What I am Looking For

I have a workshop on free market health care reform that I've been hoping to present.

The workshop will take several hours. In the work shop I create a model for self-funded health care. I use a combination of savings accounts, a loan reserve and grants. I then create a model for group funded care. Insurance and socialism are both forms of group funded care.

With two models in place, it is possible to explore the difference between self-funded and group funded care.

My model indicates that group funded care underserves the lower and middle classes and that it has the pernicious effect of concentrating wealth and power in the center.

I contend that the problem in health care is the use of group funding for individual consumption and that the way to improve things is to restore the concept of self-funded care.

In the modern political context, I argue the following. The current health care debate is based on the false assumption that insurance is the only way to fund health care. The weak point of ObamaCare is the insurance mandate.

The way to defeat ObamaCare is to expose the false assumption and to create an alternative to insurance.

If we had an alternative to insurance that served the working class better than ObamaCare, we could expose this fiasco as the regressive legislation that it is and possibly put our nation back on the path of renewal.

I live in Salt Lake City.

What I am hoping to find is a group within 700 miles of Salt Lake that is willing to make a firm commitment to hold a meeting on Free Market Health Care Reform.

By group, I simply mean a few people who have a firm commitment to attend a meeting. If someone told me that they could guarantee that six conservative or libertarian leaning people would meet in, say, Grand Junction on May 15th, then I would be delighted.

The workshop takes a few hours. We create a model for self-funded care. We then create a model for group-funded care, then discuss the differences between the two models.

People who attend the workshop will see the health care debate in a new light and will be empowered to promote free market health care reform.

What I am Selling

My meeting will argue that the problem in health care is overuse of group funding for individual consumption. The solution is to create a self-funded model for health care.

I will argue that funding health care is a business problem and that we need a business solution. The path to solving the health care problem is to create new businesses.

I created an entity called the "Health Care Advocates Association." The goal of the HCAA is to create a new business model for funding health care. In the meeting I will sell the idea that we need an organization dedicated to the creation of a new business model for funding health care. The absolutely worst thing that will happen to people who attend the meeting is that I will talk about starting businesses and organizations.

A Post for a Twitter Thread

Both Republicans and Democrats operate on the assumption that insurance is the only way to fund health care. (NOTE: Socialism is insurance run by the state. Employer based insurance is essentially socialism run at a corporate level).

Driven by the false assumption that insurance is the only possible way to fund health care, Republicans and Democrats have the single minded focus on forcing everyone into insurance.

The Left and Right are split on a false dichotomy. Republicans want every one forced into corporate owned insurance. Democrats want everyone forced into state owned insurance.

I worked writing computer programs for a state owned insurance company. I began seriously analyzing the data and realized that insurance was doing more harm that good.

So, I set forth to research the economics of funding health care and finding alternatives.

Specifically, I created a system centered on privately owned health accounts. At the time people used the term "Medical Savings Accounts." I supplemented the private accounts with a loan reserve. I created a generously funded grant system to help people who could not afford to self their care.

All money in the MS&L flows from personal accounts. I add robust document management program to the accounts. These accounts become a robust personally owned health record.

Changing the flow of money would lead to a major realignment of the health care system. Jobs like medical claims adjusters and medical transcriptionists would disappear to be replaced by a new position that I called a Health Care Advocate.

I called my model "The Medical Savings and Loan."

So, I now have a mathematical model that shows how health funding would look like in a free society. I can compare this with the insurance model.

What I discovered is that the insurance systematically harms the working and middle classes. Insurance creates a ruling elite which controls most of the resources in society.

Conservatives have stupid talking points like the idea that buying insurance over state lines would improve things. The moment I have my model up on the screen, I can show that this argument is dead wrong.

Conservatives argue that adding a Health Savings Account to a High Deductible Insurance Policy will save the day. My model shows that the HSA+HDHC is even more regressive than regular insurance.




My goal for the last five years has simply been to find someone who will sit in a room for an afternoon to listen to a presentation about this idea.

The only thing I've learned to date is that Conservatives simply refuse to discuss ideas. In five years I've been unable to find a single Conservative withing 700 miles of Salt Lake City who is willing to sit down for an evening to talk about health care.

I've spent every penny of my savings driving to Reno, Denver, Phoenix and Las Vegas (four trips without finding even one person who is willing to discuss free market health care).

