Defunding ObamaCare

This current effort to block the funding of ObamaCare is a fight that must be fought, but it is not the effort that effort that will restore health freedom.

The effort to restore our freedom must come from the people … not from the government.

The effort to defund ObamaCare has one huge flaw. ObamaCare is a network of health exchanges by the federal government. The exchanges are implemented at the state level.

The legislation includes a large number of federal mandates plus some social spending. Much of the program is implemented by the states.

Defunding ObamaCare reduces the social spending associated with the program. It does not remove the mandates and does nothing about the health exchanges being imposed by the states.

The Health Exchanges are based on the false premise that insurance is the only way to fund health care.

If there was a group of people willing to sit with me for an hour, I could prove this premise false.

The best way to strike at ObamaCare is to create a viable alternative to insurance.

If a group of patriots was brave enough to talk for a whole two hours, I could show the group how to go about creating a viable alternative to insurance that could be used in the effort to defeat ObamaCare.

The program would involve creating a professional association called "The Health Care Advocate Association." The association would create a business model. The business model does not even need to be implemented for the model to change the debate.

For that matter, ObamaCare outlaws alternative means for financing care. The charge of the HCAA is to create a business model, then to

You do not have to like the product. You don't have to use the product.

The goal at this point is just for a group of people to stand up and talk about alternatives to insurance.

Creating the product does involve basic mathematics. It involves creating a [gasp] database. The math is simply and I can make the database.

The place I am stuck is in finding a group of people brave enough to talk about health care. I live in Utah. I am willing to travel. But will have to contact me. I am not LDS. The LDS Church is for the exchanges. Harry Reid (D), Mitt Romney (R), Governor Huntsman (R) and Governor Leavitt (R) are all heavily invested in the exchanges.

Utah has a poisonous intellectual climate. However, I am willing to travel. Here is my Contact Form.

Unprecedented

Cato Institute just published a tome called "Unprecedented" by Josh Blackman which looks at the unprecedented legal and legislative tactics used to ram PPACA through Congress and impose a law that is clearly against the spirit of the Constitution onto the American people.

I can't afford the book. The Cato Institute has a phenomenal video in which the author's discuss the scope of this important tome which provides an inside look at the legal steps taken to push through ObamaCare and the legal challenges against. The book is available at Overstock.com or on Amazon Kindle or Hardcover.

Ahem, if people bought the book through my links, I might make enough to buy a copy for myself. I suspect that the book would serve as a primary reference about the legal history of the health care law.

I applaud this legal effort. Unfortunately, legal challenges are a bit like theological challenges to the program. The people engaged in the legal battles get caught up in the jargon of the industry. The people at large often fail to see the importance of subtle legal nuances. So, while I think the legal challenge to PPACA is important, I fear that it will fail to win the day.

From a legal perspective, the actions taken by Harry Reid and Obama to pass PPACA were outrageous.

Unfortunately, I fear that they are not that unprecedented. To the progressive, any thing is fair when they ram through their legislation. To the progressive, legal precedence and nuances of the law only matter when they are attacking enemies.

To a large extent what happened under Obama is just a repeat of what happened under FDR who used all means fair or fowl to ram his social agenda through Congress.

Both Obama and FDR managed to prolong recessions into depressions.

I chalk this book up as important. The legal effort against PPACA must be well documented and preserved.

The legal effort must be followed by efforts to educate Americans on why socialization of health care is a bad thing. This the right has failed to accomplish.

On the LDS Role in the Health Care Debate

I don't know Sharia Law. I suspect this Islamic approach to law contains some valuable insights and ancient wisdom.

There are some in this world who believe US law should be revamped along the lines of Sharia Law. Despite the ancient wisdom in Sharia, I oppose such efforts as attempts to impose Sharia Law would create a system in which our laws were set by isolated clerics haggling over interpretation of scripture while the people would be cast out.

In Utah, many believe that our nation's health care laws should be derived from the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

My experience is that individual members of this church have a very keen sense of the roles that self-sufficiency and charity should play in health.

