The fundamental idea behind HSAs is not to provide better healthcare, it's to provide less healthcare. Conservatives want you to think twice before spending a hundred bucks for your regular pap smear.
What Drum doesn't understand or believe is that if consumers, especially young consumers who are more likely to be candidates for HSA's, are encouraged to price shop, or make choices based on cash on hand, health care prices will go down for those in most need of health care. If consumers, especially young consumers who are more likely to be candidates for HSA's, are using typical insurance they are more likely to engage in unneeded or excessive treatment. HSA's relieve some of the demand for the more elective procedures such as annual pap smears, therefore reducing the price. As HSA's catch on and more people have had them for 10-20 years medical care will reach a tipping point where prices will level off or even decrease.
Is there a point in which medical care prices will decrease in a socialized medical system? I don't think proponents of socialized medicine would even think such a thing. What market has the government ever controlled that actually reduced costs? The government is simply not a good consumer.
As a consumer of health care I would like to point out one flaw in HSA's. I can't prefund my HSA, meaning that I can't on January 1 write a check to my HSA that will cover my bills for January. I have to fund it in equal increments over the course of the year and only have the catastrophic illness insurance without having a base amount. It's a flaw in the system if I were to have a hospital stay in the first couple of months of coverage under an HSA without adequate funds to pay for my hospital stay. I imagine that this little flaw can and will be corrected.
1 comment:
Great blog I hope we can work to build a better health care system as we are in a major crisis and health insurance is a major aspect to many.
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