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'

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.

Arizona Exchange

According to Americans For Prosperity, it looks like the uber-Conservative state of Arizona is gearing up to impose a Health Exchange. AFP is holding a debate on the exchanges  Sept 5, 2012 at the Goldwater Institute.

I really wish I could attend. This is the first public meeting that I've come across that questions the Health Exchanges.

PPACA (ObamaCare) is a network of health exchanges regulated at the Federal Level and implemented at the state level. Romney's promise to repeal ObamaCare will simply remove the Federal regulation, but will leave all the state run exchanges in place.

Romney will repeal the bill the created the exchanges, but leave the exchanges in place.

The end result of this political move is to capture the exchanges.

The Romney/Ryan administration will then seek to relabel the exchanges as the free market alternative to Obama's socialism.

The problem is that the Health Exchanges are not free market. The Health Exchanges in RomneyCare and ObamaCare create a captured market that centralizes health care and allows the ruling elite to skim billions off the system.

Wake up America. The fact that the uber-Conservative state of Arizona is following the path of RomneyCare should tell us that our nation is still headed in the wrong direction.

Both RomneyCare and ObamaCare are founded on the false assumption that insurance is the only possible way to fund health care. The goal of the Health Exchanges is to force everyone into highly centralized network of insurance options.

The best way to defeat this beast is to debate alternatives to insurance. I am still at the ready if there is any group brave enough to stand against the Democratic and Republican beast that has taken over our nation.

Replace It With What?

I found Romney's speech (and the whole Republican National Conference for that matter) big on image, but short on substance.

I am not supporting Romney because I know that if we have just another power exchange with no substantive change in our economic theory, we will not be able to restore our nation.

The convention left us with a great image of how wonderful Romney is and how the world will end if Obama is re-elected. But there was no substance.

The closest hint of substance was a vague promise to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

REPLACE IT WITH WHAT?

The reason I am so completely dead set against Romney is that in four years of debate about health care, I have seen no substantive debate on free market health care reform.

I worked myself into abject poverty driving to Reno, Denver, Phoenix and Las Vegas to find a Conservative who would talk about substantive free market health care reform.

There may be substantive debate about Free Market Health Care reform that I don't know about. But it's not at the RNC.  The Utah Freedom Conference doesn't even have free market health care on the agenda.

In Utah, the Conservative Republicans shoved a state run health exchange down our throat and actively silenced all opposition.

For those who are wondering. PPACA (ObamaCare) is a network of health exchanges regulated at the federal level but run at the state level.

Since the Health Exchanges are run at the state level, we will find that even if Romney repeals the Federal Regulations we are stuck with the corrupt and captured health exchanges.

As long as the conservative establishment steadfastly refuses to discuss alternatives to health exchanges, American patriots need to stand against the exchanges.

The exchanges are corrupt. They will collapse into socialism. The only way to restore America is to have a viable alternative to exchanges. This cannot happen if conservatives are spineless drones that will not discuss alternatives.

Yes, I know I am a pariah. I don't give a crap about myself. All I want to see is someone where talk about alternatives to insurance. (NO, A Health Savings Account tacked onto a high deductible insurance policy is not a viable alternative to insurance. The HSA+HDHC policy is a formula for disaster … which I can easily prove.).

This blog (The Medical Savings and Loan) is simply an effort to start a discussion about free market health exchanges. The theme of the blog is that the problem in health care is that we use group funding for individual consumption and that the solution is to restore the concept of self-funded health care.

While I had such hopes that Republicans would start discussing free market reforms, I am disgusted after the substanceless Republican National Convention.

On the bright side, I am happy to see that the Republican Party is full of energetic speakers and enthusiasm.

This energy will wane if Romney wins the election, just as the energy for the left has evaporated.

Doesn't anyone remember how entrenched and disheartened the freedom movement was by the end of the Bush administration? This will happen if Romney wins.

However, if Libertarians split the vote and Obama gets a Lame Duck term, then both the Republican and Democratic Party will spend four years working on freedom agendas to recapture the independents.

I feel completely disheartened with the complete lack of substance of the Republican National Convention. It is funny how my mind always grasps at straws, but the freedom of America is hanging by a thread and we have to grasp at whatever we can as it collapses.

History has shown that the Right can be as great a threat to freedom as the Left. (The Hegelian Right came before the Hegelian Left).

Until Romney gives a clear idea on what he wants to replace ObamaCare with, liberty-loving voters should plan to vote third party.

Reforming Medicare

I applaud the nomination of Paul Ryan. He is one of the few major political candidates who is willing to take on the tough issues that face our nation. Mr. Ryan is likely to receive a great deal of criticism for his efforts to reform Medicare.

Unfortunately, there is merit to the attacks against Ryan for this effort. If Mr. Ryan cuts Medicare spending without corresponding financial reforms, then we will produce the feared result of creating a society that fails to care for its seniors.

The problem with health care can be summed up in one word::

INSURANCE

Before we can reform Medicare, we simply must create a free market alternative to employer based insurance.

Employer based insurance creates an ugly paradigm in which people receive care from their employer.

The moment a person retires, the care is gone.

This problem is inherent with group funding of individual consumption. When people move between groups, the change disrupts health care.

The solution is to create a system of individual funding of individual consumption.

I have a presentation called "The Medical Savings and Loan" in which I demonstrate that we would get optimal results in health care if we restored the concept of self funded health care. I would be happy to travel  to any group in the mountain west that is willing to discuss free market health care reform. Here is my contact form:

HSA + HDHC Flunks the Test

When analyzing different health care policies, one must look at the way that the policy plays out with people with moderate to severe health conditions.

