He also said that the best thing a young progressive could do, beside becoming a teacher, was to sell insurance.

I realized then that the only way to preserve a free society would be to create an alternative to insurance.

I was a system engineer at a state run insurance trust and managed to get access to claims data from the state. I spent late nights running claims histories through different simulations until I had a model that treated people better than insurance.

(NOTE: An HSA + High Deductible Insurance IS NOT an alternative to insurance. The health data I examined showed that the HSA + HDP model is worse for the working class and small business than standard insurance.)

Anyway, I created a mathematical model called the Medical Savings and Loan which helped people self-finance health care into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. This coupled with a grants program could allow a full restoration of free market principles in health care.

The program could generate a large number of extremely interesting editorials and academic papers.

More importantly, I believe that the arguments could turn the health care debate around.

If a non-profit group began discussing a sound mathematical model that individual funding of individual consumption achieves better results than group funding of individual consumption, then people would turn on the health exchanges, single payer and other forms of socialized medicine.

Unfortunately, I live in Utah and have been unable to find any group willing to discuss real free market reform.

Instead of working on my model, I am forced to spend my days trying to find a group willing to discuss free market health care reform.

This is so silly. If a group was willing to discuss an alternative to insurance, it is likely that the group would receive a flood of interest (and money) from around the world.

Anyway, if the Civil Society Trust is interested in engaging in a discussion about alternatives to insurance, you can contact me at:

http://CommunityColor.com/contact.html?to=kevind

Of course, I can’t ignore your omission, conscious or not, of public sector unions as one of the ultimate “corporate/wealthy/special-interest” groups. Likewise, history shows that government is rarely “used well.” Don’t mistake that for a call for anarchy. LIMITED government works well, and I’m all for that. The problem is that government has grown so big, and hence so powerful, that the possibility of moving back towards its original limited government roots looks radical and impossible.

As for “churning through people like commodities”, government’s track record in this regard smokes that of any other organization.

I’d welcome any chance to discuss any or all of this with Waters. And I’m a huge fan of his music, too.

I would love to see Roger Waters’s take on this clearly corporatist-agenda gibberish that’s nothing more than a rehash of GOP talking points from the last five years.

Any non-idiot who actually listens to Pink Floyd’s music knows that “The Machine” is the corporate system of churning through people as commodities. Government, used well, is the little guy’s only (occasional) advocate in a world where more and more power and control is evolving into corporate/wealthy/special-interest hands.

Simply put, the author is disingenuous and a little bit plain dumb.

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