Throwing Down the Gauntlet

The Sutherland Institute takes money with claims of supporting the free market. They don't. What they do is use free market rhetoric as cover for statist solutions.

Last week, David Buer of Sutherland dropped a post about how Sutherland is leading the way by supporting socialization of health care through a Health Compact.

So, I decided to write another letter to Sutherland challenging the group to a meeting about real free market health care reform. I've been working since 2008 trying to get groups about real free market reform. None will.

Sutherland wants health care socialized through a State Compact that they can influence. So, my guess is that, once again, I will receive absolutely no response from a letter or contact. Here goes

Dr. Mr. Buer,

The Sutherland Institute claims to support free market health care solutions.

If Sutherland actually is interested in real free market health care reform; you might enjoy a presentation I've developed called the "Medical Savings Loan."

The goal of my presentation is to build, from the ground up, a health care plan around Medical Savings Accounts.

This approach is different from tacking a savings account to a high deductible insurance policy as an afterthought.

The goal of the project is to create a viable alternative to insurance. Creating a viable alternative to insurance destroys the justification for insurance mandates. (Conversely, the insurance mandates are premised on the false assumption that insurance is the only possible way to fund health care. If this assumption is false, PPACA is false.

My presentation starts with the assertion that "Those who can self-fund their care, should."

Let's say a person has a job with a $40,000 salary and gets a $10,000 health plan. That person's income really is $50,000 a year. Over a 40 year period the person would have earned $2,000,000.00 and had $400,000 put into health care. $400,000 can buy an awful lot of care. This would be especially true of the person held the pursestrings to his own care.

The Medical Savings and Loan uses a combination of savings accounts and loans to help people who can self-fund their care achieve that goal. With these people moved off the table, we will create a generously funded grant system for people who cannot self fund their care.

To administer the program I create a new position called the Health Care Advocate. The advocates replace insurance agents and claims adjusters.

The goal of the advocate is to help clients understand and save for expected health expenses. The advocates will keep records about clients' health and income experience. The advocate will also help clients find care providers and negotiate medical expenses. The advocates will approve loans and, if the client has unusually high expenses of unusually low income, the advocate will seek grants on behalf of their clients.

With the same amount of money as insurance, the Medical Savings and Loan will be able to fund more care than the insurance company.

The big differences between the Medical Savings and Loan and insurance are:

• the clients get to keep their money,
• the clients negotiate for care and use direct pay
• any funds transfers to people who need additional assistance is openly acknowledged as grants.

With this basic model in place, we can now raise the observation that the problem in health care rises from the use of group funding of individual consumption.

With this very simple model in hand, I can destroy all of the justifications used to push ObamaCare through the house.

Most of the problems we face in health care are the result of using group funding for individual consumption. Restoring the concept of self-funded care will restore balance.

You may have noticed that I did not mention government in this plan. It is not a government health care plan. It is a different business model for financing health care.

If Sutherland Institute was legitimately interested in free market health care reform, the institute would discuss true free market alternatives to insurance like the Medical Savings and Loan.

Sincerely Kevin Delaney

(contact form)

Well, that is the first draft of the letter. I will hone it a little bit and send it off on Monday. I would love to give my presentation on free market health care reform to any group of patriots looking for way to preserve the American experiment in self rule.
I really hate this game where Conservatives use free market rhetoric to get power. Once in power they seek economic centralization. True free market health care reform would save this nation. But conservatives simply will not discuss real reform. If you are upset at this game, feel free to yell at Sutherland. If enough free marketeers yell at them the might respond.

Insurance is a Tax

The one good thing to come from the Supreme Court Ruling is that the ruling raises the fact that mandated third insurance is a privately collected and privately distributed tax.

Third party insurance has the same effect on the economy as a tax. Third party insurance breaks the pricing mechanism, and has pretty much all of the same negative affects on the economy as a government tax.

