There are many reasons that McCain’s Vice Presidential pick resonates far better with likely voters than does Obama’s pick of Senator Biden (D-DE):

It gives Hillary Clinton supporters a positive reason to vote for McCain because he picked a woman, a deed (not a speech) which speaks directly to the roughly 50 percent of Hillary’s supporters […]

“A NBC/Wall St. Journal poll released this week found that only half of Clinton supporters are backing the Illinois senator, while 21 percent said they will support McCain. More than a quarter remain undecided.”
This poll came out before the news that Senator Obama had not even considered Senator Hillary Clinton for his running mate, he […]

2009 Maximum HSA Contributions:
Individuals: $3,000
Families: $5,950
Allowable Additional Catch up Deposit for those 55 and older: $1,000
(Contributions can be made as late as April 15th for the preceding year.)
Max. HSA Out-of-Pocket Amount in 2009:
$11,600 family
$5,800 individual
Min. HSA Deductibles in 2009:
$1,150 Individual
$2,300 Family

Two polls have Senator John McCain up by one point.  Both pollsters are generally viewed with a slight and opposite leaning bias, Rasmussen tilts Republican, and Zogby tilts Democratic.  Each pollster would undoubtedly object to this characterization, but this is the perception on the street.  The fact that both Zogby and Rasmussen have Senator McCain […]

The answer from AHIP.

One of my basic working theories about health care reform is that Americans cannot stand, and will not stand for, having access to care being rationed or their choices limited by any system designed to do just that — which in the case of HMOs — has meant their demise.
If on the other hand, you […]

So let’s get right to the point:  I predict Sen. Obama will lose the Presidential election.  Secondly, HSAs will continue to be the fastest growing type of health insurance and the fastest growing type of bank account and the fastest growing type of investment account.
Senator McCain’s win will cause shock and awe world-wide, and in […]

Click on the link below to watch the video, and the following is the transcript of the 38 second clip:
“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program.” (applause)
“I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent […]

The Security and Exchange Council (SEC) could not believe the central fact behind a new mutual fund called The Congressional Effect Fund, a public, registered mutal fund.
What fact?  This one:
 ”Since 1965, the S&P 500 index has gone up in price at an annualized rate of 17.6% on days when Congress is Out of Session, and […]

Craig Barrett, Chairman of Intel Corp. told the U.S. Senate Finance Committee it would be spending $1 billion a year on health care soon, and that “we’ve just been writing checks,” and that those days are coming to an end.
The President of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association noted that the employer has been “a […]

The New York Times ran an op-ed by Dr. Sandeep Jauhar, a cardiologist on Long Island, who is the canary in the mineshaft for doctor discontent.
Doctors are not happy with the state of medicine in the United States. Here is a short and partial list of general complaints:
“Stories of patients armed with medical […]

The globalization of health care treatment is underway, and Kiplinger’s Retirement Report is busily telling newly minted, or soon to be minted seniors how to get better, less expensive care abroad.
Kiplinger’s start with an entrepreneur whose health insurance became so expensive they made the rational economic decision to drop it — and instead use the […]

Individuals: $3,000
Families: $5,950
Allowable Additional Catch Up Deposit for those 55 and older: $1,000
Contributions can be made as late as April 15th for the preceding year.
December 1, 2008 is the last day this year to get an HSA qualified health plan, and make the maximum allowable deposit for 2008.

Hospital prices must be made transparent, because no market can work without clear prices for goods and services.
Can you walk into a Wal-Mart without seeing the price of anything for sale? No. Jiffy Lube? Giant? Safeway? Mejiers?
America has been lulled into accepting invisible pricing and huge insurance premiums for health […]

The Philadelphia Inquirer has done a great service by its recent article, “The cost of hospital care is difficult to pin down,” if for no other reason than highlighting the absolute absurdity of the pricing world hospitals live in — they will not tell you a price, and when you get the bill, it is […]

There is a common perception about Health Savings Accounts, and it goes something like this: health insurance costs are already so high, how can I pay for my health insurance and put $3,000 in a health savings account on top of the expensive premium?
The source of the $3,000 comes out of the cost of […]

