The Need for An Organization

It is true that the media and academic community lean left.

There is not a "news blockade" against the free market health care reform. The problem is that there is not an organization at the ready when free market health care reform breaks through the national media.

For example, my last post shows a great speech by Dr. Benjamin Carson in which he mentions Medical Savings Accounts.

Unfortunately, there is not an adequate organization to follow through on this debate and the momentum is lost.

I've been following the health care debate since the 1980s.

There have been hundreds of these moments when free market health care reform catches the public attention. Unfortunately, the freedom movement fails to capitalize on these moments because there is not a group at the ready to do the follow through.

Because the insurance lobby is large and powerful, what usually happens after these breakthrough moments is the insurance lobby will muscle itself into the spotlight and claim that insurance is the free market solution. The insurance lobby might use the spotlight to argue for tort reform or for buying insurance across state lines, but they fall short of discuss substantive free market health care reform.

The insurance lobby also puts forward the idea that tacking a tax free health savings account onto a high deductible insurance policy would somehow make things better. Give me an hour, and I will tear this idea to shreds.

See, the combination of savings and high deductible insurance is worst possible implementation of health savings. What happens is that companies will try to cut cost by giving high deductible insurance to its low wage workers. This causes the low wage workers to skip preventative care and increases costs.

The program fails to restore the pricing mechanism in health. The problem in health care is not the basic care that one can buy at any clinic. The cost driver in health care is the expense stuff that happens after exhausting the deductible.

Care providers are attentive to who is paying the bill. So, providers will try to shift costs from those below the deductible to those who are above the deductible.

So, while insurance companies like the idea of tacking a health savings account onto high deductible insurance, it is not the best implementation of health savings for the individual.

There are enough horror stories of people on HSA+HDHC that the left is able to shout down the freedom movement when it is drawn into defending this idea.

There are hundreds of these break through moments when people begin to discuss free market health care reform. To take advantage of the moments, there needs to be a group at the ready to take advantage of the moments.

I've followed the health care issue for decades. I have some great ideas to contribute to such a movement. Above all, I am willing to do the work to help an organization get on the right track.

I confess, I can be obstinate. But, you know, that is a virtue when one must be at the ready to stand against forces on both the left and the right. I started to put together an organization called "The Health Care Advocates Association."

The goal of this organization is to create a mechanism for funding health care built from the ground up around Medical Savings Accounts. I gave my model the working title "The Medical Savings and Loan."

The point of the name is to say that the freedom movement needs an alternative to the HSA+HDHC model.

What needs to happen is for a small group of people to meet and spend a few days talking about free market health care reform, and I've been stuck for five years trying to find people with sufficient interest in free market reform to pursue the concept.