The fact that insurance acts like a tax was a primary theme of my Medical Savings and Loan presentation.

In the presentation, I created a system of self-funded care called the Medical Savings and Loan. In the MS&L people save for health care expenses and their savings becomes the primary funding source for medicine.

I then show how paying into an insurance pool has the exact same effect on household finances as a tax.

It really is a beautiful.

It is driving me mad that I can find no-one interested in discussing health care financing.

It is a fascinating topic. I approach the topic in a unique data driven fashion. My presentation shows conclusively that self-funded health care in a free market delivers more and better care than third party insurance or socialism.

If you are involved in a group that would like to discuss free market health care reform, please contact me.

Steps to Restoring Health Freedom

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of PPACA. Some people ask what can we do to restore health freedom?

PPACA was premised on the false assumption that insurance is the only possible way to fund health care.

I contend that insurance (group funding of individual consumption) is the source of the heart of our health problems and that solution is to restore the concept of self-funded care.

So, the first step to restoring America is to create a financially viable mechanism for funding health care that is not pooled insurance.

This is actually quite easy. A half dozen patriots need to meet in a room, and discuss the merits of self-funded health care. During the meeting, we would create a legal structure for defining this alternative to insurance.

NOTE: Ideally the structure would be a professional association, but it could be as simple as a DBA.

I have a well thought through business model that I called the Medical Savings and Loan. This program uses a combination of health savings accounts and loans to help people who can self fund care achieve this goal. The program creates a well funded system of grants to help people who cannot self fund care.

From the moment that there is an accepted self-funded alternative to pooled insurance, the members of the group could start hitting the airwaves demanding a repeal of ObamaCare.

I designed the Medical Savings and Loan so that it favors the middle and working classes over the rich. Once we have an accepted alternative to insurance, we could turn full force on the establishment arguing that insurance is the cause of both our healthcare woes and is the source of the growing income gap.

For three years I've been stuck at this impasse. I need to find five people who would stand up for freedom and be willing to put their John Hancock on a declaration of health liberty.

NOTE: Being part of the group that defines an alternative to insurance does not mean that you have to give up your insurance. It simply means that you want people to discuss alternatives to insurance.

MS&L and Addiction

Apparently there is a new report claiming the US has an addiction crisis, and that we need to dramatically increase taxes on those without addictions to treat the victims of addiction.

IMHO, the Medical Savings and Loan structure is the best possible program for handling addiction.

The program starts with the assertion that those who can self-fund their care should self-fund their care.

To determine who can self fund their care, the MS&L creates a new position called the Health Care Advocate.

The advocate works one-on-one with each client to create a model of the client's income and health care expectations.

The advocates will work with computer programs driven by real world data about health expenses.

If a client smokes, drinks, gambles or engages in other addictive  behaviors, the client will see on a computer screen how that behavior is likely to affect income and health.

If a client smokes a carton of cigarettes a month, the client would see the full expected cost of the habit along with additional health care expenses related to the habit.

NOTE, the advocate does not need to give a morality lesson. The goal of the program is to treat people like adults and to help educate people on the cost of lifestyle choices so that they can make their own choices. Advocate are wise to avoid any hint of a moral condemnation because it might lose the client.

Anyway, each client is presented with a mathematical model driven by real world experience about the cost of life style choices, in a judgment free setting.

The program will help identify people who are on track to being impoverished by their addiction well before the person actually is reduced to impoverishment.

When an advocate identifies a person who is at risk, the advocate has a responsibility to the client to seek intervention and would help the client research treatment options before the inevitable financial crisis occurs.

Americans are a charitable people. There is a lot of money and resources available in this country to help people who are on a path to crisis. When an advocate identifies a person in trouble, the advocate will be able to find help for the client.

Remember, the mantra of the Medical Savings and Loan is that those who can self-fund their care, should.

When we identify people who can't self-fund their care, Americans band together and helps that individual.

