Hello, Dr. Keith Smith with you. On behalf of the Free Market Medical Association. Thank you for joining me.

I continue to be astonished that individuals look to the government, the most corrupt invention of mankind, to solve the very healthcare crisis they created. Harry Brown, the old libertarian, used to say, “government break your legs and then they’d hand you crutches and ask you ‘how would you get along without me’”. That is exactly the condition in this country, and then we would look to the government, of all places, that caused this crisis, is very ironic.

We should look to ourselves. We should also look to a very powerful buying group, many do not know about or understand, called the self-funded companies. These are companies that have rejected insurance and buy the medical services their employees need directly with operational revenue. Many times, these self-funded companies do not participate in the free market. That is, they do not buy from Surgery Center of Oklahoma or any of the other facilities in the United States that have adopted a price transparent, non-price gouging model. This is very strange, but it’s understandable because these self-funded companies have drunk the Kool-Aid that this industry regularly hands out. There are many self-dealing individuals in this industry that accept money from other than their client, and that definitely shades the recommendations that they make to these self-funded clients.

This year, the meeting, in Dallas of the Free Market Medical Association – the details of which can be found at FMMA.org. This meeting will represent an antidote to any of the employers who have a shred of doubt about whether they’ve been lied to. When their HR team shows up for a meeting and a 12% increase in what they pay has been ratcheted down to 9%, you know, discounting what their increase from the next year would be, keep in mind more and more of the companies that directly contract with facilities in the Free Market Medical Association are seeing flat or no increases, some are actually seeing decreases year to year, on what their outlay is for medical services. If any of this rings true, I would encourage employers who are watching this to consider attending the meeting April 11^th through the 13^th in Dallas. Be surrounded by people who will give you a message other than, perhaps, the Kool-Aid you’re regularly fed by this industry. We should look to ourselves, we should look to the powerful self-funded companies to bring the prices down as they purchase value.

Thank you for joining me. We hope to see you in Dallas.