PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR AFFORDABLE HEALTH INSURANCE !!
by Linc L. Boltin Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2003 at 4:14 PM

Stop the Democrats in Congress and the Senate from legislating away affordable health care and insurance options. Write your congress person today !!

The new year will bring something of a revolution in American health care. Insurance companies such as Golden Rule, Fortis and Aetna will soon be marketing Health Savings Accounts (HAS's), which promise a new era of individual choice for health insurance.

HSAs, the saving grace of the Medicare prescription drug bill, are the new and improved version of Medical Savings Accounts. They promise individuals and employers relief from spiraling health costs, and without the need for restrictive HMOs.

The basic idea is to pair an inexpensive insurance policy that has a high deductible -- $1,000 or more for an individual, $2,000 for a family -- with a tax-free savings account. Individuals would thus be covered in case of serious injury or illness. But they would also have an incentive to consume basic health services wisely, since any unspent account balance could be rolled over from year to year. Such accounts could grow to be substantial over a lifetime -- a good thing, since health expenses tend to increase with age, and everyone knows Medicare isn't sustainable in its current form.

When Medical Savings Accounts were originally created in 1996, liberals led by Ted Kennedy did their best to kill them in the crib. Severe restrictions were placed on who could own them, as well as on the number of policies that could be sold, and authorization was set to expire this year. Not surprisingly, insurers did not rush into the market and this is why practically no one has ever heard of or used MSAs.

But now those restrictions are gone, the Treasury Department has just announced rules for new HSA policies, and private insurers are already jumping into the market. A glimpse of the market potential of HSAs is provided by South Africa, of all places. After the Mandela government deregulated South Africa's private insurance market in 1994, HSA-type plans quickly captured about two-thirds of it.

That's precisely the kind of success that Senator Kennedy and friends fear could happen here. Democrats know that a reinvigorated private health insurance market will end their dream of a Canadian-style health system. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle has already introduced a bill to "correct" the Medicare legislation, with HSA repeal a top priority.

Once millions of HSAs are established, it will be almost impossible to reverse this program. Anyone who wants affordable permanent health insurace should welcome and insist upon the continuation of the HSAs. the Democrats already fought hard to deny us any immediate prescription drug assistance. DON'T LET THEM STEAL THE HSA FROM US !!!! Contact your representatives and senators and demand that they leave the HSA alone !!!

Critics have been making a number of dire predictions about the effects of HSAs, none of which stand up to scrutiny. The most common is that HSAs would attract a disproportionate number of "healthy and wealthy" individuals, "fragment the risk pool," and drive up the cost of insurance for those who need it most. This is all not true and is promoted by the special interest organizatiosn that are working so hard to stall any meaningful adn sustainable healthcare reform in this country.

As Greg Scandlen of the Galen Institute points out, there is no giant "risk pool" to fragment. Employers and insurance plans around the country already make up tens of thousands of little risk pools, none of which subsidizes the other. If anything, by bringing health insurance within the reach of more individual buyers, HSAs should enhance the risk pool for those not covered by their employers.

Another beneficial effect of HSAs is that they will wake consumers up to the needless state mandates that price so many people out of insurance. Individual and small-group purchasers in New York, in fact, may well discover that they can't even buy a high deductible policy because of that state's mandates.

The easiest way to solve this problem would be for Congress to exercise its Constitutional power to free up interstate commerce in insurance adn repeal or reform the McCarren-Ferguson Act. Then, if New York politicians want to regulate insurers until they flee the state, fine. But NY's politicians shouldn't be able to tell New York residents that they can't buy an HSA from, say, Connecticut, which has many fewer mandates.

PLEASE URGE CONGRESS to consider deregulating the benefit design of HSAs. It makes no sense to require a uniform deductible for all medical goods and services, whether it be the latest antihistamine or an emergency appendectomy. The idea here, after all, is to make consumers a bit more savvy about those health decisions over which they really have some control.

But HSAs are still an enormous improvement over most existing health insurance options, especially for the individual and small business market. You can expect them to be very popular, and many companies will soon begin to make them available to their employees.

CONTACT YOUR LEGISLATIVE REPRESENTATIVES AND DEMAND THAT THEY NOT REPEAL THE HSA OR PRESCRIPTION DRUG BENEFIT, AND URGE THEM TO EXTEND THE HSA PROGRAM !!!! Don't let Ted Kennedy and his pals deny you another opportunity for affordable and sustainable health benefits.

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