The freedom to accumulate property and use it as you wish does more than merely protect economic interests. Economic liberty, of which the rights of private property are the foundation, is a necessary concomitant of personal liberty—the two have almost always marched hand in hand.

Today I am finishing up the paperwork to set up a HSA. The HSA rhetoric also talks about the ownership issue. When my son was born I got very frustrated with the medical and insurance professions. No one knew how much the birth was going to cost and after the birth I started getting miscellanous bills from medical providers. The bills told me almost nothing the service provided so I had to call around to figure who these people were. To top things off the insurance company said I overpaid for some services. Well, thanks alot! Why didn't you tell me how much I should be paying upfront and I would of straightened this out with the doctors before the service had been rendered. I was amazed how incompetent doctors were in running their business.

Now we are looking at the new age of the health care business. Since my son was born the ownership of the responsibility for health care has gradually been transferred from the insurance company to the individual. With this transfer has come an increased scrutiny of the medical providers only the individual can provide. Insurance compaines tried to control the rising costs but they failed. When they tried to pass on the higher costs, they priced themselves out of the business. The individual ended up owning the health care crisis by default. The combination of a HSA with a high deductable, major medical insurance plan provides a great degree of freedom and the opportunity to further encourage steamlining in the medical services business. To make this plan work a portion of the normal insurance premium is being diverted to a HSA. If the individual is willing to do a minor amount of financial planning and shopping around they will benefit from the lower costs for the equivalent medical coverage. As you can see the concepts of financial planning and shopping around were foreign concepts to the health care business as recently as 13 years ago. A side benefit is that by setting up a HSA the pyschology of many people is that they will probably be more inclined to perform the routine exams that can lead to lower overall health costs. I have felt for a long time that the power of the individual is more likely to change health care costs than any government plan. The use of a HSA is not the sole solution to our health care crisis but it is a sharper tool than the others in the shed.

I watched "Big Fish" last night. My wife had seen it but did not remember that she had seen until half way through. It was a great "feel good" movie. We tend to stick to SciFi and action so this was a nice change of pace.

This is the transcript of the testimony by John Kerry that has caused much pain amongst the veterans.

I said a couple of weeks back that John Kerry was too strange to be President, and a week or two earlier that he was too stuck-up to be President. Since I'm on an alliterative roll, let me add that he's too stupid to be President. What sort of idiot would make the centrepiece of his presidential campaign four months of proud service in a war he's best known for opposing?

Why didn't someone pull John Kerry aside and say this campaign strategy doesn't pass the laugh test? As a result I think John Kerry will be a weak president if elected. He does not have strong enough convictions and political savy to lead his own party like Bill Clinton. He is too dependent on his advisors to determine which way the political wind is blowing. The bad news is that he has gotten very poor advice from his advisors. You got to of seen this one coming! Since the political wounds from this fiasco are his own doing his leadership skills are now on trial.

Bob Dole who tells John Kerry over the telephone,

“Everybody likes quiet heroes,” Dole added, saying he told Kerry, “John, everybody knows you were in Vietnam and the less you say about it, the better.”

[Via One Hand Clapping]

I think it is time for John to take his whipping and quietly move on. Own up to the responsibility. You made a strategic error by making your service record core to your campaign so stop whining about the Swift Boat ads. Now go out there and try to look presidential for the next couple of months.

[Via WSJ.com: Opinion]

This article hits the nail on the head. Kerry tried to justify his fitness for command based on his Vietnam war experience and it backfired on him. Although I am very tired of hearing about what John Kerry did or did not do in the Vietnam war I do not have very much sympathy for his plight. He just does not get it! Vietnam war veterans are old but they have not completely forgotten the sense of betrayal and the unending sense of being taken advantage of. Now they remember being called baby killers by a young John Kerry. It is difficult to say whether the young John Kerry was expressing his moral indignation with the tragdy of war or cynically intent on furthering his political career. It is obvious that the much older and wiser John Kerry either does not understand the pain he has inflicted on his fellow veterans or just does not care!

John Kerry, quoted by the Boston Globe:

“I didn’t really want to get involved in the war”, Kerry said in a little-noticed contribution to a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. “When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that’s what I thought I was going to be doing.”

But two weeks after Kerry arrived in Vietnam, the Navy changed the swift boats’ mission to patrolling the Mekong river to attract enemy attention, a dangerous job to be sure. (hat tip: Spinsanity)

But John Kerry also said last February that President Bush’s Air National Guard service was a way to avoid Vietnam:
Bush was referring to remarks such as those made by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), his likely presidential challenger, equating Guard service with avoiding the draft during the Vietnam era. But Kerry said,

“I’ve never made any judgments about any choice somebody made about avoiding the draft, about going to Canada, going to jail, being a conscientious objector, going into the National Guard.” (Emphasis added)

Kerry seems to think that draft dodging and volunteering for the Guard were equivalent.

Anyway, the situation is this:

Kerry went to Vietnam and asked to be assigned to a swift-boat unit in the hope he wouldn’t see combat. His unit’s mission was changed and he did see combat.

G. W. Bush, OTOH, became an F-102 fighter pilot in the Texas Air Guard and was assigned to a fighter wing that was sending pilots to fly in Vietnam. It is a common misconception that the Air National Guard was a safe place for military duty during the Vietnam War. In actuality, pilots from the 147th Fighter Interceptor Group, as it was called at the time, were actually conducting combat missions in Vietnam at the very time Bush enlisted. In fact, F-102 squadrons had been stationed in South Vietnam since March 1962. It was during this time that the Kennedy administration began building up a large US military presence in the nation as a deterrent against North Vietnamese invasion.

F-102 squadrons continued to be stationed in South Vietnam and Thailand throughout most of the Vietnam War. …

… the F-102 was serving in combat in Vietnam at the time Bush enlisted to become an F-102 pilot. In fact, pilots from the 147th FIG of the Texas ANG were routinely rotated to Vietnam for combat duty under a program called “Palace Alert” from 1968 to 1970. Furthermore, Bush asked to be sent to Vietnam. Fred Bradley, a friend of Bush’s who was also serving in the Texas ANG, reported that he and Bush inquired about participating in the Palace Alert program. However, the two were told by a superior, MAJ Maurice Udell, that they were not yet qualified since they were still in training and did not have the 500 hours of flight experience required.

Bill Hobbs has exhaustively documented Bush’s military record.
[Via One Hand Clapping]

Last night I found myself repeating this story at the dinner table. I find this story to be very revealing about the character of the two men and probably a good indicator of how the two men would respond to a future terrorist crisis. This is not meant to criticize either man’s decision. I find the irony of the results amusing. I also dealt with the question, “Should I volunteer for Viet Nam?” when I was growing up. This was a very serious and complex decision for a high school boy. Fortunately my draft number was high and the war ended before I had to make a decision. I do wish this subject would fade away and the political ads could start to focus on real political issues. I have already decided that there is a great uncertainity in how John Kerry would respond to the events leading up to a crisis. The good news and the bad news is that he will be a weak president who out of necessity will be heavily reliant on his staff.