Friday, September 28, 2012

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.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

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.

Friday, September 21, 2012

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.

Monday, September 17, 2012

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.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

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

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

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'

Saturday, September 1, 2012

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.