So, the Medical Savings and Loan uses a network of Health Care Advocates to make a full mathematical model of each individual. Every client in this program will sit with their advocate to see how how decisions affect their personal life.

The program is centered around self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is extremely powerful stuff. It is more powerful than most medicines.

In contrast, the communitarian approach to treating addiction is absurd.

The communitarian starts by raising taxes on people who've avoided addiction. The communitarian funds treatment programs that lack adequate incentive to help people stave off addiction. Eventually, the government funded treatment falls back on moral condemnation or criminal punishment of the addict to treat the addiction.

Reviving the concept of self-funded care would be a powerful tool in treating addiction. If the self-funded care is administered in a data driven program that educates the public on the cost of addiction, the people in the program would create natural incentives to help people struggling with addictions.

If you know of a group willing to learn more about the Medical Savings and Loan and Self Funded Care, please contact me.

The United HealthCare Way is the Wrong Way

The current version of the Health Savings Account was pioneer by massive health conglomerates like United Healthcare primarily for the benefits of massive health conglomerates.

Because the HSA+HDHP model was designed to the desires of big corporations and not for the needs of the people, the policies have the effect of underserving the people and turning people away from the free market.

I just read a page by someone campaigning against United Healthcare.

An HSA + High Deductible insurance is a plan that rewards policyholders who receive no preventative care.

Uh, err, uh ...

It is an absurd program.

Don't you see what's happening? A bad implementation of the Medical Savings concept destroys support for  free market health care reform.

Not only does the HSA + HDHP discourage people from seeking preventative health care, it dramatically increases health care expenses for people with health conditions. The HSA advocated by United Healthcare actually makes things worse for people with chronic conditions.

The really pathetic thing about the HSA+HDHP model is that it does nothing to restore the pricing mechanism in health care. The uncontrolled costs in health care are with the big ticket items, and not the small items.

With the HSA+HDHP, you might see some competition for small items, but that won't make a dent in the cost of the big ticket items or the overall cost of care. I can prove that the HSA/HDHC model of United HealthCare actually makes things worse.

By promoting a bad model for the HSA, the Bush Administration made health care worse.

If we want to restore the free market in health care, we must start from the ground up and build a free market system around the needs of the individual.

(I wrote a long rant on my frustration with Conservatives and their unwillingness to discuss real free market reform. I will publish that in a few moments. If you would like to engage in a discussion on Free Market reform, please contact me.

Washington or Oregon, Anyone?

I have a wonderful presentation on free market health care reform that I've been dying to give for the last three years.

My niece lives in Washington state and is getting married on August 3rd.

I spent all of my traveling cash trying chasing down places to give my Medical Savings and Loan presentation; so I wasn't planning on going to the wedding.

However, I was just thinking. If anyone in Washington, Oregon, Idaho or Western Montana was interested in a presentation on free market health care reform, then I could combine the wedding trip with the initial presentation on free market health care.

If you have a contact with a group in the Northwest that is interested in free market health care reform that would be interested in some unique insight on this matter please contact me.

If I combined my trip with a meeting, I could have a talk about free market reform and eat wedding cake too!

The Advocate as a Life Coach

The goal of the Medical Savings and Loan is to replace group funded health care with self-funded health care.

To accomplish this goal, I must find a way to convey to people how much they should expect to spend on health care. Currently we spend a lot on health care. It's currently something like 18% of the GDP.

To publish this information, I transformed the insurance agent into a new position called the "Health Care Advocate."

The first job of the advocate is to help people set up a structured savings plan for health care. The advocates will want to show people the benefits of preventative medicine, good nutrition and fitness. When a person needs medical services, the advocates will help negotiate prices and will seek loans or grants on behalf of their clients.

An astute reader will notice that the Medical Savings and Loan is essentially a life coach.

In this plan, every worker will have a person who they can talk with about the direction of their life. The advocates are likely to talk about more than just health. People will probably talk with their advocate about setting and achieving career goals.

