Six Years and Counting

The Health Freedom Workshop was a bust. Six years into this effort. I have yet to find a conservative within 700 miles of Salt Lake City who is willing to talk about free market alternatives to ObamaCare.

Utah is a closed society. So, once again I am looking beyond the Zion Curtain and thinking of giving in to wanderlust.

There is a FreedomFest going down in Las Vegas from July 9-12. They are charging $400 to attend. That is simply too much. I can't afford to attend the event, but if there were people wanting to discuss free market health care reform either before or after Freedom, I could make a drive down into the Western Desert.

I just discovered something much more interesting.

Dr. Ben Carson will be at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver from July 18-20

Dr. Carson is the only national voice I've heard actually talking about a true savings based health care system

I've been working on developing a savings based health care system since the 1980s.

If I could get my research into the hands of Dr. Carson, it might be possible to make true free market health care reform a reality.

(BTW: The HSA/HDHC combination is a bad mix. It is easy to prove why this is so. Please, don't tell me an HSA+HDHC policy is savings based. It is not. It''s just a tax break for the wealthy.).

My big problem is figuring out how to get the money for the event, gas and a hotel room every other night. I burned up all of my personal savings trying to find people interest in defeating ObamaCare. Traveling costs money. When I travel, I like to stay in a hotel every other night to recharge the camera.

Since the Western Conservative Conference is in Denver, I could take pictures of Colorado along the way. I might be able to get something from a huge pile of photos.

My one big hesitation about the Western Conservative Conference is that I am not a conservative. A conservative is closed-minded.

I believe that people should engage in intellectual inquiry. Unlike Conservatives who simply blow partisan hot air, I believe strongly in vigorous research of issues and the scientific method.

It is funny though. Living in Utah, the most Conservative area West of Iran, I've come to see modern conservatism as a big a threat to liberty as modern liberalism. If I had to spend three days listen clap trap about how "conservative" means freedom and "liberal" means slavery; my head might explode.

This Conservative belief that freedom is slavery and slavery freedom traces to the father of Modern Conservatism -- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). I will have to bring along a library with Hegel, Machiavelli and Plato. That way when people start pounding me over the head with their Hegelian belief that Freedom is Slavery (Conservatism), I can pound back.

Of course, here I have to ask: It is fair to go to an event called "conservative" when I am adamantly opposed to the views of Hegel, Machiavelli and Plato (the intellectual fathers of Conservatism)?

The conference is at a place called "Colorado Christian University." Christian Conservatism is a little different than LDS Conservatism which is about as Hegelian as one can get.

But, my goal isn't to discuss philosophy. My goal is simply to find people who are interested in defeating PPACA. If Dr. Ben Carson is at the Western Conservative Conference, there might be people who are interested in free market health care reform.