Health Savings Accounts and The Government Trust: Government’s Bad View of Americans
By Ross Schriftman
Certain members of Congress and their think tank experts don’t think we Americans are smart enough to handle our own funds. No better example of this exists than the recent hearing held in Washington before the Subcommittee for […]

It has been predicted for some time, that HSA (Health Savings Account) enrollment would surpass HRA (Health Reimbursement Arrangement) enrollment, and according to UnitedHealth, among their clients, HSA enrollment is now at 1.38 million, larger than the 1.34 HRA enrollment.
This comparison includes all types of customers, employer, individuals and families. The total number of […]

MEMORANDUM

To: Coalition Members and Opinion Leaders
From: Dan Perrin
Re: […]

On April 30, 2008 House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and House Ways & Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Pete Stark (D-CA) released a report they requested from the General Accountability Office. Even though the report was delivered to the Chairmen on April 1, they chose to wait to release the […]

On April 30, 2008 America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) released its 4th annual survey of enrollment in HSA-qualified health plans. As of January, 2008, more than 6.1 million Americans are covered HSA insurance plans, a 35 percent increase over last year and almost double the number in 2006. This is an increase of […]

I hesitate to summarize this Milliman report, but believe it is a serious piece of work that needs wider distribution, so I have quoted the abstract below. The study “was based on six employer programs that offer their employees a choice of CDHPs (Consumer Driven Health Plans) or non-HDHPs (High Deductible Health Plans). These […]

MEMORANDUM

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To: Coalition Member and Opinion Leaders
From: Dan Perrin
Re: […]

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A new HSA tax that passed the Ways and Means Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives last week.

This tax will double your monthly administrative fees. HSA providers are not doubling HSA owners’ fees, we are being forced to do something we disagree with, if this bill passed by Congress becomes […]

MEMORANDUM

To: Coalition Members and Opinion Leaders
From: Dan Perrin
Re: […]

Please click here.

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To: Coalition Members and Opinion Leaders
From: Dan Perrin
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Employers considering introducing HSAs need to select a high enough deductible, to create a big enough drop in the plan premium, to free up enough cash to fund the account. The reason a high deductible plan is required by law is so that money which was going to the insurance company in the form […]

Employers must choose an HSA qualified plan with 100% coverage above the deductible. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont offers HSA qualified plans with 100% coverage after the deductible is met. It is no coincidence that 70% of all broker business in 2005 brought to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont was […]

When presenting HSAs to employees for the first time, employers talk about the amount of the deductible first. This mistake is guaranteed to poison the well against HSAs - and very difficult to recover from. (I learned this lesson the hard way. I came home and told my wife we had a new health […]

Among employers, the average contribution towards an employee’s health benefit is 73% of the cost, with the employee share at 27%.
Here is a simple rule of thumb for employers: An employer which decides to spend their health benefit contribution on a health insurance premium, instead of on a pre-tax deposit to their […]

Health Savings Accounts are different than Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRA) or Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA), and everyone must think differently about Health Savings Accounts to understand them, and to roll them out properly to their employees.

Here is a short and true story that may help illustrate how to think differently about HSAs. Last summer, […]

A recent study by Watson Wyatt clarifies how Health Savings Accounts reduce the rate of increase of cost of health plans for employers. Simply put, the study found employers with lower annual cost increases — in the 1% over two years range — had a high number of employees enrolled in consumer directed health […]

Unfortunately, the Senate did not vote on the Ensign Amendment to the U.S. Budget to allow individuals to who purchase HSA qualified health plans to deduct their premium costs from their taxes. The U.S. Senate passed the Budget (51-41) and therefore, there will be no vote.
It is more often than not that an amendment filed, […]

Today (March 13, 2008) Senator Ensign (R-NV) will offer on the floor of the U.S. Senate, to the Budget Resolution, an amendment to allow HSA Qualified Health Plans to be deductible for individuals whose employer does not provide health insurance.
As a practical matter, HSA qualified health plans are the most affordable health insurance for employees […]

One of the tactics that work against Democrats on the issue of health care reform is to let them over reach politically, so that they propose reforms that are too far reaching. This means they will empower the government to step in and interfere with citizens at the most basic level.
Clinton, for example, proposes […]

