely wealth.

A case in point is Warren Buffet. Yes, Mr. Buffet is a great investor, but the real source of Buffet's wealth is that he owns multiple insurance pools and gets a return by investing the pools.

If we replaced a $10B pool with $7B going into the savings accounts and $3B set aside for grants, we would see a break up of the pools which are concentrating wealth.

The Medical Savings and Loan has the same amount of money as insurance. Since people are better with their money than they are with other's, people will be able to buy more and better care.

The primary difference is between the ownership. With insurance and socialism, the resources are owned by a collective. With the Medical Savings and Loan, the resources will be owned by individuals.

Let's end by looking at an individual.

Imagine that a worker earned $40k/year and had a health insurance policy that cost $10k/year. This person's income would be $1,600,000.00 with $400,000 taken to provide care over a 40 year career. (This is not counting the money taken for Medicare).

The Medical Savings and Loan would put the bulk of the $400,000 in the worker's savings plan with a good portion held aside for grants. We might put $300K in the savings plan and hold aside $100 in grants. The worker would then be expected to pay up to say $400k in health expenses before receiving grants.

People who live a healthy lifestyle and who keep their health costs low will be rewarded. People with high health expenses will end up paying a little bit more, but people with extreme health needs will have access to well funded grants.

Now What?

The Medical Savings and Loan is a free market alternative to insurance. The program breaks apart the insurance pools that concentrates wealth and gives people direct control over their health care resources. The program empowers individuals by replace insurance agents with advocates.

I believe that such a program could be used in the fight to restore freedom in America by directly challenging the false assumptions at the base of ObamaCare and RomneyCare.

What is needed at this point is for a brave soul to engage in peer review. After peer review, I would like to set up a legal entity that owns the definition (a DBA is sufficient).

Once there is a peer-reviewed alternative to insurance, it would be possible for patriots to stand against ObamaCare and RomneyCare and argue that pooled insurance is the cause of the problems. Rather than having government force people to buy insurance, we need small businesses to create a self-funded alternative to insurance.

Presidential Debate

I am not sure which candidate won the Denver presidential debate. After watching it twice, I fear that the American people lost.

The reason the people are losing is that our pundits keep asking the wrong questions. For example, the political machine has made jobs the fundamental issue of the debate.

Guess what? The president, as envisioned by our founders, had nothing to do with jobs. I suspect the founders would recoil at the idea that the president was the source of jobs.

This is the type of top-down thinking behind the monarchy.

In the monarchy, people thought the wealth of the nation flowed through the king to the people.

The American founders had a bottom up vision in which the people owned property. They created a limited government charged with protecting the property of the people.

If we had a system of equitably distributed wealth and a government set on protecting the property rights of the people, we would have full employment. People who own property keep themselves and others employed in the maintenance of the property.

By arguing the wrong issue, both candidates get set on paths that destroys liberty. Presidents who feel compelled to create jobs are apt to do things that fall outside the scope of a limited government.

The health care debate is a mess as well.

Both candidates start with the false assumption that insurance is the only way to fund health care. I can easily prove that this is not the case if anyone would care to sit through a thirty minute presentation. It would be a fascinating 30 minutes.

Because the candidates hold the false assumption that insurance is health care, they are set on a negative path of mandating that the people buy insurance.

ObamaCare uses the taxing powers of the Federal Government to force people to buy insurance.

During the debate, Mitt Romney declared that he would pressure the states to impose health exchanges and complete with insurance mandates.

The debate has me disheartened. Our nation is clearly going in the wrong direction. This wrong direction is not set by the answers the candidates gave to the questions, but the form of the questions.

The only way to get our nation back on track would be for someone to come in and change the narrative.

I am going to continue my Split The Vote campaign. If a large number of people voted third party, we might see the parties re-examine their platform and start asking the right questions.

Controlling Both Sides

The goal of the progressive is to win the argument by controlling both sides of the argument. The video below is an absolute hoot showing how Obama and Romney essentially hold the same position on most issues. (The differentiate themselves through contrived narratives).

