Obama Administration to kill health savings accounts

Various health care experts have noted that ObamaCare, which was created by an Administration and Party that opposes the very free market principles underpinning health savings accounts, actually made HSA’s an increasingly-popular option for Americans. HSA’s are simply tax-free savings accounts that allow people to use those pretax savings dollars for daily medical expenses and then only use the insurance policy for serious health problems or accidents. Today, more than 11 million Americans (including me) have an HSA.

Unfortunately, having already lost my insurance once thanks to ObamaCare, thanks to Obama Administration efforts to kill HSA’s, I may lose my insurance — which covers my wife and three young daughters — yet again as early as January 2017.

As health care expert Grace-Marie Turner notes:

The Obama administration has published final regulations that “will make it impossible to offer HSA-qualified plans in the future” in the ACA exchanges, according to HSA expert Roy Ramthun.

The Department of Health and Human Services published final regulations last month that will make it virtually impossible for plans offered in the exchanges to comply with both HSA and ACA rules.

The new rule governs the “standard benefit designs” for Bronze, Silver and Gold plans in the exchanges.  According to Ramthun’s analysis, the new rules mean that 1) the specified deductibles for the plans and out-of-pocket limits to be offered in the exchanges will be outside the requirements for HSA-qualifying plans, and 2) plans will have to cover services below the deductible which are not allowed under the legal definition of HSAs.

Ramthun believes it is unlikely any HSA plans will be offered in the exchanges in 2017 as a result.

I see ObamaCare as being quite similar to the housing market/US economy circa early 2007 (as portrayed in The Big Short for example). It is clear that something is wrong and the system is not sustainable, but no one knows when it will collapse. Clearly, ObamaCare is NOT working as promised. It is “covering” people primarily through the costly and ineffective Medicaid program.

It may take awhile to utterly collapse (and who knows what will happen then), but it is coming.