Terrible problems happen once one says we should base our health care on the fundamentals of the LDS Church.

At this moment, Glenn Beck is promoting "Covenant Theory" which teaches that the US Revolution was staged by the Heavenly Father and The Constitution revealed to the US Founders for the express purpose of creating the conditions necessary for the restoration of the church in the latter days.

This restoration came with the revelation of the Book of Mormon. The BoM was followed in 1833 by the revelation of the "Book of Commandments" in which the Heavenly Father revealed the details of the new Covenant..

In Glenn Beck's theory, The Constitution was revealed to bring forth the Book of Commandments, making the Book of Commandments the greater of the two documents. Please, read what the Book of Commandments says! You can find a photocopy of the plate on The Institution for Religious Research.

25 Thow knowest my laws, they are given in my scriptures, he that sinneth and repenth not, shall be cast out.

26 If thou lovest me, thou shat serve me and keep all of my commandments; and behold, thou shalt consecrate all thy properties, that which thou hast unto me, wih a covenant and deed which cannot be broken; and they shall be laid before the bishop of my church, and two of the elders, such as he shall appoint and set apart for that purpose.

27 And it shall come to pass, that the bishop of my church, after that he has received the properties of my church, that it can not be taken from the church, he shall appoint every man a steward over his own property, or that which he has received, in as much as is sufficient for himself and family:

28 And the residue shall be kept to administer to him who has not, that every man may receive according as he stands in need:

29 And the residue shall be kept in my storehouse, to administer the poor and needy, as shall be appointed to the elders of the church and the bishop; and for the purpose of purchasing lands, and the building up of the New Jerusalem, which is hereafter to be revealed; that my covenant people may be gathered in one, in the day that I shall come to my temple.

When you hear Glenn Beck talk about Covenant America ... well ... This document is The Covenant.

The revelation starts with the command that those not in the covenant need to be cast out. Notice the intensity in which Beck casts dispersions at liberals. This method of thinking divides people with an "us-v- them" mentality and a need to constant attack people outside one's group.

 I've been to local political meeting where I've been labeled a servant of Satan and shown the door.

In my opinion, the thinking behind Covenant America creates a closed society in which a small corruptible group is determining the allocation of resources of the group at large with most people cast out.

The Book of Commandment by Joseph Smith goes on to say that property should be taken by the church. Former property owners reduced to stewards over the property. The leaders of the Church would give people what the leaders of the church deem sufficient for one's family. The Church wuold keep all capital gains (residue) which it will use to build a huge city to the glory of The Church. To sound progressive, they would give poor members of the church according to their needs as deemed by The Church. (Those not in The Covenant are cast out).

40 years later, Karl Marx expressed this basic tenet as "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." A great irony of history is that Marx formulated many of his ideas by studying the Mormons.

The LDS Church is considered far right. Marx is far left. They are different sides of the same coin.

After publishing the Book of Commandments, Joseph Smith found himself facing a mob (primarily of his own followers). People were not keen on giving all their property to The Church. Joseph Smith quickly revised the Word of God from "consecrate all thy properties" to "consecrate of thy properties." The new revelation was called "The Doctine and Covenants."

There is value in a theological discussion about the difference between "consecrate all" and "consecrate of."

For that matter, this theological split touches on the same basic issues of the culture war that is tearing our country apart. A primary question of the culture war is:: "How much should the centralized authority take from the people for the glory of the state?"

I am also intrigued with the transition from "property owners" to stewardship that occurs in the Book of Commandments. 

I believe that the Founders of the United States were envisioning a society with widespread property ownership.Smith issued a direct attack on widespread personal ownership in favor of a society in which property was owned by a central authority and people reduced to stewardship.

If you look at the American economy, you will see that the United States is rapidly transitioning from a society of property owners to one in which all property is owned by collectives (corporations are collective ownership) and individuals are mere stewards.

The history of the revelation touches deeply on the interplay between the central authority and the people.

