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.
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