HSAs Have ‘Fundamental Flaws,’ Columnist Writes
A "growing number of businesses are expected to stop offering costly insurance benefits and push workers instead" into high-deductible health plans linked with health savings accounts in an effort to reduce costs, but HSAs have "fundamental flaws," Los Angeles Times columnist David Lazarus writes. According to Lazarus, although supporters maintain that HSAs "give people more control over their health care spending" and make them "savvier medical consumers when they're more aware of the costs of treatments and procedures," critics maintain that HSAs favor healthier and higher-income individuals and can "increase medical costs for everyone else by requiring people to take out high-deductible insurance policies."
One of the problems with HSAs is the "notion that affordable insurance plans will be available to meet health care needs," Lazarus writes.
A second problem is that individuals with HSAs might "be tempted to invest their money in mutual funds offering the best potential for capital gains," but "would you want your health care nest egg to take the same beating your retirement fund took over the last year?" Lazarus asks. He writes, "Want to help working families and cash-strapped businesses? Extend Medicare to everyone, with employers and workers covering the tab with tax money, rather than premiums, deductibles and copays," adding, "It may not be a perfect solution, but it's a lot better than most of the alternatives out there" (Lazarus, Los Angeles Times, 2/4).
