Health of the Nation
By
There is a super article about HSA’s (Health Savings Accounts) in of all places the NY Times.
In the past five years, private health insurance premiums have risen 73 percent. Some businesses have responded by dropping healthcare coverage, leaving employees uninsured. Other employers pass the costs on to workers, both by raising co-payments and premiums and by denying workers the wage increases they need to afford these higher prices.
What is driving this unsustainable run-up in health insurance costs, and how can we make things better?
Health care is expensive because the vast majority of Americans consume it as if it were free. Health insurance policies with low deductibles insulate people from the cost of the medical care they use - so much so that they often do not even ask for prices. And people don’t recognize the high premium costs of this low-deductible insurance because premiums are paid by employers. Finally, the tax code subsidizes these expensive, employer-purchased insurance policies.
To control health care costs, we must give consumers an incentive to spend money wisely. We can do this by encouraging the purchase of high-deductible policies and providing the same tax benefits for out-of-pocket health spending that employer-provided insurance enjoys. The overall cost to the consumer will be no greater than it is now and, in most cases, significantly lower. And no consumer is better than the American consumer at driving prices down and quality up.
The president has proposed a package of reforms that will spur such changes by building on the success of consumer-directed Health Savings Accounts and the insurance policies that go with them. Health Savings Accounts allow people to save money tax-free to pay their out-of-pocket health costs, as long as they have high-deductible health policies to cover catastrophic expenses. Enrollment in these accounts has grown rapidly since their introduction in 2003, with more than three million people now contributing to them.
These types of Health Plans are highly effective because patients have a stake in their own health care. When is WEA Trust going to start offering them. LOL
No related posts.
In most states HSA’s have the same tax benefits as employer provided insurance. Not in Wisconsin. Governor Doyle won’t allow these premiums to be tax deductible.
Reason number 863 why we need Mark Green as Governor
There is most likely nothing more misunderstood in our society today than insurance, of any type.
About a month ago I posted out here: Mises through Hoppe clearly illustrates the folly of health insurance as a general proposition, but clearly one gleans from this piece by Hoppe (although he doesn’t state it) that a large deductible HSA style system would be profoundly rational, consistent with human action, and in concert with the proper role of insurance in a free market system.
The Hoppe article is an excellent piece…you don’t suppose the NYT has been reading Hoppe do you? We know they read On The Borderline… Hoppe Article Here…The should be required reading.
Well, maybe they will have the local Boy Scouts in New Richmond do some research on the matter and report back to the board. Heck, if they mail a letter around town with their findings they would probably qualify for some convoluted merit badge.