I hold the radical view that people are assets, and that businesses grow as they develop their employees. Companies that just leave their employees languishing in dead in jobs are wasting the world's most vital economic resource ... the human mind.

Creating a system of health care advocates will help put a system in place in which every employee has someone who is looking after their needs and making sure their needs are fulfilled and the employee is on a positive and productive path.

In my last post, I voiced displeasure with unions and collective bargaining. A union is a group that uses the needs of the workers to build a politically powerful group that makes the decisions for the members of the group.

Unions concentrate power in the center and inevitably turn into forces of oppression.

Unions and health insurance companies are surprisingly similar. Both systems use the needs of the workers to build immense power bases which centralize power and diminish the individual.

My displeasure with unions is not based on simple class warfare, but a strong belief that we can and should create services that provide better service for the individual than the union.

Unions exist because workers have unmet needs. We, as a society, should look to create services to assure that those needs are met.

I am thrilled that unions got a drubbing in the Wisconsin recall. But I am distraught that Conservatives simply refuse to talk about pro-market strategies to assure that workers' needs are met.

The current structure of our employee market leaves the needs of workers unattended. People feel like they are stuck and languishing.

We cannot thrive as a nation when the needs of so many people are left unmet.

The primary focus of the Medical Savings and Loan is health care, but the program does more than just simply helping people finance health care. The program gives people an advocate and these advocates will; work with people on a one to one basis to help them achieve career goals and live a positive productive life.

The American Experiment held the individual in high esteem. The modern theories of the Marxian tradition (Capitalism, Communism, Fascism, Unionism, Corporatism and, dare I say, pooled insurance) subjugate the individual to the collective.

We've been on this path of collectivization through public and private means for close to a century and it is not bringing us into a positive place.

To return to a free market, we need a proactive structure which replaces this centralization with a strong focus on creating healthy and productive individuals.

The goal of the Medical Savings and Loan is to deconstruct the large centralized power bases like insurance companies and unions. It then creates a new structure in which each precious individual in our society owns resources and has a life coach who helps people achieve their career and life goals.

By unleashing the power of the individual, a truly free market will help out society achieve our aspirations.

Unions v. Professional Societies

I read several articles lamenting the failure of the Wisconsin recall vote as a great blow to unions.

I don't lament the election. I rejoice.

As you see, my life experience has shown unions as a force or oppression. Unions are highly centralized and corrupt structures that exploit the needs of the workers for political gain.

Because unions place their grubbing for political power over the needs of their members, unions have become a net negative.

This problem is not unique to unions. When any group puts the grubbing of power over its primary function, the group becomes a negative. This same problem applies to corporations, schools, the media and even churches.

The central feature of unions is collective bargaining. Collective bargaining is a process in which a few insiders of the union, in conjunction with the employers, make the decisions for the collective.

Unions essentially have the same model as pooled insurance.

Pooled insurance is, by nature, a collective bargaining process. We place all of our health care resources into a pool. The small group of people who control the pool bargain for our health care on a collective basis. In both cases, the people who do the collective bargaining make out like bandits and the rest diminish.

Just as unions seek to lock out scabs. People who don't have insurance are effectively locked out of health care.

I dislike the political structure of unions; however, I realize that there is a need for organizations that directly help in the professional development of workers. A better model is the professional society.

A union is a centralized structure that uses the needs of workers to consolidate political power. This political power is not necessarily used for the benefit of the workers.

The ideal professional society is a distributed structure, in which people work one-on-one with workers in their professional development.

Do you see the contrast I am trying to draw? Both unions and professional societies are organizations in the field of worker enhancement. A union is a centralized political entity that uses the needs of the workers to gain power. A professional society is a distributed system helping develop people on a one to one basis.

Unions, of course, engage in professional development and professional societies engage in politics. The question is where one places the emphasis.when the emphasis is about developing people, it is a force for good, when it is about centralizing power, it becomes a force for tyranny.

