Why the MS&L must be presented in face to face meetings

I can't believe it.

I wasted a whole day yesterday writing a single email, which I did not mail. The email was to a request for information from a person in Vermont. I wanted to explain why it is so terribly important that I present the Medical Savings and Loan in face to face meetings with small crowds.

The answer is that my plan is only one page long.

Do you remember how PPACA is thousands of pages long and nearly impossible to understand?

The Medical Savings and Loan is the opposite. The plan is one page long and very easy to understand. The plan starts with one very simple statement:

"Those who can self-fund their care should."

So my goal is to make a mechanism that will help use determine who can self-fund their care and to give them the tools to accomplish this task. This involves looking at data. We might find that 95% of people spend less than 15% of their lifetime income on health care. Those people should self-fund their care.

After we define the positive space (those who can self-fund their care), then we look at the negative space (those who need additional assistance). So here is the plan:

The Medical Savings and Loan

I developed the Medical Savings and Loan by reverse engineering a group insurance policy. It has the same amount of money as a comparable insurance pool.

The program uses a combination of savings accounts and interest free loans to help people self fund their care.

It creates a new position called a Health Care Advocate which replaces in the insurance agent and claims adjuster. The advocate educates people about expected expenses and helps people set up a structured savings plan to cover these expenses. The advocate will help people keep records and negotiate prices with health care providers.

If a person has health expenses that fall outside the norm, the advocate will seek grants on their client's behalf.

The program has a well funded system of grants. The amount of money in the grant system was determined by the same actuarial process used in insurance. There will be billions at the ready for grants.

That's It, Folks

The plan itself is not long. I can make it shorter by removing the comparison to insurance. The fact that I created the plan by reverse engineering is an interesting aside. Once it is up and running, it is self sustainable.

I include the reference to insurance to emphasize that the plan has the same amount of money as comparable insurance plans. People keep assuming that it does not. Also, I want to explain that the position of advocate is not that new. Insurance agents and claims adjusters become advocates when one changes the focus of the system from a centralized pool to individual accounts.

Why I Need Face to Face Meetings

The plan is short, but it has big implications. When I blog about the implications, people seem to get lost in the complexity of the implications and miss the basic simplicity of the argument.

I have a meeting designed in which I present the plan. I then look at the plan from multiple perspectives to show how the program helps individuals optimize their resources. I show how the plan helps public policy makers optimize their resources. I show how the health care advocates make money by directly helping clients.

I show how the Medical Savings and Loan reduces the gap between rich and poor by making the poor richer.

In truth the program really is a short presentation followed by a moderated discussion. The discussion can take many directions.

One direction is to compare self-funded care with group funded care (socialism, insurance, etc.). I have a number of devices that argue that group-funding of individual consumption automatically leads to conflicts, inequities and inefficiencies.

Others would like to talk about ways to implement the concept. This is a fun discussion. There are numerous was to implement the plan. My favorite device is to implement it through a network of distributed businesses. There would be financial institutions holding the grants and loans and a network of independent health care advocates.

Political-types like to talk about public policy. The challenge here is that the Medical Savings and Loan is not a government program. What I do is show that the MS&L exposes itself to public policy in a more elegant manner than insurance. The program separates the people who can self fund their care from those who cannot. It also provides a great deal of money to be given in the form of grants.

Conclusion

The actual Medical Savings and Loan plan is very simple. It takes fifteen minutes to describe but it leads to a large number of interesting discussions.

I've invested decades into following these discussion from every conceivable direction.

It is a presentation work great as a workshop at a Tea Party or Campaign for Liberty meeting.

I have the misfortune of living in Utah. Utah was established as a theocratic commune. Harry Reid, Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman and the LDS leadership that control the state favor socialized health exchanges to free market reform, which means I have to travel. I've completely exhausted my personal resources traveling to Reno, Las Vegas and Phoenix trying to find a venue.

I created a fundraiser program to pay for travel, but I need people to help me along the way. I have enough room on my credit card to buy gas to get to Arizona or Denver. I would happily go all the way to Vermont or the east coast but I would need to find stops along the way to run the fundraiser and fill up my tank.

(It is a really fun fundraiser. I would split any funds I raised with whatever group helped me along the way.) I will also give boat loads of links and publicity to any group that is willing to host a meeting on free market health care reform.

I hope this article made it clear why I need to have face to face meetings. It is a simple plan with big implications. Such plans require face to face communication.