Health Savings Accounts Are A Good Idea
The fact that an idea is promoted by Republicans should not relegate the idea to the dung heap. George Will’s column in yesterday’s Washington Post, How To Get The Country To Solvency On Entitlements, extols the virtues of Republican Congressman Paul Ryan’s outline for budget reform entitled Roadmap For America’s Future. The Roadmap includes a proposal to expand the availability of health savings accounts, an idea which will decrease the cost of care. Democrats should adopt this idea and enact legislation effectuating it.
When Obama campaigned for the Democratic nomination, he understood that the exorbitant cost of care is the primary problem with the health care system. In the Nevada debate with Hillary Clinton, Obama said, “What I see are people who would love to have health care. They desperately want it. But the problem is they can’t afford it.” The fatal flaw in both of the health care reform bills is that they fail to pay sufficient attention to the issue of costs.
Only when patients have a motive to control the cost of health care will the cost of health care be controlled. As long as patients have their health insurance premiums paid by someone else (employers) and have their health care expenses paid by someone else (health insurance companies), they will not care one iota about the cost of their care. A health care savings account changes this dynamic by giving the patient “skin in the game”.
I offer a personal example. My teenage son hurt his wrist a month or so ago. When it didn’t improve after a few weeks, I took him to a hand specialist. The doctor x-rayed the wrist and determined it was only a sprain which would be fine with time.
When the doctor asked me how I was going to pay, I said I was paying from my health care savings account. He gave me a discounted rate of $140, because his staff did not have to mess with filing insurance, delays, reviews, reductions, billing me for the co-pay and/or the deductible, etc. He said that if everyone had a health savings account, 90% of the health care cost crisis would be solved.
If the Democrats focus on bringing down the cost of care, as advocated by President Obama during the campaign, the number of the uninsured will also come down. Insuring the remaining uninsured will then be infinitely easier.
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