The end of HSA's?

[ERD50]

--- yet we wait, and kick the can down the street over and over. America is a great country, but we have a collective habit of ignoring many issues until circumstances are almost beyond repair when we could have been ahead of the curve. And we love to blame politicians and special interests as the source, when ultimately they reflect our views or often our apathy.

I am wondering more and more if this isn't due to the US being a BIG, diverse country. We can't get agreement across these many factions until things are so bad we have no choice?

As I understand it:

We pay more per capita for health care than anyone else in the world and do NOT have better health statistics to show for it.

And as I understand it, we pay more per capita for public education than anyone else in the world and do NOT have better standardized test statistics to show for it. Why would health care be any different?

"We have met the enemy and he is us"?

-ERD50

 

[Sevo]

Sevo, I generally agree with this theme of "personal responsibility to decide and personal responsibility for the consequences and keep govt out of it if we can". However, I think there is a reasonable argument to say that health care does fall into the "for the common good" clause (yes, that phrase is subject to overuse/abuse).

I would prefer the least invasive form of regulation possible. Like you say, with ins lobbies, lawyers/lawmakers against tort reform, etc, I don't expect that we will get that. We will likely get a mish-mash of micro-management that may be a cure that is worse than the disease.

I hope the above comments conveyed some common sense, knowledge of history and acknowledged that our cultural history as a free people sometimes requires us to balance those freedoms with our responsibilities to our fellow citizens (I'm not "free" to drive 120mph down the road either - and that is good, IMO).

And this seems to work OK. Some posters are saying that medical is "different", but I suspect that is because we don't have true competition in health ins. I think the "piece work" issue that has been brought up would go away if there was real competition. Maybe other reforms are needed, but I'd like to start there and see what happens. Take some baby steps while the govt brings all these cost savings to Medicare/Medicaid that they claim they can make. That would build up a bit of trust in their ability to deliver on promises.

With baby steps, we could see how things go, and adapt and expand as needed. I think a "baby step" bill could actually get passed and do some good. The public just has too much distrust of govt (look at polls, esp Congressional approval rates), to have a big complex bill shoved down our throats. So nothing happens. Something would be better than nothing.

-ERD50

ERD50 Thank you for that very thoughtful reply. We all agree that we want The best for ourselves and our countrymen. That is one of the wonders of our culture and reason that people from all over the world flood into our country from other parts of the world.

We have tried baby steps with medicaid medicare and Federal "regulation" of the insurance industry and every thing else in our lives. The out come....... A giant mess that is getting worse by the day and really is bankrupting us as individuals and as a country.

I'm afraid there isn't anything we can do now. Human nature is such that we come hard wired for jealousy. That leads us to prefer to give up everything that we have including our liberty to make sure that others don't have more that we do even when what we have is adequate. It is hard to imagine the out come of this behavior with out spending some time out side the US in continents such as South America, Asia and Africa.

Philosophically ,the question we are addressing in its simplest form is this.
Is it reasonable to allow humans the liberty to manage their own affairs or collectively do we have to be forced to behave is a rational civil manner by an all powerful centralized government. I think that with our culture we are better off managing our own affairs but at this stage I am almost willing to accept that I am dead wrong. Maybe the answer is to have true regulation of all of our affairs from Washington.

Now back to reality, This is helpful psychologically to have this discussion in that it makes us feel like we have some control over what is going to happen to us. We don't! The votes have been cast. We are going to get what ever our masters in Washington feel will keep get them reelected. With total one party control it is inevitable. Is it going to contain anything that is voluntary like HSA's ? Maybe for a little while. On the other had operating on the concept of "fairness and common good " I can't see any rational reason that some rich retired person who has so much that they can afford to hide money into a tax shelter like an HSA should be allowed to do that when so many "30 million " people can not afford any insurance at all! In fact I can't imagine any rational voter that can't afford that kind of health care coverage would vote for a politician that would make that kind of unfair deal available to the "Rich".

Hang on and hope that's all we can do now.