Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Health Savings Accounts stirring up panic - among politicians
[Michael F. Cannon, "Hillary's Worst Nightmare," The Cato Institute, 9 May 2004.]
Health Savings Accounts are expected to revolutionize health care in the United States. Apparently the thought of greater consumer choice is enough to sound a rallying cry for the defenders of heavy-handed government programs:
Ever since the Clinton administration's proposal to direct America's health care system from Washington, D.C., went down in ignominious defeat a decade ago, its chief architect, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has shied away from "comprehensive health care reform," preferring instead to take smaller steps toward government-run health care.
That is, until now.
Tucked away in the recently enacted Medicare prescription drug bill is a deceptively small provision allowing personal, tax-free health savings accounts. Health savings accounts mark a fundamental shift in federal health care policy. Health savings accounts treat an individual's medical expenditures and savings on a par with tax-free employer expenditures. As a result, they empower individuals to become stewards of their own health care dollars rather than force people to depend on their employer to spend those dollars wisely.
Just as IRAs and 401(k)s made the political landscape more hospitable to Wall Street and free markets by turning Americans into investors, health savings accounts will generate the political will to enact consumer-based Medicare reforms by turning millions of Americans into sovereign health care consumers.
Former Sen. Phil Gramm quips that the left reacts to health savings accounts like a vampire reacts to a cross, because the left knows that once patients get a taste of freedom, all hope of achieving a government-run health care system will vanish.
Clinton inadvertently acknowledges this reason for her change in strategy by veering off-message for several column-inches to denounce health savings accounts and similar reforms. She argues that as stewards of their own health care dollars, consumers aren't sophisticated enough to demand value from medical providers and will harm themselves by forgoing needed care to save a few bucks. Like all opponents of consumerism, the real object of her disapproval is the public's intelligence. More importantly, health savings accounts and similar reforms threaten, as she puts it, "what we consider traditional insurance."
To the most ardent supporters and opponents of health care consumerism, Clinton's desire to accelerate socialization makes perfect sense. Considering how health savings accounts will transform America's health care sector, it's imperative.
For the first time, advocates of socialized medicine are on the run. This ought to be good.
[Michael F. Cannon, "Hillary's Worst Nightmare," The Cato Institute, 9 May 2004.]
Health Savings Accounts are expected to revolutionize health care in the United States. Apparently the thought of greater consumer choice is enough to sound a rallying cry for the defenders of heavy-handed government programs:
Ever since the Clinton administration's proposal to direct America's health care system from Washington, D.C., went down in ignominious defeat a decade ago, its chief architect, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has shied away from "comprehensive health care reform," preferring instead to take smaller steps toward government-run health care.
That is, until now.
Tucked away in the recently enacted Medicare prescription drug bill is a deceptively small provision allowing personal, tax-free health savings accounts. Health savings accounts mark a fundamental shift in federal health care policy. Health savings accounts treat an individual's medical expenditures and savings on a par with tax-free employer expenditures. As a result, they empower individuals to become stewards of their own health care dollars rather than force people to depend on their employer to spend those dollars wisely.
Just as IRAs and 401(k)s made the political landscape more hospitable to Wall Street and free markets by turning Americans into investors, health savings accounts will generate the political will to enact consumer-based Medicare reforms by turning millions of Americans into sovereign health care consumers.
Former Sen. Phil Gramm quips that the left reacts to health savings accounts like a vampire reacts to a cross, because the left knows that once patients get a taste of freedom, all hope of achieving a government-run health care system will vanish.
Clinton inadvertently acknowledges this reason for her change in strategy by veering off-message for several column-inches to denounce health savings accounts and similar reforms. She argues that as stewards of their own health care dollars, consumers aren't sophisticated enough to demand value from medical providers and will harm themselves by forgoing needed care to save a few bucks. Like all opponents of consumerism, the real object of her disapproval is the public's intelligence. More importantly, health savings accounts and similar reforms threaten, as she puts it, "what we consider traditional insurance."
To the most ardent supporters and opponents of health care consumerism, Clinton's desire to accelerate socialization makes perfect sense. Considering how health savings accounts will transform America's health care sector, it's imperative.
For the first time, advocates of socialized medicine are on the run. This ought to be good.
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