P.S. I personally have an HSA and love it and so do my clients.

High Deductible Health Plans coupled with a Health Savings Account almost always result in less; not more of a tax break than what most Americans’ health plans provide today.

The tax break according to the Senate Finance Committee report is calculated at 2/10th of 1% or about $500 million of the $194.2 Billion of total health care benefit tax breaks for 2008. This amount is hardly worth addressing as a part of the overall tax revenue issue.

With the eminent financial collapse of Medicare without significantly raising taxes or slashing beneficiary benefits through much higher deductibles and copays, Americans will need to accumulate large sums of money to pay for their out of pocket expenses. Health Savings Accounts could end up saving the Medicare program by creating a Medical Individual Retirement Account.

The nation/state of Singapore has a health savings type program that has been very successful in providing dollars for people’s care.

Most High Deductible plans have better preventative benefits with less out of pocket than more “traditional plans.” Higher percentages of consumer driven health plan participants take advantage of these benefits and have a higher participation in getting needed screenings done according to many studies.

Reducing premiums through high deductible plans allows participating Americans to better utilize their health care dollars for the care their specific families want and need.

Reducing the amount available for annual contributions to the deductible will break the Administration’s promise that Americans can keep the same health plan they currently have.

Why would the Congress and the Administration want to reduce the amount of money people can contribute for their health care needs? We should be encouraging savings. The amount of contribution is currently limited to $3,000 for a single and $5,950 and for only those people who have a qualified high deductible health plan for each month of the calendar year plus a $1,000 catch up provision for Americans 55 and over. This is hardly a significant “tax shelter.”

If a person used the funds for other than 213d expenses, they not only would have to report this as income, but then they may not have funds to pay for medical expenses that are less than their deductible. This, rather than substantiation, is the key to discourage using funds for other than medical expenses.

Requiring substantiation by employers will add costs to a plan and discourage employers from participating especially small employers. Many choose the Health Savings Account approach rather than a Flexible Spending Account or a Health Reimbursement Arrangement because they are currently not responsible for administrating the account; the account holder/patient is.

Substantiation by an employer over an individual’s personal savings account should be considered a violation of HIPAA as well as financial privacy. My employer has no right to look at how I am spending my own personal funds. Small businesses will, by default, have to hire a Third Party Administrator to handle just the substantiation issue that, in some firms, amount to less than $10,000 per year. Few T.P.A.s will be willing to work on such small accounts without charging a significant fee defeating the savings element of the entire program.

With estimated fraud and abuse of Medicare in the tens of Billions of dollars, why would tax committees in Washington want to focus their time on Americans who have several thousand dollars saved for their personal medical expenses?

If a cap ends up being placed on the tax exclusion for employer provided health benefits, then more people will choose plans with higher deductibles. After all, that is one of the goals of placing a cap. So why would Congress take away the ability of people to accumulate personal funds to cover their out of pocket expenses?

Lower income people benefit from health savings accounts as their contributions can be contributed on a pre-tax basis.

Healthy people will eventually need funds to pay for their medical expenses at older ages when they do get sick. Putting funds away for this need will save future generations an enormous health care bill that is not currently funded in Medicare, Medicaid or any other government program.

The one important person that seems to missing in all the health care reforms is the patient. Without patient involvement reforms are only addressing symptoms (i.e. higher health insurance premiums) and not the cause (health care utilization and price per service.) Health Savings is one of the best tools for patient/consumer involvement.

The system is NOT BROKEN, it’s the typical Democratic solution to fix everything by raising our taxes to pay for another health insurance plan run by the government that is destine to fail just like Medi-care, Medi-caid.

I’m not suprised at this, I fully expected them to start taking ROTH IRAs first though.

We must collectively continue our private sector efforts to improve the efficiency and quality of the world’s most accessible health care delivery system–flaws and all. The consequences of not doing so will result in a total government take-over where free choice and abundance are replaced by rationed care and limited options.

The skyrocketing cost of health insurance will soon enable a filibuster-proof Democratic majority to destroy a dysfunctional but free market in health care, in favor of government-run/ socialized medicine, putting both the health insurance industry and health care providers at grave risk.

Most puzzling is the fact that an obvious solution already exists that requires no new legislation; but key industry players are so consumed by trying to preserve their slice of the status quo that they apparently can’t or won’t see the one move that ultimately wins the game once and for all? Three hundred million Americans financially vested in their own health care futures will NEVER agree to government-run health care!

To date, the largest barrier to increased market penetration of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) has been the insurance industry’s refusal to price HSA qualifying coverage at lower rates that truly reflect the marked reductions in insured payouts inherent to high deductible plans. Sure protecting and if possible growing top-line revenue is great when you can do it safely, but the meltdown of the financial services industry over profitable but ultimately lethal sub-prime mortgage instruments ought to serve as a warning to any industry that pushing a pure revenue strategy to its infinite limit is just plain stupid. I would remind the industry of the old adage, “He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day!”

The bulk of HSA deposits are derived from premium savings arising from moving from expensive 1st dollar coverage to much less costly high deductible plans. But, with insurers holding on tightly to the legacy overhead of “touching” every claim, and charging excessive premiums for inherently less expensive high deductible plans, employers and individuals just can’t realize enough savings to justify the transition en masse. The ongoing consumptive behavior and price insensitivity of 1st dollar coverage continues to grow out-of-control health care spending, adding more fuel to the political argument that the only solution is for the government to step in to heavy-handedly compel reduce insurance company profits and set lower provider fees.

But what if the insurance industry were to forgo short-term profits in favor of long-term viability? What if the average $13,000 employee insurance premium were replaced by a $6,000 deductible HSA qualifying HDHP with $6,000 in premium savings going directly into each employee’s HSA? Day-to-day care would be totally free, on a pre-tax basis, and what employees didn’t spend they’d get to keep toward future health care needs or better yet toward what is clearly a very uncertain retirement future. Social security and Medicare are going bust to the tune of 30-50 trillion dollars, and the cost of health care in retirement for couples retiring today (based on existing Medicare coverage) is variously estimated at around $250,000+. Paying for health care in retirement from an IRA or a 401k requires significantly higher balances in those accounts because of the after-tax nature of distributions from those accounts as compared to HSAs. Thus, HSAs are the ideal way to save and invest for those costly and predictable expenses of old age.

All physicians, especially primary cares, can help patients decide what health care services are really effective and necessary, and even help direct patients to the most cost-effective venues. Patients with HSAs ask about and pursue more affordable care. Again, three hundred million financially responsible health care consumers is a relentless force of nature that will quickly right-size the health care industry.

The single-payer crowd may call these strategies “tired old ideas”, but in reality they are deathly afraid of the success of consumer directed health care in the marketplace as this would put their ultimate goal of government-run, socialized health care permanently to bed!

All that remains to be seen is whether the health care industry will wake up in time to take advantage of the very short window of opportunity before opponents of free market medicine have their way with the country.

So the government gets less taxes on HSA funds used to buy beer than beer purchased with funds on their regular paycheck. These HSAs are magical.

Brian, wake up. These are refundable tax credits. What 30-year-old uninsured male would not let the government buy his HSA insurance for $700 a year and then let the government deposit $1,600 into his “FREE” tax free HSA at the bank?

Brian, I don’t know anybody that’s so broke that they can’t let the government give them $1,600, all tax free. You better bone up on HSAs before you make such goofy statements.

John Edwards (D-NC) said HSAs only work for millionaires. Where does the liberal left get this stuff?