The heart of the free market is the free mind. To thrive as a society, we need organizations dedicated to helping develop people.

A political win against a corrupt union is all fine and wonderful, but to succeed as a society, we need to find ways to fill the unmet needs that unions exploit.

Dare, I mention? The goal of the Medical Savings and Loan is to replace insurance with self-funded care. The heart of this program is a new position called The Health Care Advocate. This advocate is an advocate for the individual.

It is a departure from the model of group think that places the collective over the individual mind. It would be worth pursuing.

If you know of anyone interested in free market concepts who would enjoy a discussion on the differences between unions and professional societies and how it is the same as the difference between pooled insurance and self funded care, contact me.

Splitting the Vote

My goal for the last several years has simply to find a group interested in discussing self-funded health as an alternative to insurance.

I believe that creating a viable mechanism for self-funded health care (as opposed to insurance) would pop a hole in the justification for ObamaCare.

I've been unable to find people willing to discuss this subject.

I happen to have a good set of arguments that Obama winning a split vote would be better for the freedom movement than eight years of a progressive Republican.

This presentation might be of interest to folks in the Libertarian Party who seek ways to convince independents to vote for a third party this year.

The cost for this presentation is that you would also let me give my talk on self-funded health care. I ran out of money; So, I would have to run a recreation oriented fund raiser to pay for my transportation and hotel room.

Most Libertarians will be voting Republican this year thinking that voting for the bad will avoid the worst. Gary Johnson could get a big boost if people understood that a split vote would be better for the freedom movement than another Big Government Republican Administration.

A group supporting Gary Johnson might like this offer. Here is my contact information. I live in Utah, but can travel. Colorado would be nice. I am technically a third generation Coloradan, and not really a Utahan. For that matter,

The First Step is a Meeting

I've been hammering away at the issue of free market alternatives to insurance for the last three years.

I contend that our health care problems result from the use of group funding for individual consumption (employer based health insurance). The solution is to create, from the ground up, an alternative to insurance.

Think about it? If there is no legimate recognized way to fund health care beyond insurance, then we must have insurance mandates; else we have people with no health care.

To defeat ObamaCare, we must have a legitimate and recognized alternative to insurance.

The operative words in the sentence are "legitimate" and "recognized."

Talking about self-funded health care when no-one on the planet recognizes self-funding as legitimate is wasted breath.

So, my goal is to create a legitimate and recgonized alternative to insurance.

I chose the catchy title "Medical Savings and Loan" for the issue because I wanted to differentiate this effort from the HSA/HDHC programs created by the Bush Administration.

A savings account tacked onto a high deductible insurance policy is still an insurance product. The HSA/HDHC product is actually an extremely unstable program.

The MS&L is not an HSA/HDHC politic. The program uses a different mathematical model for tracking health than standard insurance model.

Insurance calculates the risk of a group over a year. The MS&L is based on a lifecycle analysis of individuals. Using a lifecycle model does a better job emphasizing fitness and preventative medicine than the group model.

The program is surprisingly easy to understand. The MS&L looks at each person as a whole being. It starts with the simple statement that "Those who can self-fund their care should."

The model says that people are responsible for their health care up to a reasonable portion of their lifetime income. We determine the reasonable portion by studying the experience of others. If 90% of people spend under 20% of their income on health care, then the cap would be 20%. Capiche? By income, I refer to your paycheck plus what your employer pays for insurance. So, if your income is $40,000/year and your employer pays $10,000. Then your income is actually $50,000. If you work for 40 years, your life time income is $2,000,000.00.

Let's say the percent is 20%. A person with a $2,000,000 lifetime income would be expected to self fund health care up to $400,000. Wow, you can buy a lot of care with $400,000.

Warren Buffet and Bill Gates would be expected to self fund their personal care into the billions.

