An ObamaCare amendment we all need

The more you know about Christian health sharing, the more you agree it offers a better deal for consumers than government-regulated health insurance. It doesn't take a very detailed analysis.

Kentucky is gaining increased national attention for its long-standing hostility toward Christian health sharers. While we pursue a legislative correction to that misguided animosity, federal representatives should also implement a small change to the ObamaCare law to improve the efficiency of health coverage alternatives not regulated by public employee bureaucrats.

ObamaCare bill H.R. 3590 exempts health sharing from federal mandates but also limits the market to religious organizations in operation since 1999. Simply eliminating this arbitrary limitation allows for new competitors in the market just as the rest of the federal law reduces choices in the government-controlled market.

The change involves striking out this part of the law:

While the benefits of a more competitive free market in health care coverage are obvious for Christians, less obvious is the opportunity for others who may, for political reasons, want to support the idea of ObamaCare but don't want to be stuck holding the bag when the government sector of the health market blows up.

I'm thinking a health care sharing ministry for the Church of the Left-Handed Bicycle Riders might come in handy at some point.

Kentucky tying up Christians for sharing, promising

Two national news articles in the last three days about Christian health sharing have mentioned Kentucky's battle against Christian Care Medi-Share. In one, Medi-Share CEO Tony Meggs suggests his company's legal problems will be wiped away when Judge Thomas Wingate sees Medi-Share has changed the way it handles it's members money.

That's not likely.

Medi-Share was found to be an unregistered health insurance company in 2010 by the Kentucky Supreme Court. The Court ruled the company failed to meet all requirements of the Religious Publications Exemption in KRS 304.1-120 (7), specifically the one requiring health sharing members to pay each other's medical bills "directly from one (1) subscriber to another."

Whether that requirement is met under current operations is somewhat open to interpretation. Medi-Share members now send monthly funds to a credit union account the member and Medi-Share control jointly. The Kentucky Department of Insurance and the Supreme Court claim such an arrangement does not constitute direct subscriber-to-subscriber payment.

But even if the Department and the Court change their minds and decide that this method is direct enough, there is at least one more problem for Medi-Share. Gaining the exemption also requires that there can be "no assumption of risk or promise to pay either among the subscribers or between the subscribers and (Medi-Share)."

Medi-Share's many advertisements (like the one above) are full of eye-popping numbers like an average family month commitment of $282 and a claim of $625 million in savings. Also, anyone who has had to call around to find an agreeable doctor has to be impressed by the idea of having the freedom to "use any provider."

All this is suggestive of a "promise to pay," but the fact that is going to get them is that members who don't pay their monthly fees for two months will be dropped from the program and will not have outstanding medical needs presented for payment. That sounds obvious, but the fact of a requirement to pay in order to benefit is the legal definition of a "promise," which is prohibited under the law.

The ridiculous hoops we require these people to jump through to enjoy some measure of health freedom need to be eliminated. But they can't be wished away or shouted away. We need to change the law.

Kentucky dawdling wastes health money

Two months after promising to investigate their own arbitrary prosecution of Christian health sharing organizations, Kentucky's Department of Insurance has still failed to clear up confusion for citizens seeking to escape ObamaCare mandates.

Religious health sharing organizations in continuous operation since 1999 and their members are exempt from dictates of the Affordable Care Act. Kentucky's hostility toward this simple alternative to health insurance, however, predates federal health insurance reform.

The state's 2002 lawsuit against Christian Care Medi-Share is still not resolved, mainly due to Department of Insurance inaction. Failure to even begin addressing legal issues facing members and prospective members of the only two other federally exempt organizations -- Samaritan Ministries and Christian HealthCare Ministries -- until forced to do so six weeks ago, very poorly serves Kentucky's insurance consumers.

Hundreds of thousands of Kentucky Christians are overpaying for health coverage because of this legal mess, which could be cleared up easily.

Kentucky waffles again on Christian health

After repeatedly refusing to meet with Christian Care Medi-Share to discuss their legal status, the Kentucky Department of Insurance now seems to be coming around.

A Department spokesperson said a meeting may take place in August.