If proponents of the free market want to succeed they have to create a different narrative. Since the 2012 presidential election will be the most scrutinized election in US history, I say the best way for Americans to reject this false dichotomy is to vote 3rd Party (Split The Vote!

I am still open to talk with anyone interested in free market health care reform. Contact Me.

RomneyCare IS NOT Free Market Health Care Reform

Mitt Romney's health care plan is not free market reform. It is simply ObamaCare (PPACA) rebranded.

The PPACA (aka ObamaCare) was based on Mitt Romney's Massachusetts Health Care Plan. Both plans attempt to socialize health care through state run"health exchanges."

ObamaCare simply imposes RomneyCare on all states.

The heart of ObamaCare is a network of health exchanges regulated and partially funded by the Federal Government. The exchanges are implement at the state level.

RomneyCare is a network of health exchanges regulated by a non-elected entity called a compact, then implemented at the local level.

They are the same thing in form and function.

Mitt Romney simply promises a symbolic repeal of ObamaCare followed by an nationwide implementation of the same plan.  Mitt Romney admitted this in an interview with Meet the Press earlier this month.

I read Mr. Romney's Health Care Plan. It is not free market health care. The plan begins:

"Mitt will begin by returning states to their proper place in charge of regulating local insurance markets and caring for the poor, uninsured, and chronically ill.:

The idea that the STATE is in charge of caring for the poor, uninsured and chronically ill is a STATIST ideal. It is not a free market ideal.


For the state to provide these things the state must charges taxes to provide these things!

The Romney plan does not get the Federal government out of health care. His plan says:

"The federal government’s role will be to help markets work by creating a level playing field for competition. "

This really isn't that much different than the role the Federal Government had in ObamaCare. The Feds had more enforcement power and more direct control in enumerating health benefits. Under Romney, the footprint of the Federal Government is only slightly reduced. The major funding for Medicare and Medicaid will come from the Federal Government in the form of block grants and the Feds still have a boot on the throat of the state.

My greatest disappointment with the Romney plan is that the plan operates under the false assumption that pooled insurance is the only possible way to pay for health care.

True free market reform would start with the realization that the problem with our health care is our use of group funding for individual consumption. A true free market would make the individual, not the State or insurance pool the primary focus of health care.

The Romney plan simply tries to rebrand ObamaCare with only a token (and temporary) reduction in Federal Control. The Romney plan is a statist solution with the State at the center of health care.

Top Down Won't Hack It

Paul Ryan received resounding jeers and disapproval during a speech at the AARP simply for thinking entitlement reform.

Entitlements, by nature, are a Ponzi Schemes. The con-artists at the heart of the Ponzi Scheme pay an unrealistic return from the capital of current investors to a subset of the group. In theory one could create a sustainable Ponzi Scheme if the pool for the scheme keeps growing. The truth of the matter, though, is that all Ponzi Schemes will eventually crash under their own weight.


So, I applaud Mr. Ryan for wanting to take on entitlements before the crash. Unfortunately, the Romney/Ryan team approaches entitlement reform with a top-down approach that is doomed to failure.

A better approach is to work from the bottom up by creating viable alternatives to the entitlements.

If people saw a viable alternative to Medicare in the works, they'd dump Medicare at a drop of a pin. Sane people understand that depending on a ponzi scheme for sustenance is pure folly.

The viable alternative to Medicare is an ownership based mechanism for funding health care. If somebody, somewhere developed an ownership based alternative to insurance, then people would have a model they could discuss.

The ownership society envisioned by John Locke, Adam Smith and the US Founders is an inherently bottom up economic system which would do a better job at equitable wealth distribution than the top-down entitlement society pushed by both the GOP establishment and progressive socialists.

Sadly, until conservatives are willing to swallow their pride and discuss bottom up solutions for restoring the American experiment in self rule, our nation will be locked in a downward spiral as the left and right argue about which group gets the spoils of our failing society.

