Patient Power

Are you willing to die, to save Medicare? Given the increase in life expectancy since the inception of the program the follie of this Ponzi scheme has been exposed. The Liberals want to "fix" the overall healthcare situation by a complete government takeover and the establishment of European style health care. But the dirty little secret is that the Europeans are willing to deny treatment to their aged and chronically ill in order to preserve costs for aiding the young who still have "value to the state".

Health Savings Accounts, the only good thing that came out of the Medicare Prescription Drug plan, offer an alternative that fits more closely with the idea of an ownership society driven by individual responsibility and self-sufficiency.

From IBD:
Posted 2/16/2006

Health Reform: President Bush, on the stump Thursday, again pushed for greater patient involvement in paying for health care. By the reaction of some, you'd think he was instead outlawing medical treatment.

When Bush signed the Medicare prescription drug benefit bill in 2003, he also made health savings accounts available to more Americans than ever. That put him sharply at odds with those who push a national health system.

As Merrill Matthews of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance says, "By expanding HSA options, President Bush has openly declared that patient empowerment is the centerpiece of his vision for the health care system — and liberals don't like it one little bit."

During his State of the Union address, Bush asked Congress to give poor Americans refundable tax credits to help them buy basic health insurance and to expand health savings accounts so that more small businesses can take advantage of them.

Should Congress follow Bush's lead, more Americans will have health care coverage, and costs, including insurance, will fall.

Critics say there's a big problem: As a Los Angeles Times editorial recently put it, "Nearly 46 million Americans live without health insurance," and Bush's plan doesn't "address the broader problem."

First, that 46 million figure is not established fact. It's an estimate. The Times could have just as easily used 36 million, a figure arrived at by a study commissioned by the federal government.

Or it might have used 19 million, the number determined by the Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation.

But those numbers would not bolster the implication that there's a crisis that needs immediate attention — and lots of public money.

Second, the ranks of the uninsured are not necessarily swollen with those who have been "left behind" or are just too poor to buy insurance. A large number are uninsured out of choice: They're young and healthy and therefore don't see the need to buy health insurance. Or they choose to use their limited dollars elsewhere.

So the uninsured will be with us always. But their numbers can be trimmed. That's where health savings accounts come in.

"In just two years, more than 3 million consumers — many of whom were previously uninsured — have chosen health savings accounts," says Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans.

Third, expanding HSAs and allowing refundable tax credits for health insurance costs will not only address the uninsured issue, but also help bring down premium costs.

Obviously, by allowing a tax credit, as Bush proposed, the cost of medical insurance becomes much more affordable. That alone will shrink the ranks of the uninsured.

Not as obvious: how HSAs will affect costs of premiums.

Health insurance premiums are expensive because medical care is expensive, and medical care has high costs because the system is simply overused. HSAs will give people incentive to limit unnecessary trips to the doctor. As demand falls, so will costs. The laws of economics dictate that a dip in premiums will follow.

And as coverage increases through HSAs, premiums should fall even further. Why? There will be fewer uninsured, and so the costs of caring for those without insurance will shrink.

Unfortunately, some won't be swayed by logic. They prefer a European-style national health system, the kind Hillary Clinton favors. Such systems are falling into disfavor around the globe. We would be wise to avoid that mistake.

Nor should we let those who oppose HSAs wage a disinformation campaign against the one reform we know will work for health care, as it has for everything else: the market.