The wording of the revelation changed after a riot. This touches directly on the conflict between centralized authority and the people (the mob).

Mobs tend to scare political leaders. Joseph Smith claimed to speak the Word of God. It is scary to learn that an angry mob actually changed the Word of God!

I am pro-religion. I believe that theological inquiry provides valuable insight.

Despite the importance of theological inquiry, I think it imperative that law of the land should be based on a broader dialog and verified through analysis and a broader intellectual discussion.

Just as I wonder if theological disputes about Sharia Law should be the basis of our Health Care system, I question if the theological dispute about the LDS Covenant should be the foundation of the US Health Care System.

I worry about Glenn Beck's insistence that the US Revelation was staged by the Heavenly Father to bring rise to the LDS Church, because this ideology has the effect of reducing the importance of the Constitution and of cutting hundreds of millions of people out of the picture.

Joseph Smith's revelation included the statement that those not of the Covenant need to be cast out. I dislike systems that cast people out.

Don't you see the problem? If you hold Glenn Beck's view that the Revolution was staged to bring forth a new Covenant, then you need to hold the Book of Commandments in higher regards than the Constitution (which was simply created to bring forth the real deal ... the new covenant.)

Of course LDS Church history provides some valuable insights.

The Mormon Church began as a commune. The Fundamentalist LDS Sects still practice varying degrees of communalism such as polygamy and communally owned property.

The mainstream LDS Church saw the negative effects of these experiments and has since been a strong advocate for traditional American values and respect for property rights.

At the beginning of the Health Care Debate, I was hoping that the Mormon Church would play a strong role in the battle to defeat PPACA.

In a related culture war debate, the LDS Church experimented with the redefinition of marriage. The D&C not only permitted polygamy. The new covenant mandated polygamy. Currently the LDS Church is a strong defender of maintaining the traditional definition of marriage.  (Fundamentalist Mormons want the definition changed).


BTW: I defend the traditional definition of marriage based largely on the experience the LDS Church had when they tried changing it. Large polygamist cults create a clan mentality.

I support groups in my community when I see them doing good, and question them when I think they are running astray.

Beck to Health Care.

I support and applaud the activities of Senator Mike Lee and Representative Jason Chaffetz in working to defund ObamaCare.

The overall activity of the LDS Community in this health care debate been a mixed bag.

Obama's Health Care plan was based on the plan of Mitt Romney. Harry Reid was the primary architect of PPACA. I suspect that both Romney and Reid believe that their efforts match their understanding of the LDS Faith.


Governor Mike Leavitt owns an insurance company that provides infrastructure and is a primary benefactor of the Health Exchanges. Jon Huntsman campaigned on imposing the exchanges.

Utah was one of the first states to impose a Health Exchange. Utah imposed the exchanges and suppressed debate against the exchanges.

The Utah conservative community has held few public meetings about defeating PPACA. I've been labeled a servant of Satan and cast out of the few meetings that I've attended.

The Utah attendance at the 2012 Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally was so pathetic I actually felt sick. From a metropolitan area pushing two million people, only about 200 attended the rally. Of that group half were members of the press, speakers or family members of speakers.

Karl Rove was the architect  behind The Bush Administration.  President Bush greatly expand the role of the Federal Government in health care as part of that strategy. Karl Rove was the architect behind Romney's presidential campaign.

If you compared the county by county electoral map of the 2012 Republican Primary, it appears that Mormons voted as a block for Romney. If you have a voting block and a half dozen or more candidates, the group will the voting block will win every time.

Mitt Romney's campaign created a disastrous 2012 election pitting the father of RomneyCare against the Father of ObamaCare (which was based on RomneyCare). It was impossible for the GOP to really differentiate itself from Obama. Mitt Romney would vow to repeal ObamaCare at one stop; then promise to keep the majority of the bill in the next.

Karl Rove is currently working to isolate and neuter the Tea Party candidates seeking to defund PPACA.

While I support Senator Lee and Representative Chaffetz and I appreciate the discussion by members of the LDS faith who realize the need for both self-sufficiency and charity, I feel that, on the whole, the efforts of the LDS Community is falling on the side of tyranny and not on the side of freedom.