Green Smoothie Girl

On Wednesday I went to the GreenSmoothieGirl presentation at South Towne Exposition Center. There were 350 people at the meeting. Clearly, there is a hunger for quality health information (and green smoothies) in our society.

My mother won the Green Smoothie Diet book in a raffle; so I've been reading the life adventure of Janet Openshaw (aka GreenSmoothieGirl)

The transformative event in Ms. Openshaw's life took place in her pediatrician's office. Shew was overweight and her son had a potentially fatal chronic condition. The doctor was prescribing steroids with known side effects. Ms. Openshaw had the epiphany that she, not her doctor, was the one charged with the health of her child.

In that epiphanic moment, Robyn Openshaw transformed into GreenSmoothieGirl. Realizing that we are what we eat, GreenSmoothieGirl began researching a whole food diet rich in leafy greens and vegetables.

It is really hard to get kids to eat massive salads (with no dressing). GreenSmoothieGirl discovered that if she threw all the leafy greens, carrots and whatnot into a blender with some fruit, both she and her children would be willing to eat the concoction.

The value of a whole food diet is not new. Doctors have known since antiquity that food is medicine and a proper diet is the best way to handle chronic conditions such as diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cancer, etc..

For that matter, the standing joke in early sitcoms was one in which doctors put the comic on "rabbit food diets" while the comic wanted to live the good life of fatty foods, sweets, meat and smokes.

Convincing people to modify their diet is extremely difficult; so doctors in our mechanized age simply gave up on nutrition and started prescribing extremely potent pharmaceuticals instead.

GreenSmoothieGirl stumbled on an important discovery. She found that if you put a salad into a Blendtec blender (normal blenders have a hard time blending carrots and beets), she could created a meal that her kids would eat. A smoothie is just a vehicle for delivering whole foods. The smoothie is like a gel capsule at the pharmacy. You can put whatever you need for your medicinal needs in a smoothie. With just a little tweaking of the recipe, it will come out palatable.

The basic green smoothie diet is massive amount of leafy greens and veggies thrown into a blender. GreenSmoothieGirl advocates drinking a quart of smoothies a day. A person with a chronic condition should really research the foods.

So, the meeting begs the question about how one would go about researching and disseminating the information to figure out what to put in the smoothies?

Wait a second, I just remembered, I happen to be writing a post in a blog called "The Medical Savings and Loan." The theme of this blog is that "You own your body, You own your health. You (not some third party) should own your health care resources."

Oh, and I just remembered. The center piece of the Medical Saivngs and Loan is a position called a Health Care Advocate. The HCA is a clerical position that helps you record information about your health and the health of your family. The advocate would be the ideal vehicle for communicating with people about health and nutrition.

I love what GreenSmoothieGirl is doing. She has a traveling presentation that goes from town to town with information on how a good diet reduces health costs.

This presentation I have on The Medical Savings and Loan might work with this format. But, I have zero resources; so I need to find a group willing to host the first event.

Conservatives Killed the Tea Party

Obama is ahead in the polls and is likely to win a second term for one simple reason:

Conservatives failed to present
(or even discuss)
alternatives to ObamaCare.

Anyone who dares bring up an alternative to PPACA is immediately thrown out the door by conservatives who, from the beginning, have been set on capturing (not repealing) ObamaCare.

At the end of the Tea Party and Republican primary, we are left with a sinister candidate who has already declared that he intends to keep ObamaCare. Romney's plan is a symbolic repeal of ObamaCare followed by an implementation of RomneyCare (which is the same thing as ObamaCare.)

The only hope for restoring America is for patriots to turn from the Republican Party and run a massive campaign to split the vote. If the people voted third party and deprived Obama a majority, then we might still have a future.

If a third party split the vote, there might be somebody, somewhere who is willing to engage in a discussion free market health care.

A proper discussion would question whether insurance (group funding of individual consumption) is really free market health care. If it is not, is there a way to restore the concept of self-funded health care (HINT A Health Savings Account + High Deductible Insurance is not an alternative to insurance.)