Karl Rove has weighed in on why Republicans should compete with the Democrats on health care. According to Politico:
“The RNC event also broached taking control of traditionally Democratic issues such as health care, with even Rove stressing a need for Republicans to start addressing the matter. Congressman Calvert described health care […]

Among serious policy experts and political operatives, when either Democrats or Republicans talk about reforming health care, providing for the uninsured and lower costs, their honest reaction is rolling of their eyes or snickering or a sad shaking of their head.
The reason that reforming health care in any meaningful way has failed — with the […]

After months of work to stop, and slow, and ultimately improve the Indian Health Reauthorization bill, Senator DeMint (R-SC) has lead HSAs to yet another legislative victory.
Senator DeMint (R-SC) conducted a negotiated withdrawal of his amendment to make the new, redesigned and richly funded Indian Health Reauthorization plan a pilot program, and in return, the […]

When Americans hear about politicians who want to increase the government’s role in our health care, everyone should understand what that means, and looking at the total level of government control in Canada is instructive.
In Saskatchewan, an Indian tribe’s desire to buy and operate an MRI machine was denied.
The MRI would perform scans for […]

Before the baby-boomers slam Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security like a run-away train — as in right now, today — 35 percent of the entire federal budget is spent on senior benefits, according to USA Today.
Among young Capitol Hill staff, seniors are known as the greedy-geezers.
The U.S. Taxpayer is paying $38,628 per senior household, per […]

BearingPoint released projections showing that various Presidential candidates’ health plans, if enacted, will push the number of Health Savings Accounts past 2012 projections of 12 million HSAs and $200 billion in account deposits.
There are very good reasons for this conclusion to be valid, assuming that the Democratic Party does not ban HSAs from being one […]

Lots of people, mostly opponents to HSAs state with all sincerity and earnestness that HSAs will not work for the Medicaid population — mainly because, to paraphrase President Bush, of the bigotry of soft expectations.
Turns out, HSAs for the Hoosier Medicaid eligible population are so popular in Indiana that they have pulled all advertising to […]

The last post to this blog was about the 2003 data showing that those seniors without Medigap supplemental coverage cost Medicare $1,628 per yer less, than those seniors with Medigap supplemental coverage.
More recent data from MedPAC, in their report titled, A Data Book: Healthcare spending and the Medicare program, June 2007, on page 65 […]

While some partisans are licking their chops over the opportunity to rain political fire from seniors down on President Bush’s long-term Medicare reform, the adults in Washington, D.C. know that reforms of Medicare are desperately needed, or the program will have catastrophic reform forced upon itself by the crush its financial obligations. Notwithstanding the […]

Socialized medicine, or a single payer system, means that there is one payer, and it’s the government.
But the government puts roadblocks to care in place, because when anything is free, it is over-used.
And because there is only so much money, and there is a higher demand for care than there is the capacity that the […]

The authors Dean Halverson and Wayne Glowac just self-published their “The Wave of Consumerism that will Change U.S. Business,” and thankfully the Manitowac Herald Times wrote a very well done article about the thesis of their book: as employers have adopted HSAs, employees have begun “asking more questions and asking for price information,” which “hasn’t […]

The debate about hospitals overcharging their patients and playing hide the ball with their prices is just beginning to gain traction. One of the elements feeding the fire on this issue is data about what hospitals charge vs. what it costs a hospital to deliver that service.
Medicare payments for a specific procedure accounts for […]

The jointly commissioned report on hospital prices, by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CALPERS) and the Pacific Business Group, deserves more attention.
Click here to download the study.
The heart of the summary of the study’s finding is contained in the CALPERS media release, quoted extensively below:
“A new study designed to uncover the key […]

The LA Times and the Palo Alto Daily News reported on a study on hospital prices commissioned by “the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the nation’s third-largest health benefits purchaser, and the Pacific Business Group on Health, which represents 50 large employers that spend $10 billion a year on healthcare for workers and retirees.” […]

One of the on-going concerns among critics of Health Savings Accounts is that the incentive to spend wisely on your health care needs, which is one of the key features of an HSA — really will become an incentive not to spend money on your health care or the health care of someone in your […]