Again Harry Reid, Mitt Romney, Mike Leavitt and Jon Huntsman played an active role in imposing the exchanges. Karl Rove is leading a charge against the Tea Party and the ideology of LDS Church advocates reducing property owners to stewards.

I look at Glenn Beck's Covenant America which seeks to base our health care on the Doctrines and Covenants of the LDS Church with the same suspicion as I look on claims that we need to impose Sharia Law. Quite frankly, I believe the American Constitution and the classical liberal tradition of the US Founders makes a much better basis for governance.

On Defunding ObamaCare

PPACA (ObamaCare) is a network of state run health exchanges. The Exchanges are mandated and regulated at the Federal Government, but run by the states.

The Health Exchanges are an idea that came from the Right. The idea was that, if we forced everyone into health exchanges, we might be able to overcome some of the most egregious flaws of the insurance industry.

Republicans love the insurance industry and are happy to sell our God-given liberties to insurance lobbyists whenever the insurance lobbyists pull out the checkbook.

 The Health Exchanges are actually quite regressive. The laws will force everyone to buy into captured these exchanges which will result in the transfer of billions of dollars from the middle class to the ruling class the runs the exchanges.

The healt exchanges are inherently regressive. To make the exchanges appear progressive, Obama added a massive increase in social spending with the exchanges.

The exchanges are being implemented at the state level as we speak.

There is currently a push to Defund ObamaCare. I support this effort and signed the petition.

The problem I see is, that if we remove the social spending, we will be left with the regressive exchanges. These exchanges will transfer billions from the working and middle class to the ruling class. By creating a program that transfers billions from workers and small business to the cronies that run the exchanges the defunded health exchanges are likely to level a death blow against thousands of small businesses.

Don't you see the problem? PPACA is a collection of regressive health exchanges (run at the state level) coupled with some social spending to offset inherent problems with the exchanges.

Defunding ObamaCare will leave us with corrupt state run health exchanges which will transfer billings of dollars for small business and workers to a corrupt ruling class.

For the freedom movement to save the American Experiment in Self Rule, people in the movement will have to do something radical.

People in the freedom movement will have to come up with an alternative mechanism.

I happen to have developed an alternative to insurance called the Medical Savings and Loan.

For five years, I've been on my knees begging for a small group of people to get together for an afternoon to discuss alternatives to the exchanges.

I live in the most Conservative State in the Nation. With the possible exception of Tehran and Saudi Arabia, Utah just might be the most conservative place on the planet.

In five years, all I've learned is that Conservatives really are closed-minded people that the dictionary describes. Apparently conservatism really is nothing more than a belief in a closed society with a debased ruling class shutting out all ideas.

I live in Salt Lake City. I'm not Mormon. I've lived here since the 1970s, and have come to accept that closed-minded intolerant people incapable of engaging in civil discourses.

I spent ten thousand dollars traveling to Las Vegas, Reno, Phoenix and Denver ... hoping beyond reasonable that someone on this planet has enough love for the freedom our forefathers fought to defend might be willing to engage in the radical act of discussing the mathematics of health.

I know. Math is so scary. The are ten digits in the decimal system and hopeless complex operations like addition, subtraction and ratios.

The presentation involves really complex math: The actual presentation involves taking the sum of columns of numbers and calculating ratios.

I confess, the original model involved calculus, combinatorics (aka probability) and topology. I removed the complex for a really clean model.


I actually have one dollar in my pocket and things I can sell. If I sleep out, I figure I could safely travel 750 miles from Salt Lake.

The Freedom Movement could be doing better than this pathetic effort to Defund ObamaCare.

The entrenched reluctance of conservatives to discuss the issue of funding health care has me convinced that the end game of the Republicans, from the beginning, has been to impose a system of health exchanges with no social benefits to offset the concentration of power.


