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[Note: Letter published in the Washington Post on 7/22/98]
July 14, 1998
Letters to the Editor
Washington Post
To the Editor:
Robert Novak’s article ("Republican Wobble on Health Care," July 13, 1998) misleads your readers about the potential of medical savings accounts (MSAs) to improve our health care system. The article – citing the father of medical savings accounts – inaccurately asserts that these anti-consumer accounts have extended health insurance to 17 percent of the nation’s uninsured (and 31 percent of California’s uninsured). This would translate into 7 million Americans (and 2 million Californians).
In fact, the number of previously uninsured Americans now covered by MSAs can be counted in the thousands, probably about 17,000 (if insurer estimates are correct). No wonder the number of uninsured Americans continues to grow and is approaching 42 million. It is time for Congress to recognize MSAs for what they are – a marketplace flop, a mechanism that benefits the healthy (at the expense of the sick who pay higher premiums), and a drain on the federal treasury.
Congress should enact legislation that makes health insurance affordable to all Americans -- rich and poor, healthy and sick, young and old. MSAs will not achieve the goal of affordable health insurance.
Sincerely,
Gail Shearer
Director, Health Policy Analysis
Washington Office
