Health Savings Accounts
Friday,May 2, 2008 Posted by: Shay Jones No Comments
Source: Medical Watch (for AAPA Members) May 1, 2008 (below)
MW Bias alert ! MW today subtley put down Health Savings Accounts (AKA: Consumer Driven Health Care -CDHC). The article alludes that CDHC is “pushed” by Bush administration as tax shelter for the rich. The counter quoted is put forth weakly and not the best counter.
Goodman, a supporter of CDHC, reports on a study which shows that CDHC patients were twice as likely as patients in traditional plans to ask about cost and three times as likely to choose a less expensive treatment option, and chronic patients were 20 percent more likely to follow treatment regimes carefully. (Goodman, John (2006), “Consumer Driven Health Care“, Networks Financial Institute Policy Brief, Indiana State University)
Bottom line: Costs have to be curtailed and this can be done in two ways, consumer-driven (we decide individually what we want to spend money on) or government-driven (the government curtails everyone’s health care and decides exactly what we can or can not have) — mixed model exist (as we have today) but history shows that government inevitably bureaucracies grow unchecked until economic disaster demands it).
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More people open health savings accounts, industry group says.
On the front of its Personal Journal section, the Wall Street Journal (5/1, D1, McQueen) reports that the “public debate over consumer-driven healthcare is heating up.”
The AP (5/1, Freking) reports that approximately six “million people are enrolled in health insurance plans that allow them to also open health savings accounts,” according to projections by the trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans. The “accounts are a relatively new product pushed by the Bush administration as a way to slow rising healthcare costs.” To date, “enrollment in such plans represents about 3.4 percent of the private insurance market.” But according to data released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), “taxpayers with health savings accounts had an adjusted gross income averaging about $139,000 in 2005, versus $57,000 for all other filers.” That means “the wealthy are using the accounts as a tax shelter, rather than as a means to help them afford health insurance,” said Reps. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) and Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). Noting that “the typical enrollee deposited $2,100…in 2005 and withdrew $1,000,” the trade group’s CEO Karen Ignagni countered that “those figures hardly represent amounts that could be described as a tax shelter for the wealthy.”