If there was a group within 750 miles of Salt Lake willing to discuss health care, I would pack my bags and hit the road with my last dollar in hand. It will never happen. There will never be a Conservative who is willing to discuss ideas.

MSL Screencast

Readers of this blog know that, for the last five years, I've been searching for a group of people to discuss free market health care reform.

I put together a presentation that starts with a Pithy Introduction to the health care debate. The pithy introduction should be about five minutes. The goal of the introduction is to define the term "Health Care" and to contrast the idea of "group care" with "individual care." I favor the idea of delivering health care on an individual basis.

The pithy introduction would be followed by a quick introduction of a mathematical model for funding health care that I call "The Medical Savings and Loan." This second part of the the presentation should be about 15 minutes.

A key component of the MS&L is a thing called the "Health Care Advocates Association." Introducing the HCA should take about 10 minutes.

I would then give a short presentation comparing the MSL and HCAA with the insurance paradigm and show why the Medical Savings and Loan would provide more care for less money.

In five years, I've found no-one interested in attending this presentation. I have received requests to create a video.

So, I bought a tinny microphone for $5 and plugged it into my 2003 Dell Computer. I deleted a whole bunch of files to make room for the CamStudio-Recorder. I bought a pile of microstock images and read the presentation into the tinny microphone. To produce the thing below.

The actual time of the video is 15 minutes.

I am so upset at this whole unwillingness of the Conservative Movement to take a positive stand on free market health care that I added a ten minute diatribe on the poor quality of modern debate.

The US Founders were not conservatives. The conservatives of 1776 stood with the British.

The Left/Right split took hold during the French Revolution when supporters of the ancient regime sat on the Right of the French Legislature and supporters of radical change stood on the Left. Modern dialectics took hold with the rantings of the arch-conservative thinker Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The Modern Progressive ideology was scripted by the Young Hegelians (Feuerbach, Marx, etc).

The fact that the GOP nominated Mitt Romney to run against Barrack Obama convinced me that the GOP has no intention of repealing ObamaCare. They simple seek to project negative images on President Obama in a snide attempt to capture the ring of power.

I suspect that there are many people who sincerely call themselves "conservatives" who want to restore the American experiment in self rule. The conservative movement is not defined by one's rhetoric. It is defined the the actions of the whole movement. The goal of the Conservative Movement from Revolution to present has been to preserve the centralized social order.

If a group was interested in discussing Free Market Health Care reform, I would pull out ten minutes of the Pithy Introduction. A primary reason that I added the diatribe was because I want to disassociate this presentation from the Conservative movement which I personally find as corrupt as the progressive movement.

I am not happy at all with this recording. The home of the recording will be at the URL hca.me/presents/intro.html.

Presentation on Health Care

I had a math background. Decades ago I worked writing programs to analyze insurance claims and calculate premiums. While engaged in this activity, I realized that insurance underserves large segments of the community.

I spent several years investigating alternatives to insurance, but did not find much interest.

I took to calling the model I developed "The Medical Savings and Loan."

During the campaign against HillaryCare, I contacted numerous free market groups. They were eager to use my insights about insurance to help defeat HillaryCare, but I found no-one interested in true free market health care reform.


In 2008, when I realized that President Obama was likely to repeat the drive for socialized medicine,

The weakest part of PPACA (ObamaCare) is the assumption that insurance is the only way to fund health care.

I happen to have developed an alternative business model for funding health care.

My goal for the last five years has been to find a free market oriented group interested in developing this plan.

I discovered something very disturbing during this period. The first is that, while Republicans love when people agitate for free market solutions, but they dismiss anyone who talks about real solutions.

The other troubling thing I discovered is that I would spend weeks trying to develop a contact to hold a meeting. Meetings would routinely be cancelled the moment that commissars that control the GOP realize that I am seriously talking about alternatives to insurance.

Anyway, in five years, I've been unable to find anyone in either the Republican or Libertarian Party willing to listen to my mathematical models.

Most people in the establishment are completely aligned with health care money. Attending a meeting about alternatives to insurance would involve an unusual amount of bravery.