The state's newly found interest in openness on the issue of religious health sharing organizations and their superiority to government-regulated health insurance doesn't immediately address the organizations' real legal problems, but the response to tea party pressure is a welcome one.

Health freedom can be won in Kentucky and then spread to the other states. Stay tuned for updates.

Frankfort should defund ObamaCare ads

Frankfort Republicans made a little noise this past week with an attempt to deny office space funding for Gov. Beshear's ObamaCare health insurance exchange bureaucracy. Beshear had no trouble going around them, but another opportunity has just presented itself.

Kentucky's Cabinet for Health and Family Services Secretary Audrey Haynes just appeared this morning on Bill Bryant's WKYT Newmakers program in Lexington touting the coming bureaucracy.

She also stated the 2014 roll out of the expensive program will be "heavily advertised."

Wasting money on advertising to promote this waste of money should be against the law, right? Looking for a way to do that in the 2013 General Assembly could be both fun and productive for the cause of Liberty.

The first place in statute that comes to mind as a vehicle for prohibiting government from spending our money to advertise the expansion of itself is KRS 121, campaign finance law.

I'm a little nervous about opening up campaign finance with the current legislature given than Senate Republicans have been at least as bad as House Democrats on the issue. Proposed legislation to prohibit the state from using any state resources to promote any element of the Affordable Care Act, though,  could be worth the risk. A pre-filed bill with this objective this summer could be used as a campaign tool against House Democrats stuck between their party's damaging policies and their desire to win re-election in November.

Kentucky still abusing health consumers

Kentucky's quiet war on Christians has taken another odd twist.

Official Kentucky inaction on a consumer protection specifically guaranteed in the ObamaCare Affordable Care Act unconstitutionally harms citizens by limiting consumer healthcare choices. Repeated delays in a Department of Insurance investigation leaves unclear the legal status of religious based health sharing organizations and their members, who were granted an exemption from the ObamaCare insurance coverage mandates.

A Consumer Protection Division official in the Department of Insurance confirmed today that no determination has been reached on the legality of Christian health sharing organizations Samaritan Ministries and Christian HealthCare Ministries. A Department of Insurance spokesperson has claimed repeatedly the organizations have been examined thoroughly for several years, so the latest delay in the current six week investigation is perplexing.

Given that another Christian health sharing organization, Christian Care Medi-Share, has been attacked by state insurance officials repeatedly throughout a lawsuit initiated in 2002, consumer confusion caused by arbitrary application of the state's Insurance Code leaves consumers at great risk.

Because of the structure of health sharing organizations, Kentucky law could cause members -- customers -- of the organizations to be defined as insurers and prosecuted as felons.

Kentucky officials should act immediately to clear up this confusion as citizens scramble to find viable healthcare solutions before ObamaCare hits them in 2014.

This can't be good

Someone in Obama's office is reading Kentucky Progress right now:

I'm not going to go Alex Jones on you, but seeing this did kind of give me the willies.

Steve Beshear will be surprised in 2015

Governor Steve Beshear went on the Jack Pattie radio show on WVLK 590 in Lexington this morning to make his case for signing Kentucky up for ObamaCare yesterday. He either doesn't understand what he has just done or really hopes no one is paying attention.

Beshear flatly stated the ObamaCare health insurance exchange won't cost the state anything, that the exchange will pay for itself. This is absolutely false. Increased fees or taxes will be necessary to fund the new bureaucracy after federal funds run out at the end of 2014.

Beshear takes the bait on ObamaCare

Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear couldn't get through the first sentence of today's big press release without telling a lie.

From the release: "Governor Steve Beshear today issued an executive order establishing the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange, a requirement of the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA)."


The ObamaCare exchanges are optional. Further, refusing to play along is the only way Kentucky could hope to survive the rapid tax, penalty and fee increases for Kentuckians in the federal law.


Federal funding for the Kentucky exchange will dry up at the end of 2014. At that point, Beshear claims the "Exchange will be wholly funded with revenues it generates."


That means either a new tax or some kind of fee increase on health insurance will be necessary. Governor Beshear should be made to explain exactly how much he anticipates the state will spend on the exchange annually and where precisely that money will come from. 