Insurance salesmen love to concentrate on single catastrophic events. For that matter, people have a deep fear of catastrophe; however, when I worked in insurance I quickly realized that the chronic conditions were both the most costly and hardest to handle.

It turns out that many catastrophic conditions lead to a chronic condition. In many cases the chronic condition resulting from a catastrophe costs more than the original catastrophe.

If you broke your back, the long term cost of dealing with a bad back is higher than the first surgery.

If you have an HSA+HDHC policy with a $3000 deductible and your chronic condition requires $5,000 each year; you are stuck having to pay out the full deductible each year plus the cost of the insurance.

When you have a chronic condition, you really aren't in a position to negotiate down the deductible. Once you have a chronic condition of a known cost, you are in a high risk pool. Trying to negotiate down your deductible is intellectually dishonest because the insurance company will have to pay a dollar for every dollar of reduced deductible.

So, the HSA+HDHC increases the cost that people with a moderate chronic condition must pay for health care because a person with a disease like diabetes simply must spend money on care every year.

An HSA+HDHC policy is regressive.

It is true that, if a low income worker has an HSA+HDHC policy and never has a moment of sickness in his life, the worker would make out better than with low deductible insurance. If a person has normal or higher than average medical expenses it does not work out so well.

Let's compare the experience of a person who makes $12,000 a year to a person making $120,000 a year. So, let's say the deductible was $3,000. The deductible is 2.5% of the income of the person making $120,000/year. The key feature of the HSA is the tax deduction. Our high income worker is smart to put the $3,100 in a "Health Savings Account" to get the maximum deduction.

As for the low income worker, $3k is 25% of his total yearly $12k paycheck. The tax deduction ain't worth bug squat because the marginal worker pays no taxes. The worker would be stupid to put money in a tax free health savings account.

Try living on $12K a year, the poor guy probably isn't going to be able to put any money aside to pay for the deductible and will be in a terrible crunch if health care problems occur. The working poor with high deductible insurance feel locked out of the system.

In our next thought experiment, imagine the bossman comes into the shop and says that, "to lower our health care expenses, we are going to raise your deductible from $300 to $3000, but to make it up to you we will give you all $500 that you can put in a Health Savings Account."

With this plan, the people in the shop who have health conditions will lose $2,700 in the deductible increase. A person with a chronic condition just lost $2,700 a year for life. Everyone else gets just a token pay increase that fails to cover the deductible.

The switch from a low deductible to high deductible leaves people feeling insecure and put upon with the people who have chronic health conditions complaining to the heavens.

The workers in the company will simply see the HSA+HDHC policy as a cheap attempt to cut costs in a manner that hurts the most vulnerable in the group.

I read the reviews of Health Savings Accounts coupled with high deductible insurance. People in the upper middle class praise the idea because they get a tax deduction. The working poor stress the deductible and see it having a negative effect on people with health conditions, and complain about the idea.

I suspect that if you analyzed HSA+HDHC policies over a large population base, you will find that the policy is regressive. This structure transfers wealth from the poor to the rich.

Please note, I am not a big fan of redistributing income. But the whole point of a Health Care policy is to transfer resources from the healthy to those in need. If a plan is not doing that, then it is best to get rid of the plan.

Simply tacking a Health Savings Account to high deductible insurance does not play out that well among the working poor.

I am a big fan of self-funded health care. If we want to use savings accounts, we need to form a health care system, from the ground up, around the savings accounts, which is what I did in the Medical Savings and Loan. This program removes insurance from the equation. Each person gets a pile of money in a savings account and access to a loan reserve. People with an unusually high ratio of health expenses to income will have access to grants.

The most important issue when judging a health policy is if the policy actually reduces costs.

Yes, it is true that low income workers with high deductible insurance will skip preventative and routine care. Skipping preventative care does not save all that much money. It just means people suffering from things they could have prevented.

The really big cost overruns in health care happen with the big expenses. High deductible insurance might encourage people to skimp on small items, but the abuse will continue on big items and might even grow.

Hospitals are notorious for creative billing. Imagine a patient with a $3,000 deductible who had an incident costing $3,333. Both the patient and doctor know that the patient was put upon to pay the $3k deductible. With that deductible paid, the inclination is to just load the bill with everything.

Care Providers are keenly aware of whose paying the bill, and most clinics are not above playing games where they shift costs to deep pockets.

A system with an HSA and high deductible insurance fails the three most important tasks: The program does not cut costs. The program does not handle chronic conditions well and the program is unnecessarily regressive.

Hyperbolic Function

If you made big database that recorded people's total health expenses charted against total wealth (total lifetime income + inheritance), you are likely to see a hyperbolic equation.

In most cases, people's total health care expenses will range from 5% to 15% of their total wealth. There will be a small number of people whose health expenses way exceed their ability to pay.

A primary job of the Medical Savings and Loan is the chart the curve. The program has health care advocates whose function is to record people's income and expense. They will report this info to actuarial firms that will munch the data and report back to the advocates telling us what it reasonable expenses and what is extraordinary.

In contrast, insurance is totalitarian and evil. Insurance says that because some people have expenses they cannot pay, the kollective must take ALL of the health care resources of everyone in the nation and put those resources in a pool controlled by the ruling elite. To fund the health care of the small percentage of people who cannot do so on their own, insurance tells us that we must force all the people could self fund their care into subservience.

Now, the simple hyperbolic graph above is very simple. If a group was interested in pursuing the cause of liberty, the group would spend a great deal of time collecting data on health care and mapping out real equations.

It would be a really fun and fruitful investigation. If there is anyone on this planet who is interested in freedom, they could contact me.