HSAs (Health Savings Accounts): One more Republican scam

From: HSAs are not the cure St. Petersburg Times editorial 02/07/06. Noting that Bush argues HSAs will help hold down medical costs through consumer choice, they write:

But the evidence on how health savings accounts are operating so far is telling a different story. About 3-million people already have enrolled in the program. Of those, only about half have put any money in the account. Just as with other "ownership society" benefits, you can only reap the tax savings if you're wealthy enough to put dollars aside.

Then there's the study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute that found people with consumer-driven health care are more likely to spend a larger share of their income on medical expenses, and less likely to seek the routine preventive health care they need. Moreover, for consumers to have an impact on pricing levels for medical services, information on quality and cost has to be readily available. But it's not. A single doctor might have thousands of different billing categories for various procedures and a hospital, tens of thousands. For an average consumer, trying to compare prices is virtually impossible. ...

Health savings accounts are as much about letting the employer off the hook and providing a new tax loophole for those in the highest tax brackets as about providing good medical coverage for workers. If these accounts are part of the answer to this nation's health care affordability crisis, they are a very small part indeed.