Family Foundation of KY still wrong on health law

The Family Foundation of Kentucky is a leading protector of Christian values in Frankfort. I appreciate much of their work, but they are missing in action on health freedom.

At issue is an apparent unwillingness to accept reality of Kentucky's arbitrarily applied prohibition of an otherwise very viable Christian health insurance alternative called health sharing. This failure is preventing them from doing much good on a key front in the fight against ObamaCare.

The reality is that health sharing is against Kentucky law and it is no matter how much anyone repeats that it is not.

In 2007, the Family Foundation touted a court ruling they thought might put to rest the controversy over health sharing in Kentucky. It did not.

The problems health sharing organizations face in Kentucky will persist at least until the Religious Publications Exemption in the state's Insurance Code is greatly expanded.

The legislative fix is easy. We need to amend KRS 304.1-120(7) like this:

This change would allow all the Christian health sharing organizations currently exempt from ObamaCare to function in Kentucky without fear for themselves or their members of being shut down and possibly charged as unauthorized insurers and jailed as felons.

This should be a simple discussion and not an embarrassing mess full of personal attacks and missing the point. Failure to resolve this quickly and amicably only benefits those who want the government to control all of our health care.

Odd bedfellows can win health freedom fight

Kentucky can absolutely lead the way to health freedom in America, but first we have to break off the lock those who profit most from the status quo have on the debate.

And that means clarifying the value of a free economy for the Christian Right and Left to bring their powerful voices into the fight.

Lots of work to do, but if you look carefully for subtle progress here and here, you just might see where I'm going with this.

Black market Christian health company puts Kentuckians at risk; illegal under federal law

Texas-based Christian health sharing organization Altrua is operating in Kentucky as an illegal insurance company. Its members are also not eligible for the mandate exemption under the Health Care Sharing Ministry section of ObamaCare.

According to the company, Altrua was formed in 2000, which means it can't help you under federal law. The Affordable Care Act doesn't specify penalties for operating as an illegal insurer under that statute, but under Kentucky law, the company and even its members could be charged as felons.

Health reform for Rand Paul and John Yarmuth

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa inserted a religious-based health sharing exemption into ObamaCare before he voted against the entire bill. If we can't kill the whole bill, the current Congress should expand the exemption.

From the Affordable Care Act on page 128, we find the following passage:

What we need more than anything is more alternative forms of protection for Americans, rather than fewer or a fixed number. President Obama and congressional Democrats had to like this passage or they wouldn't have it in their bill, right? Surely they wouldn't mind making it better.

Limiting the exclusion to religious organization who started their health sharing activities on or before December 31, 1999 is discriminatory and arbitrary. If a group of gay left-handed communists want to set up a church and start their own health sharing organization, they should be allowed to under federal law. It is only fair.

Please encourage your member of Congress to amend the Affordable Care Act to strike both references to December 31, 1999 in the Health Care Sharing Ministry section of the bill so that they may do so.

Might Medicaid migration hurt Kentucky?

If Republican governors in Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee and Virginia reject ObamaCare's Medicaid expansion and they are joined by a hesitant Democrat in Missouri, then Kentucky's Steve Beshear could face significant in-migration of low income people seeking government health benefits they can't get in their home states.

Of the seven states surrounding Kentucky, only Illinois and West Virginia seem likely to go for the budget-busting entitlement expansion mandated by ObamaCare but made optional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Beshear's delay on Medicaid expansion is odd for someone who has supposedly been "studying" these issues for a long time.

Contempt for consumers in Frankfort

A decade-long legal battle between the Kentucky Department of Insurance and Christian Care Medi-Share took another weird turn today when a judge announced he would ignore a year-old contempt of court petition and expects the state to file another one.

Franklin Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wingate said through a spokesperson he now expects the state to re-file against Christian Care Medi-Share soon, after saying last week he was waiting for a meeting between the two parties.

The original contempt of court filing by the state was dated July 27,  2011 after Christian Care Medi-Share, a health sharing organization, was found to be continuing operations in the state despite a 2010 Kentucky Supreme Court ruling ordering them to stop.