My basic belief is that if the freedom movement created a mathematically viable alternative to insurance, the movement could use that model to attack the assumption that insurance is the only way to fund health care.

I am unable to force people into a room to talk about the mathematics of health care. For that matter, the reason I left the insurance industry is because the industry forces people to take actions that are against their best interest. I do not believe in forcing people to do anything.

I live in Salt Lake City. If anyone is interested in defeating ObamaCare. I have a plan. I have a very good, well thought through plan. I have a solid mathematical model that shows group funding of health care does disservices to workers and small business.

But, since I have yet to find anyone brave enough to sit in a room to talk about the mathematics of funding health care ... I can do nothing.

BTW, I live in Salt Lake City.

Defunding Obamacare, Then What?

PPACA (ObamaCare) is a federally mandated network of Health Exchanges implemented by the states.

A small group of Republicans is currently running an obstructionist campaign to stop the Federal Funding of PPACA. I applaud the effort.

But, here's the problem. Even if the Feds defund ObamaCare, we are stuck with the centralized exchanges. We will be in a horrific mess that will most likely be resolved by the creation of state level bureaucracies that are even worse than ObamaCare.

This leads to the fundamental problem of "conservatism."

Obstruction does not provide a path forward.

Obstructionism alone is not a path to the future.


If we want to restore health freedom, then there has to be a vision to work towards.

The one and only way that we can have a vision to work towards is if people spoke with each other.

Conservatives, with the obstructionist mindset, simply shut everyone out and kick their neighbors down.

But by kicking people down, conservatives destroy all hopes of finding solutions. Since conservatives refuse to talk, think or engage in discourse, they open the door for the next band of statist rogues who are willing to talk and engage in discourse.

Even if the obstructionist campaign works and Congress defunds the Federal component of health care, we are still saddled with the state component, which is where the real oppression in PPACA lies.

To get rid of the state component, the freedom movement needs to have a constructive solution. This can only happen if people in the freedom movement speak to one another.

The weak point of the health exchanges is the insurance mandate. The insurance mandate is built on the false assumption that insurance is the only possible way to fund health care.

I want to challenge the insurance mandate through a presentation that shows insurance is not the best way to fund health care.

The presentation involves mathematics and takes an hour or so. Attending the presentation might help empower activists against ObamaCare. I really don't know this for certain. In five years I've been unable to find a single Conservative who has enough interest in health care reform to spend an afternoon talking about the problem.

I live in Utah. I am not LDS. The Utah GOP does not allow participation of non-Mormons in the party (see Closed Society). I accept that. I am willing to travel. I would be willing to travel to Denver, Cheyenne, Phoenix, Las Vegas. Boise, Reno, just for the privilege of talking to another human.

What I want to talk about is the mathematics of funding health care. In the meeting I would present a mathematical model that shows that insurance underserves the middle and working class of this nation. I wish to argue that we could create a better model built around self-funded health care and a restoration of fee for service medicine.

I've spent five years with the single minded goal of finding a small group of people willing to spend an afternoon talking about free market health care reform.

I must confess.I am not a Conservative. I am what you might call a Classical Liberal. I define Classical Liberalism as the application of classical logic to the question of liberty.. I believe the US Founders were classical liberals. They had a liberal-arts education steeped in classical logic. They applied this education to the question of liberty.

I believe solutions are found in reason, mathematics and science. The scientific method involves detailed analysis of problems with a heavy dosing of peer review. I've engaged in analysis of health care, and I want someone to review the ideas.

I am not all that keen on obstructionism. I do not see obstructionism as a positive path to the future, but am willing to fight hard for American ideals.

Quite frankly, I believe that the reason our nation is falling apart is because Conservatives refuse to actively engage in discourse and spend too much time engaged in obstructionism.

I've spent over five years and over $10,000 just trying to find a person who is willing to review a mathematical model.  If people in the freedom movement are unwilling to engage in discourse, all hope for renewing the American Experiment in self rule is over. Obstructionism alone leads to ruin.