Health Savings Account-Health Savings Account Info

Gina G asked:


I’m 24 yrs old and work 2 part time jobs. I’ve never had any medical problems, take good care of myself, eat right, not overweight. I only go see a gynocologist once a year. I want something that can cover me in case anything happens. Should I look for a cheap health plan or try an HSA? Thanks!

Leonel Ullrich

Lance asked:


HSAs make individuals responsible for their own health care decisions and help people learn how to manage expenses over time as opposed to regular insurance in which cost is more opaque. In most HSA plans, preventative care is included for no extra cost. Other expenses are borne first by the participant at the discounted group rate and then covered after the deductible.
Tort reform is obvious. Doctors pay hundreds of thousands in malpractice insurance each year while punitive damages are not capped. Extra procedures and tests are constantly performed in fear of lawsuits. We all bear the cost so that lawyers can pad their pockets with frivolous lawsuits.

Franklin Gelder

dolphin314etc asked:


1. Would it mean that all jobs in USA would cease immediately? No? People would still seek employment, and companies would still hire them?

2. Well how would the employees be “compensated” without corporate healthcare insurance plans? There is a thing called a paycheck. That would be the way to compensate the employees.

3. So how would people get health insurance without having it given to them by their corporations? They would buy it on the open market. That’s how they get groceries, and cars, and houses. So they would go to the market, pick out a policy. Sign it. And start paying premiums. The glove fits, so wear it. Each glove fits each customer. Wow, it’s like tailoring! What a concept!

4. How would this affect healthcare utilization? It would make it more moderate, more appropriate. If I have to pay for my own coverage, I’m likely to go for a high deductible policy with a Health Savings Account as backup. Very efficient — and all the tax breaks come to me, not the corporation I work for. When I need care, I just get what I need. Not those extra PET scans and CAT scans just to see if they can find something, two or three times a year. Not those luxury discretionary operations and treatments. Just what I need. That way, my premiums stay low, my health stays OK, and I have $3 million in coverage in case of catastrophic illness, or accident (with a $5,000 deductible, covered by my Health Savings Account, from which I get a taxbreak).

All corporations are always insatiable greed machines. So any contract or arrangement in which a corporation participates is going to be slanted mostly so that it benefits the corporation, not you, even though you think you’re getting a big freebie. They would have to pay about 15% to 20% more in salary to attract employees if they did not offer healthcare insurance. So, cutting out the insurance is revenue neutral for you, but you get a much better deal, and you participate in lowering our national expenditure for healthcare, so maybe it doesn’t go all the way up to 25% of GDP in the next five years, which is where it’s heading now in five years time.

Laurence Delashmit

Saikka asked:


Health Care in France is Often Held Up as a Model the U.S. Might Follow Yet the French Have Their Own Problems that Show There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch — or a Free Doctor’s Visit

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, August 26, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Call it the grass-is-greener syndrome. Advocates of national health care, acknowledging the flaws in ObamaCare yet despising the current U.S. system that has the best medicines, the best medical equipment and the shortest waiting lists, have turned their eyes lovingly to places like France.

As City Journal contributing editor Guy Sorman notes, the French would also love to have the low-cost, high-service system some Americans gush about. Unfortunately, they don’t. France’s system isn’t that cheap and is financed by high taxes on labor that have heavy economic consequences.

Sorman notes that a Frenchman making a monthly salary of 3,000 euros has 350 of them deducted for health insurance. Then the employer throws in an additional 1,200 euros. This raises the cost of labor to prohibitive levels and puts a brake on economic growth. This helps explain why French unemployment hovers around 10%.

France imposes an additional tax levy to cover the constant deficits that national health insurance runs.

The French Parliament raises this levy, which applies to all forms of income, every year. Altogether, Sorman writes, “25% of French national income goes toward what’s called Social Security, which includes health care and basic retirement pensions for all.”

Drugs developed in America at enormous expense do cost less in France, which decides what drugs are to be used and at what prices. American patients in effect subsidize the French, who take the same pills at half the price because American pharmaceutical companies don’t want to lose the French market.

French taxpayers fund a state health insurer, Assurance Maladie. Assurance Maladie has run in the red since 1989, and this year’s shortfall is expected to be 9.4 billion euros ($13.5 billion) and 15 billion euros in 2010, about 10% of its budget.

Regardless of the cost, does the French system produce better outcomes? Not always. Infant mortality rates are often cited as a reason socialized medicine and single-payer systems are better than what we have here. But according to Dr. Linda Halderman, a policy adviser in the California State Senate, these comparisons are bogus.

Official World Health Organization statistics show the U.S. lagging behind France in infant mortality rates — 6.7 per 1,000 live births vs. 3.8 for France. Halderman notes that in the U.S., any infant born that shows any sign of life for any length of time is considered a live birth. In France — in fact, in most of the European Union — any baby born before 26 weeks’ gestation is not considered alive and therefore doesn’t “count” in reported infant mortality rates.

France reimburses its doctors at a far lower rate than U.S. physicians would accept.