Under ObamaCare, members of religious-based health sharing organizations are exempt from the federal insurance mandate. Kentucky’s official hostility to this free market activity has received very little media attention, but the uncertainty caused by this case keeps consumers locked into a health care financing system increasingly overrun by arbitrary and autocratic bureaucracy.

Fear the government

On Friday July 6, a federal jury in Covington convicted a local lawyer on three counts of filing false tax returns.  The charge was that he had under-reporting his income.

The convictions came after four years of prosecution following an armed raid on the lawyer’s offices in April 2008.  At that time agents of the IRS, FBI and DEA along with other law enforcement officials, armed with machine guns, burst into the attorney’s offices and while holding his staff at gunpoint seized his records and computers.

At the same time other groups of armed government agents raided his home and went to his bank seizing records and several hundred thousand dollars in cash.

In the last four years, the government returned all of the cash to the lawyer. Why?  Well, for starters it is no more illegal to hold hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash than it is to hold one hundred dollars in cash.

You might ask, “why would the attorney have so much cash on hand”?  His explanation at trial was that his grandfather had lost everything he had during the depression when his bank failed and he couldn’t withdraw his life savings in time.  The lawyer admitted that he kept some of his money in bank accounts but that he had been slowly putting away his savings in cash for nearly 30 years as his “nest egg”.  He explained that while others had put their money in retirement accounts only to see those accounts lose half their value in recent years, this was his retirement.  He was preparing for an uncertain future.

There being nothing illegal about his cash holdings, the IRS returned all of the cash they seized cash to him.

But for four year they kept up the prosecution which reportedly cost the government perhaps as much as $2 million in taxpayer money. And what was the result?

The result is that the lawyer will likely be sentenced to serve time in a federal prison, which you might note will also be at taxpayer expense. 

In addition he will likely lose his license to practice law which means that he will no longer be the high wage earner he has been for thirty plus years which will cost the government even more money in lost revenue on his earnings.

According to various reports the lawyer asked the government how much they claim he owed them and yet they never supplied him with a figure. 

The government could have charged the lawyer for back taxes, levied a substantial penalty and of course since they already had their hands on more than enough cash to obtained payment, could have settled the matter pretty much on their own terms.  But they did none of these things. Why?

What could possibly have been the purpose of this four year prosecution which was obviously very expensive in more ways than one?

For the answer to this question, go back to where I asked you to stop a minute and assess your reaction to this case and how it made you feel.  Over powering prosecutions like these serve only one purpose, to make an example out of people for the rest of us to see.  In other words, cases like this make us fear our government.

Of course the lawyer denied that he had failed to report any of his income.  In addition to his law practice he ran several businesses and his books were handled by a book keeper, his tax returns prepared by a CPA and he testified that he trusted these professionals to do things right.   But of course the government stood firmly on the law that says no matter who prepares your taxes, your signature means that you have affirmed the accuracy of everything reported on those returns and if any of it is wrong you have committed perjury. 

It is hard to tell how much money this lawyer spent defending himself, but one thing is clear; we have all now been taught to shudder at the thought of the government coming after any of us.

What is the solution?  A lot of politicians these days like to say they favor a “fairer/flatter tax”.  But things don’t seem to be getting any better.

In fact things have just gotten a whole lot worse. The Supreme Court has declared that the penalties under ObamaCare are really a tax which of course will be enforced by the IRS.  The IRS has just added thousands of new agents.  We hear annual reports how the IRS is ramping up its enforcement efforts and with thousands of new agents and a whole new set of laws to enforce things just got a whole lot scarier. 

Is there a plan is to make American citizens fear the government more and more each day?  It should be the other way around.  As Thomas Jefferson said "When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."

The time has come to eliminate the IRS, to pass “The Fair Tax” thus removing the need for citizens to file burdensome tax returns under penalty of perjury.  The “Fair Tax” would streamline collection, eliminate loopholes, spread the tax burden equally over the entire population and result in a steady stream of revenue to the government throughout the year.