I've written every single so-called conservative organization I can find within 700 miles of Salt Lake. The only replies I've been given are firm rejections.

Health care is the single most important issue of the day. If Republicans actually cared about the people of this nation, they would be in the streets actively looking for ideas. In five years of aggressive search, I have not found a Republican who is even willing to discuss the foundations of funding health care.

Packaging Freedom

Long ago I worked writing programs to track and analyze insurance claims. During this experience I realized that insurance was systematically flawed and was leading people to ruin.

After leaving the insurance industry I spent years trying to come-up with an insurance-like program that would help people finance their health spending.

I realized, of course, that there is no way to package freedom.

Any artificial constraints placed on savings and spending in health care creates false signals that have a negative effect on health care.

Packaging Tape Dispenser © Rafael Angel Irusta Machin

I finally took the approach of stripping health care down to its bare core.

On stripping health care it is core, I realized that health care is about applying time and resources to the care of health. Health care is all about people. People, not a system, should be the center of health care reform.

Money is simply a tool we use to track time and resources.

Every single person on this planet has time and resources. The challenge is figuring out the best way to use time and resources.

The centerpiece of the health care reform I propose is a new position called The Health Care Advocate. A Health Care Advocate is a person who specializes in the financing of health care. Advocates help people set up savings programs. They help people find care providers and negotiate prices. The advocates would know about loans and grants available for people with insufficient savings.

The heart of my health care reform proposal is this position.

I am a mathematician and computer programmer; so I created a structure for analyzing health care data. Insurance (and socialism) analyze the experience of a group over a year. In my proposed reform, I engage in a whole life analysis of the individual.

Insurance (and socialism) see individuals as fragmented beings processed through a system. It is dehumanizing.

My program starts with the assumption that each person is a whole being. I then create tools that empower individuals as whole beings. The process is humanizing.

I admit. I love to work on logic and mathematics.

However, the process of restoring health freedom is all about people and real human to human communication.

My goal for these last few years is simply to get a group of people into a room to talk about free market health care reform.

I live in Salt Lake. I am not LDS. I am stuck waiting until I find a group of people brave enough to discuss free market health care reform. I am willing to travel. Contact Me

Healthy Consumption

The secret to healthy consumption is moderation. If you consume too much of anything it will be bad for you, This includes medicine.

The insurance industry (socialism is insurance run by the state) feeds us the line that we could get more health care if we just pooled our resources.

Fat Man Eating Burger © Sergiy Tryapitsyn

But, the problem is not a lack of health care. The problem is one of achieving balanced in our consumption of care.

Lobbyists for the health establishment claim that we must pool our resources to achieve an economy of scale. Pooling resources makes the lobbyists rich and powerful, but it does not improve care.

The idea of "economy of scale" only applies to production. It does not apply to consumption.

Supply and demand are not the same thing. Supply and demand have different logical traits. Economy of scale can increase productivity on the supply side, but when we try to scale things up on the consumption end, we end up with with waste and fat.

The secret to healthy consumption is moderation. The claim that we could get more health care by pooling our resources is completely mistaken. Supply and demand are different things. The logic that applies on the supply side does not apply on the demand side.

Interestingly, we see the biggest improvements in productivity in those areas of health care that are not covered by insurance. Notably, LASIK Surgery is not covered by most insurance policies. People must pay for this cosmetic procedure with cash. The ophthalmologists who practice in this area invested personal resources to achieve economy of scale on the production, which dramatically reduced the cost.

I contend that, if we broke up the insurance companies and rejected the fallacy that one can achieve economy of scale on the demand side; then we would see a balanced consumption of care.

Since doctors would be forced to compete for dollars, they would be forced by the market to change their practices to achieve the economy of scale that increases productivity and lowers cost.

Yes, supply and demand are both part of economics. However, the production of goods and the consumption of goods are two different things. The logic that applies to supply does not automatically apply to demand.
The key to productivity is economy of scale. The key to healthy consumption is balance.

The politicos who confuse these basic principles do the world a great disservice.

Now, if you don't mind, I need to go out and get a soda to wash down this cheeseburger.

Insurance v. Assurance

The weak part of ObamaCare is the insurance mandate. The best way to defeat ObamaCare is to come up with an alternative to insurance.

