The problem with medical savings accounts...

[benEzra]

Sorry, just have to vent a little here. Our 7 y.o. son is a special needs kid (22q.11.2 deletion, aka DiGeorge Syndrome/VCFS) so we are up to our eyeballs in medical bills and medical debt. Due to high-deductible insurance and the fact that we make enough to pay taxes (and hence don't qualify for Medicaid/SSI benefits, even though our son is classed as SSI disabled), we pay a lot of our son's medical expenses out of pocket. At least $50,000 in the past seven years, maybe more. I just had to pawn a rifle today (the first one I ever bought, owned it since 1989) to pay for back-to-back specialist visits this week for our son.

I've seen some repubs push the line that making patients pay out of pocket as much as possible will greatly slash the cost of health care, by reducing the number of expensive tests and elective procedures that people undergo. That's bogus. I can see how MSA's might be a decent idea if you are healthy and don't use your health insurance much (get a high-deductible insurance plan you'll never use, and pay for the small stuff out of pocket), but since most health care expenditures are generated by those who are NOT healthy (duh!), the wheels fall off the MSA wagon when you look at cases other than the repub MSA poster people.

As I said, we pay a LOT of our medical expenses out of pocket. You know what? We DON'T skip the big stuff, the expensive tests and procedures that repubs say MSA's will slash. We skip the small stuff, the kind of preventive health care that you won't die without in the short run. I haven't been to a primary care physician, or a dentist, in 3 years (I take pretty good care of myself and have good teeth, good thing). My wife needs a root canal and a crown but we can't afford it. But when I had symptoms of a nasal tumor a few months ago, we paid for two $800 CAT scans to rule it out--out of pocket expenses be damned--because cancer can KILL you. You can let a checkup slide, skip a few dental cleanings, but if your life may be on the line, you will get the damn test and figure out how to make ends meet later.

So the repubs' idea about MSA's is the opposite from how it actually happens; we make decisions on health care based not on how much a procedure costs, but on the magnitude of the consequences of skipping it. So if you make patients pay more out of pocket, you won't drive expenses down by getting people to skip expensive procedures; you'll drive expenses UP by getting people to skip preventive care, meaning that they'll be more likely to need something expensive down the road--and they'll go for it, cost be damned, if their life is on the line.

OK, rant off. Back to our regularly scheduled life...

[amitten]

1. Just another flawed Republican economic theory. Right up

there with "trickle down" economics.

What has "trickled down" to you, lately? Oh, really? Well, you know how that saying goes...shit runs downstream...;-)

[SharonAnn]

2. On what you "think" the magnitude of consequences of skipping it are.

Unfortunately, there are times when we can't really anticipate the magnitude of the consequences.

Delayed dental care can result, occasionally, in a bloodstream infection that settles in the heart and damages/destroys a heart valve and damages the heart and circulatory system. Maybe it's caught after it's in the heart and you're hospitalized with antibiotic IVs for a month or so, but the damage can be permanent.

What we think is a cold ends up to be a sinus infection and then pneumonia. Hospitalized for agressive treatment so that the pneuonia doesn't kill you.

That's the reason preventive care and early care are good things.

[Orrex]

3. "That's the reason preventive care and early care are good things."

That's a great argument! It strikes right to the heart of cost/benefit analysis so beloved by Conservatives. If they could be made to see the value--financial and personal--of early/preventative care, they would argue for subsidized healthcare as strongly as any Liberal.

Too bad their blinders are so firmly attached...

[bunkerbuster1]

4. MSAs are band-aids.

the little teeny-weenie ones you might use for a tiny cut.

They're no solution, they're just a small part of a really lousy healthcare system that has to be upended, destroyed, and rebuilt on a single-payer plan.

And any Democrat running today who doesn't back that idea deserves to lose.

[napi21]

8. Obviously your situation is a ig problem, but there's another BIG

one too! Lots of people don't have the $$ to put into a MSA! They're making barely enough to get by week to week.

In my opinion, MSA's are nothing but another tax break for the wealthy!

[bunkerbuster1]

9. well, yeah. It's a tax break.

Tax breaks for MSAs aren't a specifically bad thing, they're just a tax break. It is what it is.

It is not a solution to anything, and it's grotesquely dishonest for the Chimp-in-Cheif to pretend as if it were.

[BlueEyedSon]

5. We need a national health plan. The only way "insurance" works

is to maximize the risk pool.

[ThomCat]

6. Health savings accounts are a new form of Euthenasia.

1. Get everyone out of risk pools.
2. Make everyone solely responsible for their own medical costs.
3. Watch the elderly and disabled sink and become bankrupt.
4. Watch people die because they can't afford care.

And suddenly you have a society of just the young and healthy.

They're just trying to weed us out. Anyone who isn't healthy is considered dead weight, a drain on society.

[sui generis]

7. they only benefit you if you have a crystal ball

or enough income to afford setting aside.

If you want to reduce medical costs, reduce the cost of medicine, not the cost of insuring it.

That's that part that republicans don't get, or rather, they DO get it, but big pharma's and insurance's right to profit (and growth) exceeds your right to health.

[EC]

10. Their cure to the problem is just another strawman.. n/t