Health Savings Accounts (HSAs)

Press Release: PricewaterhouseCoopers Identifies Top Seven Health Industry Trends of '07

> In Missouri, State Representative Dr. Rob Schaaf is calling for more competition in St. Joseph, a town with only one hospital: Heartland Regional Medical Center. He claims that HRMC's monopoly has artificially inflated medical costs, but hospital administrators say the facility makes only a small profit. Article

> California Pacific Medical Center workers say that the hospital has violated an …

Columnist John Berry at Bloomberg News analyzes why the Health Savings Accounts being pushed by the Bush administration won't have the desired effect on healthcare costs. Using a recent Health Affairs paper as a springboard, he interviews the authors and concludes that for many, the accounts wouldn't increase cost-sharing and might actually reduce it in some cases. The flaw is the tax-deductibility of HSA money, which can mean that the consumer's total liability is less in after-tax …

The Health Care Blog has a vivid rant today on Golden Rule, a perennially low-cost and shady provider of individual health policies that was acquired by United Health Care awhile back to make it an instant player in high-deductible health plans and health savings accounts. Apparently, Golden Rule claims to its customers that it has negotiated rates with providers, but its contracts with providers allow them to balance-bill the customer if the negotiated rate isn't enough--and why …

In yet another sign that consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs) are here to stay, CMS has announced that the plans will be available through Medicare in 2007. The CDHPs will be used in conjunction with medical savings accounts (MSAs) that are similar to health savings accounts (HSAs) but allow beneficiaries more flexibility. The program is designed to protect Medicare recipients from catastrophic costs and lower premiums. Medicare will even cover the amount below the deductible by …

> Mass. Governor Mitt Romney's administration releases a report that concludes that the state's new mandatory insurance plan could cost low-income residents as much as $140 a month. Article 

> A new study finds that healthcare and national security top the list of concerns for potential voters in the upcoming elections. …

> The best of the month's health policy blogging is up at Health Wonk Review. Article

> Technical problems and bureaucratic delays have slowed the drive toward an electronic medical record for everyone in the UK, the Financial Times reports. But the problems have more to do with who will ultimately have ownership of the data. …

President Bush spoke at the annual meeting of the American Hospital Association on Monday. The President said healthcare costs are spiraling out of control, noting that health insurance premiums have risen 75 percent in the last five years. Bush called for Congress to enact his package of healthcare reforms. The President asked lawmakers to extend his health savings accounts initiative to help reduce the burden of purchasing health insurance on consumers. He also stressed the need for …

The final day of the World Health Care Congress focused on the Bush administration's plans for reforming the health insurance market. Both Treasury Secretary John Snow and healthcare point man Allan Hubbard pushed the notion of high-deductible plans coupled with HSAs, although Hubbard admitted that there were significant challenges making them work for the chronically ill whom he said accounted for two to five percent of the population. Refreshingly, he invited disagreement from the …

Galen's Grace-Marie Turner is a leading advocate of consumer-directed health care, who'll be keynoting a big conference on that topic in San Francisco in May. I interviewed Turner to try to understand more about her ideas about HSAs and consumer care. There were lots of surprises. She doesn't think HSAs and HDHPs are solutions for everyone. She believes in the principles of population disease management. She believes in long term insurance contracts via groups. And she calls this all …