>> BUSH READIES MAJOR ATTACK ON HEALTH CARE
>> http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0131-06.htm
>>
>> LA TIMES - Emboldened by their success at the polls, the Bush administration
>> and Republican leaders in Congress believe they have a new opportunity to
>> move the nation away from the system of employer-provided health insurance
>> t
>
> A disability response:
>
> issue left out on push to promote the use of health savings accounts:
> The current health
> insurance market discriminates against people with disabilities and other
> "pre-existing" conditions. Unless insurance companies are required to sell
> "catastrophic" coverage to all comers at the same rate, regardless of
> health status, people with significant health problems will be unable to
> buy the coverage required to qualify for the the HSA tax benefit.
HSA's are good for the individual if they (and BOTH conditions have to be met) EXPECT to have low health costs (which as Marta mentions screws people with disabilities and others who expect higher costs) and DO have low costs (most people will always have low/routine health costs, but in any given year that can change for anyone--that is the whole point of insurance). There is no way for any individual to predict very accurately their own health costs for the next year; for most people it is simply a really good chance of low/routine costs and a steeply rising set of possible costs for increasingly unlikely set of chances. So HSA's are good gamble for many but a gamble nevertheless.
It is not surprising that Republicans want us to walk the tightrope of life without a safety net while trumpeting the fact that they have just widened the tightrope by a millimeter (to extend the analogy I have argued that the proposed changes to SS not only weaken the safety net but also SHRINK the size of the rope you have to walk on.)
The most scary thing about the LA Times article, is that Democrats are conceding the point about "individual" ownership of health care--this is really stupid on its face as its not the individual that controls the excessive cost and waste in the system now and there is no way "increased information" for the patient to wade through is going to help that (there are ways that information for payers can help in small ways but this "consumer focus" is just the latest of a long history of ways to avoid the real problems of mismatching our economic system with improving the health of people).
Jim
"The culture says that it’s virtuous and commendable to be a helper, but (on) the other side, those who need help are (thought) probably responsible for their own misfortune. Who knows, it may be God punishing them, so the very fact that people are helpers is proof of their virtue. The underbelly of that is that we live in a culture in which suffering is (thought to be) optional. . . . And that’s a very dangerous model."
--Chris Ringer