ATR Endorses "Health Savings Account Expansion Act of 2009"

From Benjamin Pacini on Monday, November 16, 2009 5:13 PM

ATR sent the following letter to Congressman Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) today:

On behalf of Americans for Tax Reform, I write to congratulate you for sponsoring H.R. 3971, the “Health Savings Account Expansion Act of 2009,” and to inform you of Americans for Tax Reform’s decision to officially endorse it. I also write to encourage other Members of Congress to support this legislation.

H.R. 3971 represents a needed tax improvement. For far too long, Americans have been taxed for getting their insurance personally instead of getting insurance through their employer. By equalizing the tax advantage between employer-based and personal insurance, this bill would allow Americans to maintain portable health insurance.

HSAs allow individuals to take personal responsibility for their health care. By so doing, this allows them to choose what coverage they get, safely protecting their care from government mandate. It also allows each family to tailor their health care plan to their specific needs.

This legislation would encourage individuals to save money for catastrophe, and would help them be responsible for their health care choices, eliminating the waste and inefficiency that plague the current system. This would restore the market’s ability to foster innovation (both cost-saving and life-saving) by putting the consumer in a position to care about the quality and cost of medical procedures. In other words, this legislation allows individuals to have ‘skin in the game.’

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HSAs ensure responsible spending by participants. They encourage customers to shop around and find the best price for the services they need. If Democrats were really concerned with "bending the cost curve" they would place more responsibility in the hands of consumers. Their current plan, creating a public option, only exasperates the problems present in the current system.
>> Ezra Tuesday, November 17, 2009 10:39 AM Report Comment

The left and right have two fundamentally different solutions to bending the cost curve. The way that the right wants to do it is through competition--which HSAs do best. The left's plan is to use their monopsony buying power. Monopsony is like a monopoly, only instead of one seller and many buyers, you have one buyer, and many sellers (most unions are monopsonies). Using this power, the government could force companies to lower their prices. This stifles innovation. After exploiting this monopsony power, the government has one other cost cutting technique: rationing. It happens all the time in Britain.
>> Jeffrey Hosten Tuesday, November 17, 2009 12:06 PM Report Comment

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ATR Endorses "Health Savings Account Expansion Act of 2009"

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