If there was a compelling alternative to insurance on the market, the freedom movement could use it to strike directly at the mandates.

In this regards, I am thrilled to come across a site called 3H-A Health Assurance. This group seeks to develop health assurance as an alternative to health insurance. The site has the achievable of amending PPACA to ...

" ... legislatively amend Obamacare to allow for individuals to exempt themselves from Obamacare by participating in an Individual Health Assurance Account (IHAA)."

The big question for the freedom movement is if this change will be sufficient to strike a blow to Obamacare, or if the concept of "assurance" will be co-opted by the left and turned against the cause of individual liberty.

So, I've been reading web sites on the different between insurance and assurance. Most of the sites are related to Life Insurance. These sites say the same thing. ask wikiins says

"The specific uses of the term "insurance" and "assurance" are sometimes confused. In general, the term insurance refers to providing cover for an event that might happen while assurance is the provision of cover for an event that is certain to happen."

The term is used primarily in the life insurance industry. Death is certain. An accidental insurance policy is designed to pay off only if the death is an accident. With a life assurance policy, one is building up equity in the plan that will pay off regardless.

Of course, the problem in health care is that health expenses are irregular. The only health expense that one is guaranteed to occur is the funeral expense.

In health care, there are companies developing the term "assurance" as a brand. For example Health Assurance, LLC is using Health Assurance as brand for Managed Care. Their siite says:

"Health Assurance, LLC provides a comprehensive managed care program that encompasses primary medical care and dental care services, specialty medical services via a vast referral network, psychiatric and psychosocial services, assistance with impatient referrals, and a comprehensive accreditation program that meets national standards delivered in a cost-effective manner."

3H-Assurance hopes to develop the term along the lines of a Health Savings Account in which people retain control of their money and control the spending of their money. The FAQ at 3H ends with the line: "Health Assurance your money is yours to spend as you choose.  Say 'goodbye' to the hassles of managed care!"

I really like the direction that 3H is taking. It is one of the most positive things I've seen in the freedom movement for the last several years.

My experience is that the enemies of freedom are very good at manipulating terms. Hegelian dialectics is a game in which each term has contradictory meanings. The primary strategy of the Marxian dialectics is to use the tools of a free society to destroy the free society.

The reason that defending the free market is so hard is because adherents of the Hegelian/Marxian dialectic have destroyed our language.

3H is on the right track. I am thrilled to see another group realizing that the way to defend freedom is to develop an alternative to insurance.

For this (or any idea) to succeed, there needs to be a concerted effort to develop the idea in ways to prevent the term from being co-opted and turned into its opposite.

There must be a sufficient support structure to define and defend a free market interpretation of the term "assurance;" otherwise what will happen is the freedom movement will campaign for "Assurance" thinking it is like a Health Savings Account. At the last minute, a group like Health Assurance, LLC will muscle its way in to stuff another managed care plan down our gullet.

A great case in point is the Health Savings Account. Classical Liberals spent a great deal of time developing ideas about free market economics around this term. A politically connect insurance company called United Healthcare Group captured the term and use it as a marketing gimmick for their high deductible insurance policy. The HSA offered by United Healthcare Group is the worst possible implementation of the savings account idea. Companies give their lowest paid workers high deductible insurance and effectively eliminate their access to preventative medicine. All of the work spent developing the idea of a medical savings account was destroyed by insurance companies using Health Savings Accounts to sell high deductible insurance.

3H is on the right track. But, after researching the various usage of the term "assurance," I am skeptical that efforts to parse the terms "insurance" and "assurance" will result in a restoration of health freedom.

It is possible. To succeed in this effort, one would need to create a support structure to defend the definition of terms. This support structure would start by people physically meeting and holding conferences on free market health care reform.

Unfortunately, 3H-A does not include its location on the site.

I am stuck in Utah. For me the best places to hold a meeting are Utah, Las Vegas, Arizona, Colorado, or Idaho. The goal of a meeting is to create an alternative to insurance; so that in the 2014 election freedom advocates could be out on the street demanding a clearly defined mechanism to opt out of PPACA.

The two terms I've been using are "Medical Savings and Loan" and "Health Care Advocates Association™." I am not married to any term. I think HCAA would be a great name to use for organizing a meeting.

