Bush's Health Savings Accounts Are Badly Flawed: John M. Berry (Bloomberg)

[swag]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_berry&sid=a.Sj_FDYQ9Dk

Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Health savings accounts, the centerpiece of President George W. Bush's efforts to slow increases in health-care costs, have a serious flaw that makes them largely ineffective.

Another Bush proposal, the creation of an electronic health record for individuals, perversely appears to be leading to bigger, not smaller, bills for patients and higher costs for providers. Those are the conclusions of academic researchers detailed in peer-reviewed work in the July/August issue of the journal Health Affairs.

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The point is to use the carrot of a tax deduction to wean consumers -- and their employers -- from insurance policies that have low deductibles before benefits kick in.

Such so-called first-dollar insurance coverage plays a central role ``in dulling the incentives for consumers to shop carefully for cost-effective health care,'' Bush's Council of Economic Advisers said in its annual report last February.

The problem is that the most common high-deductible insurance policies that qualify someone to have a health savings account don't actually increase most consumers' health-care cost- sharing.

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[marmar]

1. Why should health accounts be different than any other Bush program?

Everything they've done is pretty badly flawed.

[whistle]

2. Everything Bush touches becomes badly flawed