Finally, we see in the mainstream media (in print in the Hartford Courant) that HSAs have helped the uninsured.Wow! This is real progress. The article did not say how HSAs have helped the uninsured, but, even still, it is great to see this progress. Here is how Health Savings Accounts help the […]

Today’s Investors Business Daily discusses a Hoover Institute report about the cost of health care in the United States.
There are couple of bullet points worth noting:

“Medicare already costs more per capita than any other industrial nation’s public medical program.”
Half of the $2 trillion dollars spent on health care per year is spent by the government.
Government […]

U.S. Senator Wyden (D-OR) and U.S. Senator Bennett (R-UT) went on the record in today’s Letter to the Editor section of the Wall Street Journal, clearly and simply stating in their own words that their bill preserves the Health Savings Account option for Americans. Their letter reads, in part:
“we do provide the option for […]

There is a difference between supporting a candidate, like Senator Obama, and turning out to vote for him. This was Senator Obama’s fate yesterday.
Some of Obama’s supporters thought, he is going to win anyway, so what if I don’t go vote, my one vote is not going to count.
The young people who were supporting […]

Blue Cross Blue Shield’s praise of Hillary Clinton’s health care plan, days before the New Hampshire primary (discussed yesterday) can now be clearly shown as counterproductive to Hillary Clinton.
The weekend Democratic debate was focus-grouped (if it is not a word, you know what I mean) by Frank Luntz for FOX News. As usual, Frank […]

It is unclear to me if the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association was really trying to help Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign by praising her health care plan, or whether they were damning Hillary with praise.
In an interview with ASI Health Ms. Alissa Fox, Vice President of Legislative and Regulatory policy for BCBSA praises Hillary Clinton’s […]

Spiritual Progessives Weigh in on Health Care Reform & Pound Dems
John P. Geyman has written an article titled “Missing the Boat on Health Care?” for Tikkun, a website that creates a network for spiritual progressives. The article is very well-written and is insightful about the political opportunity for health care reform. The website […]

Sally Pipes, in defense of freedom, has critically examined the Body Mass Index which is used to project the percentage of obese Americans, and therefore, create government policies to police our eating.Given that her op-ed was published in the Washington Post the day after Christmas, you may have missed it, so here are a few […]

The Boston Globe’s poll of likely voters in the January 8, 2008 Presidential Primary in New Hampshire shows bright blue and red lines between the Democratic and Republican voters: 80% of Democratic voters believe providing health care is the government’s responsibility versus 30% of likely Republican voters.
The importance of the poll findings is two-fold: one, […]

It takes a whole lot of courage to appear before the Pittsburgh City Council, as University of Pittsburgh Medical Center general counsel Robert Cindrich did, and tell them that the Medical Center’s tax-exempt, IRS-approved non-profit status is not contingent on giving any charity care. As Cindrich put it, “We are not obligated by law to […]

AHIP’s new study of the individual insurance market shows the gains by HSAs among families who buy their own insurance, finding that HSAs have a 23 percent market share. Among single individuals, 10 percent have bought an HSA.
According to Insurance News:
“Health savings accounts (HSAs) continue to be a popular coverage option among consumers in […]

How do you cut taxes, increase the national savings rate, and sock money away for an aging population’s growing health care needs? This idea was proposed in ON LINE Opinion today in Australia. [Note to reader, in Commonwealth countries the word “scheme” is used instead of “insurance,” although many Americans would likely agree that the […]

The following are excerpts from President Bush’s Speech yesterday in Fredericksburg, Virginia where he spoke at length about health care and the need for further reform. Significantly, President Bush talks about the lack of large-scale consumerism in health care today, and why it is needed to help self-correct the health care market place:
“Part of […]

The State of Indiana is pushing Health Savings Accounts, and the personal responsibility that goes with them, into the realm of helping those who cannot afford health insurance to be able to get coverage, and the funds needed to meet the deductible for that insurance coverage, in a new program called “Personal Wellness and Responsibility […]

In the solid Blue Democratic state of Wisconsin, HSAs have serious political traction. In a recent Badger Poll that ranked health care as the number two issue of concern for the citizens of Wisconsin (taxes ranked first), the poll asked respondents about solutions to the health care crisis. There is a strong consensus […]