Health Coops

Utah was one of the first states to impose a health exchange. Today, the Salt Lake Tribune announced that the Beehive State is one of the first states to impose a "health cooperative" called Arches Health.

The cooperative will start with a $85 million dollar loan from the Federal Government. The cooperative will be given special tax treatment which should give it a competitive advantage over privately owned health care. The company will concentrate on giving care to large politically active groups.

As is typical, the Tribune article by Kirstin Stewart was simply a mush of poorly researched and poorly thought through ideas. For example the article states: "Today's insurers pay doctors for services as provided, a system that rewards volume over value ... Arches will assign patients to medical homes and pay those providers lump sums."

Kirstin has the pricing motive in health care completely backwards. The direct service model is one in which doctors compete for customer's service based on quality. Lumping a whole bunch of people together and paying a lump sum emphasizes quantity.

The health cooperative is just another insurance company. As mentioned in previous posts, I worked for a Utah State owned insurance company. The fact that the company was owned by the government did not change the inherent inefficiencies of the business model. 

The idea behind "health cooperatives" is that the problem in health care is private ownership. The idea is that once we end private ownership, all health care decisions would be made politically dependent on one's group. Political decision will be more equitable than one's made directly by free thinking people.


I started writing a longer piece on why the Arches Health Cooperative is unlikely to improve health care.

Unfortunately, to really understand why health care delivered through a political structure will under perform health care delivered through a system built on individual rights requires a substantive conversation that goes beyond what I can write in a blog post.

The fact that Utah is among the first states to impose the health exchanges and health cooperatives of ObamaCare does not surprise.

I am dismayed, however, that I am unable to find any group within a 700 mile range of Salt Lake that would take an afternoon to engage in a substantive conversation about health care reform.

Planning for a Trip

I have a beautiful presentation on free market health care reform that, if properly presented to the public, might change discourse on health care.

Unfortunately, I live behind the Zion Curtain. The group that controls the state does not tolerate open discourse. The MTC teaches the politicos of this state that they were put on the planet to lecture to others. They were put on earth to lecture and not listen.

Personally, I think that people should spend more time listening than talking.

BTW. My workshop is as follows. I create mathematical models for self-funded care and for group-funded care. I then open the room for discussion about the two different models. It is a basic foundational discussion of financing health care. The reason I begin with a presentation is to create a foundation for a fruitful discussion.


Anyway, Utah has proven a bust. I still think my best hope is to travel to Arizona.

I've already tried this game. Between 2009 and 2010 I racked up close to 10,000 miles traveling to Reno, Phoenix, Denver and Las Vegas hoping to find anyone interested in free market health care reform.

What happened in each case is that I wrote hundreds of emails. Made dozens of phone calls and ended up sitting in a hotel room watching the wallpaper peel off the wall.

I swore to myself that I would not move until I had a firm commitment from someone that they would get a half dozen people in a room and participate in a workshop about free market health care.

A half dozen is six. (That is not a lot of people). In a 700 mile radius of Salt Lake City, I have not been able to find a half dozen people willing to commit to spending an afternoon talking about their freedom.

It is absolutely ridiculous that there is no conservatives or libertarian who is willing to spend an afternoon talking about free market health care.

It is the most important issue of our day. If people are not even willing to spend an afternoon talking about freedom, then they  deserve no freedom.

Even if no one is willing to talk to me, I am still willing to stand up for freedom. So, I am still thinking of hitting the road.

Driving to Phoenix and hosting a meeting will cost about $750.

My experience tells me that no one will show up for any meetings I schedule. Spending $750 to sit in a hotel room to stare at a TV is a complete waste of time and resources.

Now, it just so happens that some of the most beautiful scenery on the planet sits between Salt Lake and the Arizona border. (I just started a tumblr gallery of Moab that I will fill with pretty pictures).

So, I am thinking of driving to Southern Utah to take a bunch of pictures. That way, when no-one shows up for the meeting, I will have something productive to do.

I will be able to spend my time uploading and labeling the pictures. In the last few weeks, I've created numerous tumblr blogs (eg, Utah Color, Arizona Color). These feed into my site ProtoPhoto.com.

I am adding cool features to ProtoPhoto like a photo blog and mapping resources. If I have the site well optimized, I could offset some of my costs by putting ads on the site. So, in addition to taking photos, I am working on new advertising strategies.