The lovely Adrienne has a puzzling response to my recent writings on HSA's. Not that I'm expecting a CATO-wonk to agree with my writings, but this is just weird:
If your ultimate goal as a health policy wonk is to push for government-financed health care, then criticizing HSAs and the consumer-driven health care approach is your bread and butter, the overwhelming evidence that many people like having the HSA option notwithstanding.
Well, yeah. If yesterday I was paying to help sick, old people not go bankrupt and today I'm not, I'll probably be a happy camper. At least till I get sick and/or old. I'm sure the healthy young things populating HSA's are ecstatic to have lower premiums, but I'm similarly sure that HSA's are a bad idea. And since they will eventually destroy regular insurance if widely adopted, what they amount to is a redistributionist scheme in the exact wrong direction. Now, folks can argue that we should be tilting the paying field back towards the young and well, but whether or not HSA holders are happy about their plans really has nothing to do with it.
Also, Adrienne asks:
So, keeping in mind that all this health policy wonkery is really a debate about trade-offs, I pose this question to Ezra and his ilk: Would you rather see someone enrolled in an HSA/HDHP, or not have insurance at all?
Health care is certainly a debate about trade offs, but it's not a debate about that one. I would rather take what's behind door #3: universal health care, or at least an expansion of FEHBP. HSA's are not cheaper, or simpler, or otherwise better in any way that would make them the only alternative too an uninsured dystopia.
In other Adrienne posts, I'd meant to link awhile back to her critique of Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise. Since Bush's SOTU proposals are entirely cribbed from that book, a libertarian's take on it is well worth a read.
