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My biggest complaint with this new restriction on Health Savings Accounts is that it is a blatant attempt to make Health Savings Accounts less desirable by arbitrarily removing benefits. The combination of Health Savings Accounts with a high deductible health insurance represent a low cost competitor to ObamaCare. The primary political objective of ObamaCare was to limit health care alternatives and force everyone into one common but high cost comprehensive health care plan. The key to building support for the high cost health care plan is to hide the costs of the comprehensive plan and make the low cost plans less attractive. The government health plan had to be comprehensive to be acceptable to unions and large corporations. High health care costs have made some businesses uncompetitive and one solution is transfer their health care responsibilities to the government. Under this scenario control of the health care system is the primary objective. Controlling spiraling health care costs is a secondary consideration. Once control of the health care system is attained, then the government could force lower prices at will. It is hoped that the health care czars will be smart, benevolent dictators. The downside is that the proposed health care system could be an inefficient bureaucracy like Medicare or something much worse. Currently this particular scenario has such a dim political future that many large organizations have asked for exemptions from ObamaCare. With this deadly embrace of the status quo, the owners of these luxury health care plans having particularly dim future at controlling their spiraling health care costs and ultimately their product costs. If an individual believes that a low cost plan health plan is better for them, why should they be forced to bail out the high cost plans of unions and big businesses?

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One of the more interesting gambits that played out in the health care debate was the ardent support for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) by unions and large companies. Despite the fact that these organizations are particularly at risk from rising health care costs, the focus of the debate centered around the [...]

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While Congress and most of the nation was caught in the melodrama of whether or not to extend the tax cuts this week, another drama was playing out. Politifact chose to announce, PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year: ‘A government takeover of health care’, at the same time Judge Roger Vinson was hearing the case just [...]

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I think it is admirable that California is attempting some innovative health care solutions and wish them the best of luck.  If I understand their proposal correctly they will be billing the federal government the same amount but the spending will not follow standard Medicaid rules. With the waiver they will be using the savings [...]

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Since it appears that 111 waivers have already been granted including a waiver for mini-med plans, I was wondering whether everyone who has a high deductible health insurance could be exempted? High deductible health care health insurance is the cornerstone of health savings account(HSA). For some people this is a very cost effective way to [...]

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I am doubtful that Obamacare will be repealed in the next two years but I am slightly optimistic that it can undergo some significant improvements in controlling health care cost growth. Here are two key issues that I think we can get bipartisan support on. Embrace a a wider range of cost reduction strategies including [...]

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I was looking at HeathCare.gov today. It is a pretty site. I was researching information about how the recent legislation impacted HRA and HSA accounts so I decided to give this site a try. It did not have anything. Their insurance finder looked intriguing so I decided to give it a test run. Since I [...]

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My boss and I came to same realization on Friday. We would be more in favor of the individual mandate if the Federal government required everyone to buy one of our products, too. We are hurting just like the hospitals. Hospitals have un-insured patients and we have dead beat customers. Why can’t we get a [...]

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Back in 2000 when I moved from Texas to Ohio I was given the opportunity to buy health insurance at what I thought was an exorbitant price of $350 per month. I declined. On Friday I commented on a post that about the insurance mandate that the insurance mandate is very expensive option for me for what I consider to be a hospital billing problem. Today I calculated about how much I saved by not having health insurance or having a low cost high deductable plan. Just for the health insurance premiums alone I would have spent $52,970. I used this slide from the Kaiser Family Foundation and its 131% increase to estimate my health insurance premium increases. This looks like a pretty conservative number since it assumes I can get a comparable policy today for $457 per month. From Quicken I can say that my medical and dental costs over this time period was about $37,900. Based on my ten year experience you can save a lot of money by being a savvy health care buyer.

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Despite the drama about the health care debate the country continues down its path to austerity. The only way we can get off the path is if the economy shows a robust, vigorous recovery of permanent employment and consumer spending. The states, counties, and cities desperately need more tax revenue. It is not surprising that [...]

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