As David Gratzer, a physician and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote in the summer 2007 issue of City Journal: “In France, the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat wave — when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched beyond capacity — 15,000 elderly citizens died.”

After the tragedy, the French parliament released a harshly worded report blaming the deaths on a complex health system, widespread failure among agencies and health services to coordinate efforts, and chronically insufficient care for the elderly.

It’s hard to imagine that happening here, where hospitals have enough air-conditioned beds and doctors that aren’t on vacation.

Fact is, most Americans like their health care. There are ways to provide expanded coverage at lower cost, such as pushing individually owned health savings accounts, malpractice reform and allowing insurance to be bought across state lines.

We needn’t be forced to sacrifice quality for cost. Nor do we need to look to the French for a better solution. They don’t have one.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=336178343967257

Neal Tecklenburg

Obama Hood – Spread the Wealth asked:


Fact – A plan was offered but it didn’t get any press or support by Nancy “do it my way or the highway” Pelosi. Here is a summary of what was offered:

By the way, this took me about 30 seconds to find.

http://www.neighborhoodlink.com/article/Community/Health_Care_Reform_Republican

The Republican Alternative
Republicans in the House of Representatives unveiled a 3-and-a-half page summary of their own health plan, without details or an estimate of costs, but emphasized that their plan would cost less than the Democratic plan.

Key Provisions of the House GOP Plan

States, small businesses, and others could group together to offer lower-cost, health care plans.
Medicaid users could take the value of their Medicaid benefits and transfer them to a private health care plan.
People, especially those in lower income brackets or over 55, would receive incentives to build up health care savings accounts.
Employers would automatically sign up their workers for health insurance, so that employees would have to opt out of coverage if they didn’t want it.
Tax deductions on insurance premiums for people who get their plans individually or from their companies.
Ideas in the House GOP Plan that Are Supported by Both Parties

Dependent children can stay on their parents’ policies until they are 25.
Employers would be encouraged to reward employees for improved health.
Community health centers could be expanded.
Americans can maintain their specific health insurance policies when they lose or leave jobs.
In-home care over institutional care would be encouraged with financial help.
Medical malpractice lawsuits would be limited – though there are significant disagreements between the parties by how much.
http://rsc.tomprice.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=140115

Filiberto Inserra

PNAC ~ Penelope asked:


“Edwards, a former Democratic senator from North Carolina, says the federal government should underwrite universal pre-kindergarten, create matching savings accounts for low-income people, mandate a minimum wage of $9.50 and provide a million new Section 8 housing vouchers for the poor. He also pledged to start a government-funded public higher education program called “College for Everyone.” ”

http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071026/FRONTPAGE/710260384

Why work when you can just vote for Democrats?
universal pre-kindergarten = Day Care

I don’t want to raise my kids anyway:)

This new great socialist paradise is going to be so swell!

Steve

Old Guy asked:


They are taking great risks with their health and the people around them, besides burning up money to that would be much better used in a savings account.

Jamie Winebrenner

Coriolanus asked:


… curbing skyrocketing health-care costs?

A couple conservative legislators are pushing for the “health savings plans,” which is basically like saying, “We’ll just let the prices get higher and higher and totally out of control, but now we’ll set you up a special savings account that you can put YOUR OWN MONEY INTO to pay for yourself! Which is basically what people with no insurance have already been doing for years!”

So where are all the great ideas coming out of these mobs eager to cut down everyone else’s ideas, but less eager to figure out how to control ridiculous prices? ‘Cause, oh, I guess the “free market” doesn’t actually “regulate itself” after all, does it, at least not when it comes to health care.
“the millions they are wasting on crap like global warming”: That’s funny. I’m sure you know which program ***** up massive amounts of federal funds, more than any other program (perhaps except Social Security), and that would be the U.S. military. Sorry, social spending and “global warming” are a drop in the bucket compared to the do-no-wrong military. Cons have trouble comprehending this, since it conflicts with their usual adoration for the police state.

I would be more than happy to write and ask Obama to take care of our bloated military.

Johnson Darting

lienot asked:


have a new car, buying a house, have taken a cruise, are going on vacation, belong to any social club, have one or more flat screen TV’s over 40 inches, are paying for their children’s college, have a savings account in excess of $100,000, work for a company that provides health insurance at a low cost but do not participate because they want the money for something else and hope that they get government health care insurance FREE.

Lori

Marjery B asked:


I have a strained relationship with 3 brothers, father. The oldest brother, David, had mental health issues. I borrowed him large sums of money for rent/food. No one else supported me, or supported David. They said they couldn’t afford it-debts. David would have been homeless. David started to do well again. He had a good job. He succumbed to his mental illness & killed himself. David’s life insuarnce money is here. He left no beneficiery. A ******* note was addressed to me as next of kin. My Dad turned the money over to me to distribute as diplomatically as possible. My Dad only instructed me to reimburse myself for Brother’s debt to me and my funeral expenses. My other two brothers want ‘thier fair share’ (equal 1/4 of money) like a week ago-they have debts, etc My first inclination is to set up 529C college savings accounts for my children and nieces and nephews that will never know their uncle-and/or donate to mental health research/suicide hotline.

Gordon