And the fair tax would eliminate the fear of government agents bursting into your private property wearing bullet proof vests, carrying machine guns aimed at your head and shouting orders at you.  That’s how this case of lawyer, Larry Lawrence started and it will end with him going to prison.

And after considering that he is headed to prison, isn’t it fair to ask “for what”?  Was all of this really worth a few dollars in unpaid taxes?  No matter how much he owed it had to be a drop in the bucket compared to the federal budget. 

Taxes are the tools of tyranny and it should be painfully obvious that this latest criminal case wasn’t about money, it was, as Jefferson warned, all about making citizens fear the government.

Kentucky's bogus Medicaid talking point

Just as Kentucky House Minority Leader Jeff Hoover started pushing last week for Gov. Steve Beshear to avoid the massive unfunded Medicaid expansion option under ObamaCare, media reports of a study showing the state stood to benefit more than any other suddenly appeared.

The report, issued by Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, saw immediate statewide distribution primarily through public news sites (here and here) and business publications (here and here) and at least one newspaper (here).

Only one tiny problem with that: the report was dated May 2010. These numbers are ridiculously outdated and and the ranking is meaningless, released now as a clumsy attempt to score political points. The fact Kentucky media outlets seem to have swallowed this whole should be incredibly embarrassing for them.

The truth is the massive Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act would very likely result in significant numbers of privately insured low-income people dropping coverage and signing up for Medicaid, according to another old report.

Hope this changes the conversation in Frankfort this week as Beshear weighs whether or not to drive the state to insolvency faster with this easily avoidable government expansion.

Frankfort GOP coming around on ObamaCare

A video released by Kentucky House Republican Leader Jeff Hoover shows the first real sign of life from Frankfort's GOP leadership in support of health freedom in the Commonwealth.

The striking lack of any mention of health insurance exchanges in the video was cured by House Republican Director of Communications Michael Goins, who pointed to a press release mentioning the need to opt out of the exchange at the end of its last sentence.

The effort fits in the "better late than never" category, but not by much. Most Republican legislators voted to give Beshear $50 million to expand Medicaid under ObamaCare. Forcing Beshear and the Democrats to fight on the record for ObamaCare during budget negotiations would have been campaign gold this fall, at the very least.

We need to hear more from Rep. Hoover and other GOP legislators about specific steps to get out from under ObamaCare. A very easy move with a big payoff for consumers would be to expand the Religious Publications Exemption in the Kentucky Insurance Code so Kentuckians could be more confident in the option provided by religious-based health sharing organizations, which are exempted from federal mandates under ObamaCare.

Is Beshear reconsidering ObamaCare?

Within moments of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding ObamaCare, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear announced he would issue an executive order creating a health insurance exchange under the law. Further, he said he was considering whether to accept the law's attempt to expand Medicaid.

That was a week ago. What's the hold up?

Kentucky can't afford Medicaid now. Indeed, we need fewer people on Medicaid rather than signing up more. Even Beshear, who campaigned on expanding dependency on Medicaid in 2007 and has actively fulfilled that promise since, has to understand this fact.

Frankfort Republicans already gave Beshear $50 million on paper in the 2012 budget bill to expand Medicaid. They did nothing to stop him from setting up the bureaucracy to support an exchange. All he has to do is sign a paper and it is all over. So what is he waiting for?

Could the November elections for nervous House Democrats have something to do with it?

I sure hope so. It would be great to see Greg Stumbo lose his position as House Speaker because Beshear/Obama overreach on health insurance. But it would be better for the state if Beshear admitted that we can't afford it and removed this one piece of uncertainty from the dark clouds blocking Kentuckians' ability to see brighter days ahead.

Judge Wingate flip-flops on health freedom

Less than two weeks ago, Franklin Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate said he would rule soon on the Kentucky health freedom case. Now he says he is waiting for the state and health sharing group Christian Care Medi-Share to meet first.

They aren't likely to meet soon.

The Beshear administration has the people of Kentucky in an ObamaCare headlock and intends to keep us there. Governor Beshear and his minions in the legislature don't want a public discussion about this, so they are pulling all the strings to keep it quiet.

Will we let them succeed?