Sadly, conservatives will never talk about free market health care reform, because the leading elite of the conservative movement do not believe in a free market.

Conservatism traces back to the French Revolution and the writings of the royalist Hegel. From the get go, conservatism was designed as a movement in which the leaders simply recite free market rhetoric, but then grab power when in power.

The driving issue of true Conservatism is preserving the social order. Following Machiavelli's lead, conservatives will pretend to be free marketeers while creating laws to protect the ruling elite from the market.

Conservatives will never discuss alternatives to insurance because insurance helps defend their ideal of a top down social order with a clear ruling elite and the majority reduced to servitude.

The very first "conservatives" in America were the Tories who sided with the British during the Revolution.

There will never be a day when a "conservative" talks about free market health care reform, because conservatives really don't believe in freedom. Conservatives are driven by the single issue of recreating a class society.

Sadly, by posing as defenders of the free market, conservatives have systematically discredited the free market in the eyes of the world.

RobamaCare is Here to Stay

I listened to a Meet The Press interview with Romney. About 20 years into the interview.Romney drops the bombshell. Romney intends to keep major portions of PPACA.

The spin is that Romney would replace PPACA with a  program based on the Massachusetts health care plan (which was the basis for PPACA to begin with).

I should point out that even if Romney repealed PPACA, we'd still be stuck with the legislation.

The heart of PPACA is a network of Health Exchanges implemented at the state level. Even if Romney wanted to repeal ObamaCare, we'd be stuck with the Exchanges.

The one and only way to rid ourselves of ObamaCare is for a free market oriented group to come up with an alternative to the Exchanges ... which is unlikely because CONSERVATIVES ARE WITLESS COWARDS WHO ARE SCARED TO DISCUSS IDEAS!

I haven't given up completely. If there is anyone who is willing to discuss free market health care reform, I have a plan that might work. I am stuck in Utah and can find no one willing to question the central authority. Here is my contact form

Own Your Health

I was absolutely floored last night while watching the introduction to Michelle Obama's speech. Ms. Obama said something on the order of: "The best way to improve your health is to own your health."

Sorry if I didn't get the wording right. The statement through me for a loop.

Our health care system is built on the assumption that we can abstract off the health individuals into pools. Conservatives want the pools owned by corporate giants. Socialists want health owned by the state.

The concept that people own their health is currently not even on the political spectrum.

For the last several years I've explored this concept that people, not a third party, are the rightful owners of their body. Both Conservatives and Progressives will escort you to the door if you question third party ownership of your body.

If you owned your body and and your health, then you should own the primary resources used for the care of your body.

if people owned their health, then we should be thinking of ways to break up the pools and third, rather than seeking ways to mandate insurance.

I couldn't find a youtube video of Michelle Obama's exact quote, but here is a part of the DNC presentation that clarifies the Democratic Position by clearly stating that the people belong to the goverment:
The narrator says: 'Government Only Thing We All Belong To'

Doctor in the Mirror

Dr. Reed Tuckson is hawking a book called The Doctor in the Mirror (Buy at Better World Books) that promotes the radical concept that patients should have dome involvement in their health. Dr. Tuckson argues that if the people who actually own a body have some control of their body, that they can reduce health care expenses.

This radical notion that people should be involved in their health care flies directly in the face of the Medical Establish. The Medical Establishment holds that people are members of a collective and that individual care should be administered in relation to the collective. Walking through the doors of the University of Utah Hospital, it is abundantly clear that patients exist for the benefit of the doctors. The notion that a doctor is there to serve patients is laughable.

By suggesting that individuals should have the driving role in their own health, Dr. Reed has clearly veered from established thought and in to the fantasies of free market fiction.

Being a scifi fan myself, I thought I would take the fantasy one step futher.

What if people actually owned their body?

I know this is fantasy. Conservatives believe that your body is owned by your employer. Liberals believe your body is property of the state.

But, what if your body was actually your property. What if your thumbs, fingers, feet, belly button and mind were things that you rightfully possessed and rightfully controlled?

