I hear that Bush will be presenting health savings accounts as one cure for our health care crises. There is much to be said about them and I hope the Dem rebuttal will include a discussion.
This is just a start. Hope the Dems can flesh it out an make a case.
(I have one as well as regular health insurance coverage....)
NOT COST EFFECTIVE
They are not designed and not efficacious for normal health care expenses which can be massive and capriciously timed.
George Bush's scheme for HSAs will not ameliorate the burden of health care costs to people who cannot afford insurance, i.e. they will not be able to receive health care. The citizens who are living paycheck to paycheck and have families to support cannot afford to put aside funds that would cover treatment for acute or chronic illness. As you know well, the median income is falling and families are deeply in debt.
(Congressional Budget Office; Federal Reserve Board)
"At the end of the third quarter, Americans had the worst ratio of household debt and mortgage debt to disposable income in over 25 years."
(U.S. Census Bureau; Bureau of Labor Statistics)
"Average household income for working families when adjusted for inflation was $46,058 in 2000 and has since declined to $44,389."
RATIONING
I was a nurse for twenty years and can assure you that there is now plenty of rationing. It took a giant leap in the 80s when health care delivery became a big business. Hospitals which had functioned in an efficient, altruistic way were suddenly taken over by corporations with huge increases in administrative costs.
Rationing is now based on ability to pay, with little or no factoring of urgency or projected outcome.
THE MYTH OF THE BEST HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IN THE WORLD
See: WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION
http://www.who.int/...
The claim that we have the best health care system in the world is untrue. We lag behind other industrialized nations in nearly every measure of health.
http://dll.umaine.edu/... (table 1, "healthcare system indicators and rankings")
It is also false that those countries that have adopted nationalized health care are failing their citizens/are perceived by their citizens as failing. I am a nurse and have traveled extensively in Europe. I always bring up health care in conversations and the responses I receive are uniformly positive. There are indeed horror stories of long waits for treatments and there is definitely rationing, but it is on basis of likelihood of positive outcome and not on ability to pay.
It is my experience that most doctors and health care workers favor a single payer plan. We are there in the trenches and see the abuses. Most of us view our work as a calling as well as a paycheck.
To conclude, HSAs do not begin to address the problems, they are a poor bandaid and a distraction.