We use a system of savings and loans to help people self fund their care. If a person has extraordinary expenses or super low income, the program seeks assistance.

To accomplish this goal, the Medical Savings and Loan creates a new profession called a Health Care Advocate. An advocate helps people understand and track their health expenses. The advocates help people negotiate services with providers. Because people are spending their own money and have the help of an advocate, the program quickly restores the pricing mechanism.

If a person's health experience falls outside the norm, the advocate will seek assistance on the behalf of the client.

Creating the medical savings and loan is primarily a matter of defining the HCA position.

This is all fine and good. But it is not legitimate until it is recognized as legitimate.
The challenge I face here is getting the model accepted as a legitimate alternative to insurance.

No matter how good my model is. It is nothing until I find others to brand the model as recognized and legitimate.

To be considered legitimate, a group of people must sit in a room and really pound on this model to show that it is possible for most people to self fund their care.

IMHO, there needs to be legal entity (a non-profit organization) dedicated exclusively to investing self-funded heatlh care. The primary goal of the organization is to define the position of health care advocate.

Setting up a non-profit is easy and inexpensive. It requires a small number of people to meet in a room and come up with a name and political structure for the non-profit. The brave souls who start the organization would have the inside scoop on becoming advocates.

Trying to talk about self-funded v. group funded care is a waste of time if there is not a recognized way of self-funding care.

Anything I say is just noise and agitation until the program is recognized. Making a youtube video about the Medical Savings and Loan is nonsense if the idea is just a fantasy in my head.

The only way to make a recognized product is for people talk.

Unfortunately, I live in Salt Lake City. Utah is run by the LDS Church.

I am not LDS. The LDS Church is 100% set on socializing medicine through state run health exchanges. Every national LDS politician supports socializing medicine through government exchanges including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney, Governor Leavitt, Governor Huntsman, and Governor Herbert.

I have been unable to find any local group willing to discuss free market health reform. The picture below shows the crowd at 2012 Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally in Salt Lake.


This was a regional rally with people from Ogden to Provo. The population of the Wasatch Front pushes 2 million. Half the people in that crowd were the press and politicos come out to grand stand for the cameras.

You would think a city that considers itself the Vatican of the Americas would have more people interested defending religious freedom. If Mormons were truly interested in religious freedom, this rally would have drawn a 100 times this crowd. Similar rallies on the same day drew crowds of thousands.

I've done everything I can to court local libertarian groups. Utah groups that claim to be free market oriented immediately slam the door the moment I mention free market atlernatives to insurance.

That's Utah for you.

I realize that I am location challenged.  I am willing to travel.

Last year I drove to Reno, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Denver to find people to talk health care reform. I found it hard to organize things from my car. I would be happy to travel again if I could find a group serious in standing up for free market health care.

If I travel, there must be something on the other end such as conference room and group of 12 people.

Okay, when I was coming back from Denver last summer, I hit an elk and totalled my car. Traveling is now difficult, but I will do it.

I can't afford to travel to another empty conference room.

The goal of a meeting is to discuss free market alternatives to insurance. The meeting would have the action item of creating a legal entity that defines and legitimizes the model.

After the model is finalized, we can do things like make YouTube Videos, publish books and articles telling the world that a new model exists.

If there was someone who wanted to create a Health Care Advocate business, I would give them all my support.

I think there's a large number of wonderful opportunities for anyone willing to host and attend a meeting.

For one weekend's work, they would get to claim a founder's role in The Medical Savings and Loan, or whatever, the effort is called.

If there was a legimate and recognized alternative to insurance, then I think we could defeat ObamaCare and the State Run health exchanges. There is a lot to this model.

I am devastated at my inability to get a simple thing done. Until there is a recognized alternative to insurance, anything I say on self-funded health care is just empty agitation. If I made a youtube video when I can't find people to talk about the issue, then I am just an agitator like the people at OWS. We need reason, not agitation.