Health Savings Accounts and the new Medicare bill

15 Dec
2003

Our colleague, Robert Prather at Insults Unpunished, has long championed health savings accounts. The new Medicare bill encourages them – Medicare reform opens up health savings accounts to all

Regardless of HSAs’ ultimate popularity, the important thing is a new market option has been added, said Loussedes.

The American Medical Association shares that view. “Health savings accounts, which empower patients to have greater control over their health care decisions, will become a more attractive option for all Americans,” said AMA President, Donald J. Palmisano, MD.

Republican lawmakers inserted the HSA language into the Medicare reform bill in the hopes that the accounts will help drastically reduce the future costs of the Medicare program, which will see an extra $400 billion in spending over the next 10 years because of the prescription drug benefit and other elements in the package.

By allowing people to sock away savings toward their future medical expenses, some of the burden may be taken off Medicare to cover high-cost items, such as prescription drugs and long-term care, they said.

But Democrats charged that the accounts are just another attempt to transfer Medicare responsibilities to the private marketplace. Democrats on the Senate Joint Economic Committee said the accounts would be of little use to low-income families.

“A married couple with two young children contributing to an HSA next year, for example, would not receive any tax benefit unless their income was at least $26,425,” stated the committee Democrats’ analysis. “Families with incomes moderately above that level would see minimal tax savings. Most of the tax benefits from HSAs go to higher-income families.”

HSAs remove all the restrictions of medical savings accounts that were designed to keep usage down and limit the attraction of using the accounts as a tax shelter by high-income workers, officials from the independent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said.

Clearly the Democrats abhor free market solutions to our health care crisis. I believe that free market solutions can work well. HSAs would encourage patients to participate in economic decision making. And as I and Robert Prather say repeatedly, the lack of participation may well be a driving force in overutilization of health care.

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Related posts:

  1. Health Savings Accounts – some details
  2. The stalled Medicare bill
  3. Prather on health savings accounts
  4. On Health Savings Accounts
  5. The Medicare Bill

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5 Responses to Health Savings Accounts and the new Medicare bill

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code: theWebSocket;

December 15th, 2003 at 11:39 am

DB’s Medrants: Health Savings Accounts and the new Medicare bill
DB blinks this detail from the recent Medicare bill: Our colleague, Robert Prather at Insults Unpunished, has long championed health savings accounts. The new Medicare bill encourages them … I’ve had a small medical savings account available at work …

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Insults Unpunished

December 15th, 2003 at 9:27 pm

Personal Healthcare Accounts
I’ve been bleating about personal accounts (MSAs) in non-hospital care since I started blogging (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here for example). db has been looking for the proverbial pony in the pile of…

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DouglasWhitehead.com

December 16th, 2003 at 8:25 pm

Health Savings Accounts
DB’s Medical Rants and Robert Prather at Insults Unpunished are talking about health saving accounts. The new medicare bill opens up the possibility of tax-free savings accounts that can be applied to one’s health services. While this seems like a…

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Laura Martin

December 28th, 2003 at 7:47 am

Does this imply that the money I have accrued in my HSA when I am of age to elgible for Medicare will reduce my Medicare benefit?

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Laura Martin

December 28th, 2003 at 7:47 am

Does this imply that the money I have accrued in my HSA when I am of age to elgible for Medicare will reduce my Medicare benefit?