Health Savings Accounts Put You In
Control Of Your Healthcare
As Health Savings Accounts grow in popularity, there is growing fear among
those who want to nationalize healthcare that they will not be able to put the
cat back in the bag. There are already over 3 million HSA owners, and by 2010,
the Treasury Department estimates as many as 45 million Americans will be
covered by HSA plans. They will have billions of dollars invested to cover
future medical expenses, and by then it will be politically impossible to take
that benefit away.
If you currently have a high-deductible health
insurance plan, you can invest tax-free money in a Health Savings Account. You
get to choose the type of investment - anything from savings accounts or money
market funds, to a full brokerage house. If you invest wisely, you could have
well over $500,000 in the account when you retire. You will be able to use that
money to pay for your healthcare in whatever way you please, tax free. You can
go to the best surgeons, or the least expensive doc-in-a-box. If you decide to
treat a condition with acupuncture, homeopathy, or psychic healers, you can do
that too. Whoever offers you the service you want with the best combination of
quality and price should get your business. And since you are the one paying, it
will be completely your choice. You have healthcare freedom.
If
proponents of a single-payer system were to ever have their way, you would be at
the mercy of a government bureaucrat when it comes to your healthcare. To see
what this may look like, all one has to do is look at the state of health care
in Canada, England, New Zealand, and the parts of Europe that have not yet
abandoned single-payer systems.
Proponents of a single-payer system tend
to point to Canada or England as countries that cover all their citizens with
quality healthcare, while spending less money per person than the U.S. But if we
look a little more closely, we see that these publicly financed health insurance
systems are breaking down, the quality is low, and the costs can be quite high.
Here's what Canadians have to deal with if they need medical care:
Long
waits. Hundreds of Canadians go to Detroit and other U.S. cities every year for
procedures like CAT scans, which they can obtain treatment in a matter of days.
In Canada, the wait is typically six months. Currently 876,000 Canadians are on
waiting lists for medical procedures.
Difficulty in getting
life-enhancing procedures done. If a Canadian is having a heart attack, they
will be treated right then. But if the surgery is considered "elective" (meaning
that possible death is not eminent), the wait could be months or years. Average
wait for cataract removal is 18 months. Average wait for a knee replacement is
one year.
Increased risk of dieing. The average Canadian waits eight
weeks to see a specialist, and another nine weeks before getting treated. This
is even the case with conditions that are likely to get much worse if there is
any delay in treatment. For example, the median time for a mastectomy is 14
weeks, enough time for the cancer to spread to other parts of the body. In fact,
28% of those diagnosed with breast cancer in Canada die from it, while the
mortality ratio in the U.S. is only 25%.
Things don't look any better
across the ocean. Each year the British National Health Service cancels 410,000
surgeries because of resource shortages. According to the London Sunday Times,
there are currently over 1 million Brits awaiting elective surgery. Thomas Cook,
a British travel agency, is even considering offering "sun-and-surgery" packaged
trips to Indian hospitals for British citizens fed up with low standards and
long waiting times for surgery.
The British and Canadian governments have
the power to make healthcare "free", but they are unable to control its costs.
So the costs become longer (and potentially fatal) delays, and fewer
innovations.
It's not surprising when you think about what is happening.
Universal health insurance systems always encourage over-consumption by
patients, and such over-consumption always leads to financial crises. The result
is inevitably broken promises about universal access and quality care. Because
there are always limited resources, single-payer systems tend to overspend on
primary care for the healthy, while denying more expensive specialist care to
those with serious medical problems. This is because most people (voters) are
healthy most of the time, and the sick and dieing are less likely to be able to
organize into a political force.
What makes the United States such a
great country is the "freedoms" we enjoy. Though our freedoms seem to be
constantly under attack, there is still no nation in the world that has the
freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of association, or the free
markets that we have in the United States. As anyone who understands even a
smidgen of economics knows, free markets encourage competition and innovation,
which lead to lower prices and better quality.
Though the U.S. system of
health care can not really be considered a "free-market", it is certainly much
more free than any single payer system. Some of the benefits we see as a result
of our current healthcare system include:
- U.S. medicine produces the
best outcomes for virtually every patient, from premature babies to elderly
cancer patients. - American companies are the chief source worldwide of new
treatments and procedures which each year are used to save millions of lives.
- U.S. medical training and research facilities are the best in the world.
Though Canadians might have to wait a year or two for hip replacement surgery,
they can get the same operation done on their dog in less than a week. This is
because veterinarians are competing for that business, finding innovative ways
to deliver service more quickly and less expensively. Another example is laser
eye surgery, a procedure that is rarely covered by insurance, so laser eye
surgeons must compete on the basis of cost and quality. While costs for most
medical procedures have been going up every year, the cost for this procedure
has dropped by 80% over the past decade.
Unfortunately, U.S. healthcare
policies still tend to limit competition, restrict consumer's freedom to choose,
and discourage consumers from shopping for value. Thus, there are too few
choices and there has been little attention paid to price and quality of
service. The answer is clearly not more government intervention, but instead
letting competition and the power of the marketplace drive down prices and
increase quality and access to care.
Health Savings Accounts are the
Solution
There is increasing recognition that third-party health
insurance payers are actually a major cause of escalating medical costs and the
decline in the quality of service. The increasing adoption of HSA plans has
already begun to cause greater transparency and competition in the medical
marketplace. There are now physicians available by phone, medical kiosks setting
up in malls, doctors that accept only cash (and who charge significantly less),
and others competing directly for the consumer's healthcare dollar.
Don't
be fooled by the politicians who advocate a single-payer system, claiming their
only concern is the uninsured. If a single body (such as a government
bureaucracy) controls healthcare, they control one seventh of the national
economy. And everywhere in the world that central control of the economy has
been tried, it has been a colossal failure.
As public policy reforms
centered on individual choice continue to gain wider footholds, the result will
be greater prosperity, greater choice, and a better value for all. The culture
of dependence and entitlement will begin to fade, as millions of individuals
demand further policy reforms that will reinstate the values of freedom and
personal responsibility that helped establish this great nation.
As more
consumers turn to health savings accounts, the market will respond. Innovative
providers will begin to compete more on price and quality of service, and those
that provide the best value will get wealthy doing so. And all consumers will
benefit.
An alternative treatment of disease involving the consumption of natural
materials that simulate the symptoms of the disease. These materials are
first diluted in pure water to such an extent that there are generally no
molecules of the original material left. The efficacy of this treatment is
rejected by most medical experts. It has the potential of causing harm,
because individuals may seek a cure through homeopathy, and ignore the
potential for a cure from a physician.
A natural pharmaceutical science that utilizes substances from the plant,
mineral, and animal kingdoms and is based on the premise that these
naturally occurring substances can cure disease symptoms similar to those
they produce if taken in overdose. Each medicine is individually prescribed
according to how it stimulates the immune and defence systems of the sick
person. Sometimes it is called the “royal medicine.
A form of medicine that relies on minute amounts of herbs, minerals, and
other substances to stimulate natural defences against disease. It is more
widely used in Western Europe than the United States. Developed in the late
18th century by Samuel Hahnemann, MD, the therapy uses the "law of
similars" to treat disease. That is, if large amounts of a substance such
as quinine cause symptoms of an illness in a healthy person, then smaller
amounts should be used for the cure.
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Homeopathy