I know that I am into fantasy that is counter to thinking in the world of insurance and health care ... but bear with me.

What if your body was your property. What if your mind was a thing given to you by God for you to control?

If such what ifs were true, then the accepted thinking of the insurance industry and the medical establishment are false.

If you owned your body, shouldn't you own the resources used to care for your body?

If individuals owned their body, then the notion of using group funding of individual consumption is inherently corrupt.

As mentioned, I am a scifi fan. I've explored the radical concept that people owned their bodies in depth. Furhtermore, I assert that I can prove that the problem in modern health care rise from the absurdity of using group funding for individual consumption.

I hold that your are more than just the doctor in the middle. I hold that you own yourself and that doctors are here simply to sell you services to help you achieve your health goals.

Arizona Exchange

According to Americans For Prosperity, it looks like the uber-Conservative state of Arizona is gearing up to impose a Health Exchange. AFP is holding a debate on the exchanges  Sept 5, 2012 at the Goldwater Institute.

I really wish I could attend. This is the first public meeting that I've come across that questions the Health Exchanges.

PPACA (ObamaCare) is a network of health exchanges regulated at the Federal Level and implemented at the state level. Romney's promise to repeal ObamaCare will simply remove the Federal regulation, but will leave all the state run exchanges in place.

Romney will repeal the bill the created the exchanges, but leave the exchanges in place.

The end result of this political move is to capture the exchanges.

The Romney/Ryan administration will then seek to relabel the exchanges as the free market alternative to Obama's socialism.

The problem is that the Health Exchanges are not free market. The Health Exchanges in RomneyCare and ObamaCare create a captured market that centralizes health care and allows the ruling elite to skim billions off the system.

Wake up America. The fact that the uber-Conservative state of Arizona is following the path of RomneyCare should tell us that our nation is still headed in the wrong direction.

Both RomneyCare and ObamaCare are founded on the false assumption that insurance is the only possible way to fund health care. The goal of the Health Exchanges is to force everyone into highly centralized network of insurance options.

The best way to defeat this beast is to debate alternatives to insurance. I am still at the ready if there is any group brave enough to stand against the Democratic and Republican beast that has taken over our nation.

Replace It With What?

I found Romney's speech (and the whole Republican National Conference for that matter) big on image, but short on substance.

I am not supporting Romney because I know that if we have just another power exchange with no substantive change in our economic theory, we will not be able to restore our nation.

The convention left us with a great image of how wonderful Romney is and how the world will end if Obama is re-elected. But there was no substance.

The closest hint of substance was a vague promise to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

REPLACE IT WITH WHAT?

The reason I am so completely dead set against Romney is that in four years of debate about health care, I have seen no substantive debate on free market health care reform.

I worked myself into abject poverty driving to Reno, Denver, Phoenix and Las Vegas to find a Conservative who would talk about substantive free market health care reform.

There may be substantive debate about Free Market Health Care reform that I don't know about. But it's not at the RNC.  The Utah Freedom Conference doesn't even have free market health care on the agenda.

In Utah, the Conservative Republicans shoved a state run health exchange down our throat and actively silenced all opposition.

For those who are wondering. PPACA (ObamaCare) is a network of health exchanges regulated at the federal level but run at the state level.

Since the Health Exchanges are run at the state level, we will find that even if Romney repeals the Federal Regulations we are stuck with the corrupt and captured health exchanges.

As long as the conservative establishment steadfastly refuses to discuss alternatives to health exchanges, American patriots need to stand against the exchanges.

The exchanges are corrupt. They will collapse into socialism. The only way to restore America is to have a viable alternative to exchanges. This cannot happen if conservatives are spineless drones that will not discuss alternatives.

Yes, I know I am a pariah. I don't give a crap about myself. All I want to see is someone where talk about alternatives to insurance. (NO, A Health Savings Account tacked onto a high deductible insurance policy is not a viable alternative to insurance. The HSA+HDHC policy is a formula for disaster … which I can easily prove.).

