I haven’t had a chance to comment on this, but anything Jamie writes is usually pretty good, and here he is in the NEJM on Health Savings Accounts — The Ownership Society in Health Care.
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Everything you always wanted to know about the Health Care system. But were afraid to ask.
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Matthew,
That insurance you sell from UICI is in big trouble. Their head cheese is dead. Ronald L. Jensen died in his car at 74. Now the “Truth” will come out about this health insurance that you were making money on and putting citizens in terrible danger. How can you sleep at night Matthew? Now all of your “friends” with employer-based insurance are buying up the little HSA companies but us. Bunch of losers really. I blame their consultants. Vote for Zandstra and the TRUTH.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_41/b3954056.htm
This is the best article on tax free HSAs that you have ever posted Matthew. I bet theroajones hates this article from the “New England Journal of Medicine,” because Socialists shy away from the HSA like vampires to the Cross. President Bush said, “Own your home, own your health insurance and own a piece of your retirement.”
I predict that Matthew will be giving speeches to a bunch of wags in Liverpool some day selling the Ownership Society and tax free HSA. Of course they won’t understand that large balances of tax free dollars, invested in mutual funds, as rapidly as freedom loving Americans. This article is going up at our HSA website along with my comments. I will post your comments too Matthew, so make them good. Also, I think all politicians should bone up on the tax free HSA and health care reform so I will make sure that some start their HSA knowledge with this article. I like the chart which corrects current propaganda in America, the big LIE. This chart is not current though, it comes from about the time President Bush was first elected.
This chart shows that “Individual Insurance” costs much less than employee “Group Insurance” in both large and small firms. Family insurance premiums for individual insurance is $4,500. Large group insurance is $6,800 and small group is $7,500. But we know that the average premium for group family insurance is $10,880 in 2005, which will increase in a few months to 2006 premiums.
The 2006 family premium for employee group insurance will be $12,000 a year. This a very important moment in HSA adoption history. When the “average” family monthly premium for employee group coverage has a “comma” in it, a vast amount of consumers will wise up fast. I enrolled a 35 year old couple with 2 children last night that was uninsured because they couldn’t afford $1,000 a month for health insurance. When I showed them HSA coverage for $250 a month that pays 100% after a total annual Out-Of-Pocket (OOP) of $5,200 to $3 million per person, they increased their premium to $292 a month by adding on $100 deductible on accidents then 100% coverage and increasing their lifetime max to $8 million per person. They are cash strapped right now because the wife is not working because the little boys will be 1 and 3 years old next month. She has a masters degree in health care and will be a perfect empowered consumer. Even when she goes back to work an employer will never choose the coverage on her children, trust me.
This mother will not go to work for another 4 years at least. By that time employers will have switched over to making the tax free HSA deposits. Michigan state law might insist that this mother is uninsurable. This will make her go crazy. Jerry Zandstra is running for the US Senate in Michigan to unseat Senator Debbie Stabenow (MI-D). He was on the Frank Beckman radio show and has personally ran into this Michigan law that makes their citizens uninsurable. When he quit his job to run for the Senate he was put to an 18 month COBRA for $1,300 a month. He applied to get our individual HSA health insurance (that was smart) for only $400 a month which would have been much better coverage but we had to decline him because of Michigan state law. He has a goofy hearing problem, that can’t be repaired anyway, and Michigan law will not let us put an exclusionary rider on this condition, like we do in all other states, and insure him for everything else. So he is paying $900 a month extra for dangerious COBRA insurance and putting his entire family in danger. If his wife or one of his 3 children would get cancer during the 18 month COBRA he will have 2 family members with health insurance issues instead of just his current goofy ear problem.
It would be nice to have a US Senator from Michigan that had a clue on Republican health care reform and the tax free HSA, better known as the Ownership Society. If the Republican Party sweeps Zandstra under the rug I will advise him to move to sunny Florida where Governor Jeb Bush and Florida law will allow him to purchase the security of our individual HSA insurance so he will be empowered to save for retirement health care expenses.
Florida needs every tool to bring in more workers that governor Jeb Bush can think of. The unemployment rate has dropped to an all time record low of 3.6%. Governor Jeb Bush has installed the tax free HSA option for state employees. When Florida state employees have $100,000 tax free HSA balances the Michigan state employees will throw a fit and demand more options, choices and freedoms, including tax free HSAs. If you are a state employee, move to Florida and go tax free. Jeb Bush said, “Floridians will be wise with their HSA balances.”
Back in 2000 when this chart was currect the cost for MSA Qualifying family health insurance was only $80 a month for a 30 year old couple and 2 children in Des Moines, Iowa. You should make a current cost of premiums for family health insurance Matthew. It could look like this in 2006 for a family of four:
Individual HSA Health Insurance……..$3,500/year
Group Employee Insurance……….$12,000/year
States’ Medicaid Programs………$25,000/year
The states could buy individual HSA insurance for the poor and give them a new Hummer and still cut their costs in half for Medicaid to the joy of the over taxed taxpayers. If I was Zandstra I wouldn’t use his ear problem as the example of Michigan law that makes their own citizens uninsuranble. I would use this young woman with a masters degree who has 2 little baby boys. It would be impossible for a man to be uninsurable, by Michigan law, with her medical problem. I would tie the young female medical problem into the example. Nobody wants to make young mothers pay way too much because of a female medical problem and stupid state law makers.
HSAs–because the healthcare system isn’t penny-wise and pound-foolish enough!