Health Savings Accounts
Watch these. If I were advising someone running for Illinois Gov, I'd craft a plan for Illinois that would couple in with these. It's the future. (Like it or not)
Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) were created by Public Law 108-173, the "Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003," signed into law by President Bush on December 8, 2003. Health Savings Accounts will change the way millions meet their health care needs [Baar's emphasis] because they are designed to help individuals save for qualified medical and retiree health expenses on a tax-advantaged basis.cross posted at Bill Baar's West Side
8 comments:
Unfortunately, employee contributions to pre-tax HSAs do not roll over from year to year at present. This is a HUGE disincentive; no one wants to put away thousands of dollars 'just in case' only to lose them at the end of the year if they don't get sick. That's exactly what happened to my family in 2005. This year we're contributing much less.
Only employer contributions are currently required to roll over. Unless and until this is fixed, few will want to sock away cash in them.
anon: you just gave a start for a plan.
I've just been thinking if it's illegal to be an uninsured motorist in Illinois, maybe it should be illegal to go without Health Insurance.
And for those who can't afford it, offer HSA's coupled with catstrophic insurance....
Funny thing about Bush ownership society ideas is they seem so close sometimes to McGovern's minimum national income proposals back in 1972.
Anyways, the problem with blogging is thinness and I apoligize... it just seems like HSA's might offer some solutions to some of Illinois's medicaid problems.
I'm not really optimistic all-kids is going to get much care out to the kids who need it.
Greg, I see.
I didn't realize he had proposed that. I've just been arguing with liberal co religionists waiting to take pot shots at Rommney's faith; which I don't find particularly liberal of them.
I haven't been paying attention to what he has said. That's a mistake.
Larry, I agree... and this is one of my problems with Cook County Hospital. We force every indigent user of this place into a pre-1960s deliver system. It give you care when you've become really sick.
We don't give the indigent primary care to keep them health and coordinate their care for a period of time, and charge a provider to be accountable for their care.
So we've got a really expensive building designed to deliver outmoded cared.
County's FY2006 Budget it out there on the web now but I haven't waded through all the tables... that's part of the problem with the budget...it's a lot of tables... long columns, and not much analysis of what the plan is..
Sorry, Greg, I am not "misinformed" - this happed to me and my family in 2005. We had a baby, so we socked away $3k in a pre-tax, employer-sponsored HSA (what they call a Flexible Savings Account). As of Jan 1 we just lost about $2k in savings, a significant amount of money for us. From the plan brochure:
"According to the IRS's "use it or lose it" rule, if you do not use all the money in your FSA for expenses incurred during the plan year, you will forfeit the unused balance. Your unused balance cannot be carried over into the next year. "
Maybe you didn't know about that.
Before we jump to the conclusion that fixing the health care system means switching the poor from Medicaid to private insurance, let's take a look at a section of Families USA report on Medicaid, aptly titled...
Medicaid Is More Cost Effective than Coverage in the Private Market
Medicaid costs considerably less than private health insurance. A recent study found that the cost of serving an adult in Medicaid in 2001 was about 30 percent lower than if that same person were instead covered by private health insurance. The cost of serving a child in Medicaid is about 10 percent less than if that child were covered by private insurance.
Medicaid spends about half as much on administrative costs as private insurance. In 2003, only 6.9 percent of Medicaid costs were for administrative purposes--compared to 13.6 percent for private insurance.
Here's the link:
www.civilrights.org/issues/poverty/details.cfm?id=34142
anon: 12:49 I think they're different plans. And whether this new plan supplements or overtakes the older ones I don't know.
My wife has the FSA and it works as you describe.
These are starts thought towards what I think the future is going to be....
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