This blog (The Medical Savings and Loan) is simply an effort to start a discussion about free market health exchanges. The theme of the blog is that the problem in health care is that we use group funding for individual consumption and that the solution is to restore the concept of self-funded health care.

While I had such hopes that Republicans would start discussing free market reforms, I am disgusted after the substanceless Republican National Convention.

On the bright side, I am happy to see that the Republican Party is full of energetic speakers and enthusiasm.

This energy will wane if Romney wins the election, just as the energy for the left has evaporated.

Doesn't anyone remember how entrenched and disheartened the freedom movement was by the end of the Bush administration? This will happen if Romney wins.

However, if Libertarians split the vote and Obama gets a Lame Duck term, then both the Republican and Democratic Party will spend four years working on freedom agendas to recapture the independents.

I feel completely disheartened with the complete lack of substance of the Republican National Convention. It is funny how my mind always grasps at straws, but the freedom of America is hanging by a thread and we have to grasp at whatever we can as it collapses.

History has shown that the Right can be as great a threat to freedom as the Left. (The Hegelian Right came before the Hegelian Left).

Until Romney gives a clear idea on what he wants to replace ObamaCare with, liberty-loving voters should plan to vote third party.

Reforming Medicare

I applaud the nomination of Paul Ryan. He is one of the few major political candidates who is willing to take on the tough issues that face our nation. Mr. Ryan is likely to receive a great deal of criticism for his efforts to reform Medicare.

Unfortunately, there is merit to the attacks against Ryan for this effort. If Mr. Ryan cuts Medicare spending without corresponding financial reforms, then we will produce the feared result of creating a society that fails to care for its seniors.

The problem with health care can be summed up in one word::

INSURANCE

Before we can reform Medicare, we simply must create a free market alternative to employer based insurance.

Employer based insurance creates an ugly paradigm in which people receive care from their employer.

The moment a person retires, the care is gone.

This problem is inherent with group funding of individual consumption. When people move between groups, the change disrupts health care.

The solution is to create a system of individual funding of individual consumption.

I have a presentation called "The Medical Savings and Loan" in which I demonstrate that we would get optimal results in health care if we restored the concept of self funded health care. I would be happy to travel  to any group in the mountain west that is willing to discuss free market health care reform. Here is my contact form:

HSA + HDHC Flunks the Test

When analyzing different health care policies, one must look at the way that the policy plays out with people with moderate to severe health conditions.

Insurance salesmen love to concentrate on single catastrophic events. For that matter, people have a deep fear of catastrophe; however, when I worked in insurance I quickly realized that the chronic conditions were both the most costly and hardest to handle.

It turns out that many catastrophic conditions lead to a chronic condition. In many cases the chronic condition resulting from a catastrophe costs more than the original catastrophe.

If you broke your back, the long term cost of dealing with a bad back is higher than the first surgery.

If you have an HSA+HDHC policy with a $3000 deductible and your chronic condition requires $5,000 each year; you are stuck having to pay out the full deductible each year plus the cost of the insurance.

When you have a chronic condition, you really aren't in a position to negotiate down the deductible. Once you have a chronic condition of a known cost, you are in a high risk pool. Trying to negotiate down your deductible is intellectually dishonest because the insurance company will have to pay a dollar for every dollar of reduced deductible.

So, the HSA+HDHC increases the cost that people with a moderate chronic condition must pay for health care because a person with a disease like diabetes simply must spend money on care every year.

An HSA+HDHC policy is regressive.

It is true that, if a low income worker has an HSA+HDHC policy and never has a moment of sickness in his life, the worker would make out better than with low deductible insurance. If a person has normal or higher than average medical expenses it does not work out so well.

Let's compare the experience of a person who makes $12,000 a year to a person making $120,000 a year. So, let's say the deductible was $3,000. The deductible is 2.5% of the income of the person making $120,000/year. The key feature of the HSA is the tax deduction. Our high income worker is smart to put the $3,100 in a "Health Savings Account" to get the maximum deduction.

As for the low income worker, $3k is 25% of his total yearly $12k paycheck. The tax deduction ain't worth bug squat because the marginal worker pays no taxes. The worker would be stupid to put money in a tax free health savings account.

Try living on $12K a year, the poor guy probably isn't going to be able to put any money aside to pay for the deductible and will be in a terrible crunch if health care problems occur. The working poor with high deductible insurance feel locked out of the system.

In our next thought experiment, imagine the bossman comes into the shop and says that, "to lower our health care expenses, we are going to raise your deductible from $300 to $3000, but to make it up to you we will give you all $500 that you can put in a Health Savings Account."

With this plan, the people in the shop who have health conditions will lose $2,700 in the deductible increase. A person with a chronic condition just lost $2,700 a year for life. Everyone else gets just a token pay increase that fails to cover the deductible.

The switch from a low deductible to high deductible leaves people feeling insecure and put upon with the people who have chronic health conditions complaining to the heavens.

The workers in the company will simply see the HSA+HDHC policy as a cheap attempt to cut costs in a manner that hurts the most vulnerable in the group.

I read the reviews of Health Savings Accounts coupled with high deductible insurance. People in the upper middle class praise the idea because they get a tax deduction. The working poor stress the deductible and see it having a negative effect on people with health conditions, and complain about the idea.

I suspect that if you analyzed HSA+HDHC policies over a large population base, you will find that the policy is regressive. This structure transfers wealth from the poor to the rich.

Please note, I am not a big fan of redistributing income. But the whole point of a Health Care policy is to transfer resources from the healthy to those in need. If a plan is not doing that, then it is best to get rid of the plan.

Simply tacking a Health Savings Account to high deductible insurance does not play out that well among the working poor.

I am a big fan of self-funded health care. If we want to use savings accounts, we need to form a health care system, from the ground up, around the savings accounts, which is what I did in the Medical Savings and Loan. This program removes insurance from the equation. Each person gets a pile of money in a savings account and access to a loan reserve. People with an unusually high ratio of health expenses to income will have access to grants.

The most important issue when judging a health policy is if the policy actually reduces costs.

Yes, it is true that low income workers with high deductible insurance will skip preventative and routine care. Skipping preventative care does not save all that much money. It just means people suffering from things they could have prevented.

The really big cost overruns in health care happen with the big expenses. High deductible insurance might encourage people to skimp on small items, but the abuse will continue on big items and might even grow.

Hospitals are notorious for creative billing. Imagine a patient with a $3,000 deductible who had an incident costing $3,333. Both the patient and doctor know that the patient was put upon to pay the $3k deductible. With that deductible paid, the inclination is to just load the bill with everything.

Care Providers are keenly aware of whose paying the bill, and most clinics are not above playing games where they shift costs to deep pockets.

A system with an HSA and high deductible insurance fails the three most important tasks: The program does not cut costs. The program does not handle chronic conditions well and the program is unnecessarily regressive.

Hyperbolic Function

If you made big database that recorded people's total health expenses charted against total wealth (total lifetime income + inheritance), you are likely to see a hyperbolic equation.

In most cases, people's total health care expenses will range from 5% to 15% of their total wealth. There will be a small number of people whose health expenses way exceed their ability to pay.

A primary job of the Medical Savings and Loan is the chart the curve. The program has health care advocates whose function is to record people's income and expense. They will report this info to actuarial firms that will munch the data and report back to the advocates telling us what it reasonable expenses and what is extraordinary.

In contrast, insurance is totalitarian and evil. Insurance says that because some people have expenses they cannot pay, the kollective must take ALL of the health care resources of everyone in the nation and put those resources in a pool controlled by the ruling elite. To fund the health care of the small percentage of people who cannot do so on their own, insurance tells us that we must force all the people could self fund their care into subservience.

Now, the simple hyperbolic graph above is very simple. If a group was interested in pursuing the cause of liberty, the group would spend a great deal of time collecting data on health care and mapping out real equations.

It would be a really fun and fruitful investigation. If there is anyone on this planet who is interested in freedom, they could contact me.