Are HSA Rules Changing?? Call Your Congress(wo)man

Well if you have a high deductible health plan and you are reading this post, you are not alone in the head scratching department.  And if you are like me you here all these little sound bites; like the possibility of HSAs being made illegal, or restrictions being placed on contributions, or diminimized tax treatment of HSAs, or who knows what else, may be making you a bit nutty too.   Shoot, make up your own stress inducing limitation on HSAs and there’s a chance somebody somewhere in Congress who does not believe you can or should have the right to manage your own health care has given it some thought. 

I’m not going to speculate here about how HDHPs and HSAs are going to be impacted by the congressional hairball being coughed up in Washington at this very moment, but rather to urge you to stand up for yourself and your family’s right not to have several $ trillion spent on your behalf in the name of what the United States Government believes is good for your health.

I wrote the headline for this article this morning with the intent to come back to it this afternoon and draft the post.  As luck would happen, in between, I took a bike ride around my basement and heard Mike Gallagher mention a way through which those who want to protect their rights regarding health care can contact their congressmen and congresswomen.  As the headline suggests, I would advocate a call to your elected representatives in Washington, but if you are really in a hurry, you can go through “Free Our Health Care Now” and send email letters to your Senators and Representatives in about 2 minutes by clicking on the link above.  What I loved about it was that it pulled my Senators’ and Representative’s email addresses for me so I didn’t have to look them up.  And as a bonus for the exceptionally lazy (that would be me) it even drafted a letter to my congressmen that I could then either accept or edit any way I wanted.  Total flippin’ no brainer.

Hey, it doesn’t matter if you call or write.  What matters is that you call or write.  Use your voice today!

Free Our Health Care WOW!!

Over the past almost 60 days, the link to the “Free Our Health Care NOW” petition has been the 5th most clicked link out of the 200 or so postings on this site.  Which means you (if you were one of them) helped contribute to the over 1,012,000 signatures to date on the petition.  I first stumbled across the petition in Forbes Magazine in early June, and several radio talk show hosts have helped blow the doors off this thing by encouraging folks to give some thought to their health care as well as the general and future health of our nation. 

Like a snowball down the side of a mountain, the engagement of the American public in the discussion around their future health care has been profound in my opinion, and the snowball has an enormous amount of momentum which will hopefully influence, in a positive and productive manner, the ultimate outcome of the debate.

If you have already taken a look at the petition and it represents a vision of healthcare with which you approve, I would encourage you to share it with as many friends and colleagues as possible (please feel free to send the link to this posting or straight to the petition).  If you have not yet seen the petition, have a look below and you can take it on your own from their.  Be a part of keeping  the momentum going through September and as long as the debate continues.

Over 1 million signatures.  I would say this is definitely a Free Our Health Care WOW kind of moment.

http://www.freeourhhealthcarenow.com

The Principles vs. The Realities of Obama’s Health Care Initiative.

On one hand I applaud Mr. Obama on the drive and energy he is putting forward to “get something done” in Washington around health care.   I think to get things done the furnace has to be stoked and the heat turned up on Congress to work through the issues diligently to a greater good.  I think this is a good tactic.

I also applaud Mr. Obama for his stated principles for providing health care to americans.  Better product, lower cost, everybody covered, portability, if you like what you have you can keep it, etc.

The problem is what is coming out of the other end of the sausage grinder.  And this is where the American public needs to be on their toes.  The reality is that what has come out of the House of Representatives thus far, does not achieve the goals of the stated principles.  And while the Senate package seems to be a little closer to the mark, neither is in the ballpark yet.

There is an enormous distance to travel before this deal is done and we, as Americans, need to do our job and keep the pressure on our politicians.  Otherwise we can expect extraordinary pain with very little, if any gain.

If you have not read the petition, please read it.  If you agree with it and have not signed it, please do.  

http://www.freeourhhealthcarenow.com

What is the Cost of an Ounce of Health Care Prevention? Can You Say OINK?

I was reading an article this morning wherein Nancy Pelosi is doing some shadow dancing around the costs of the Democrat proposed health care reform.  She was saying that  the CBO would indeed have to score the cost of the proposed plan (good), BUT they need to rely on other sources as well to help validate those costs ,and basically what I read was that if they didn’t like what they got back, they would use a little Congressional pixie dust to  give some quantitative weight to things not scored in the plan.

Specifically, she wants to give credit to savings derived from prevention.  A nice concept for sure, however, far be it for Congress to value an ounce of prevention.  Well maybe not so far, because they are going to lick their big ole fingers and hold them up to the wind, and if they don’t get struck by a bolt of lightening in the process, they will divine for all of us suckers, the value of an ounce of prevention.

I think I might need to have an ounce of Cutty Sark, which is what my Grandmother took every day as her ounce of prevention, and she lived well up into her 80s.

But what’s missing for me in the honorable madam speaker’s comments is the “HOW” in this equation.  I have yet, (and I may be deaf) to hear in the plans put forth by Democrats, what is going to motivate individuals to actually do anything to prevent chronic (and other illnesses).  I am one hundred percent in favor of preventative measures when it comes to health care.  That is why I have a high deductible health plan with a health savings account.   But let me ask again, how do plans on the table address prevention?  Because without the “how” HOW in the world can they try to put educated assessment of what it is worth; prevention that is?

My HDHP pays for preventative check ups, my big nasty deductible is damn good motivation for me to go outside and ride my bike as soon as I get this article posted, and my HSA gives me pretty good motivation to put money aside for my family’s health care needs both present and the future.  Is it perfect?  No, but it has helped my family reduce our health care costs overall, and we are more focused on the “health” part than the “care” part than we used to be under my old company’s smorgasboard plan where we were basically pigs at a trough. 

Well now there are a bunch of Congressional pigs lined up the trough of power.  Many of them don’t want you and me to be able to take care of ourselves through consumer driven health care plans.  So they are talking about changing the rules (lower contribution limits, they don’t trust us so they want to make us jump through more hoops with regard to substantiation of withdrawals from our HSAs, higher penalties for non-medical withdrawals from our HSAs–stuff like that).  

I fall into the category of folks who say, “if you think the Government is going to take care of you, you’ve got another thing coming.”  I hope this is healthy skepticism and maybe it even qualifies as an ounce of prevention.

If you want to contribute an ounce of prevention click here to read about a pragmatic approach to health care and to sign the “Free Our Health Care NOW” petition.  On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing it represents, “one small step for man…”

Free Our Health Care NOW! And Your HSA Can Help.

Since I stepped out of the Corporate morass a couple of years ago, I have become much more tuned in to my health and to reading my body.  No, I don’t have the Constitution tattooed on my body, I just pay closer attention to it.

While riding my bike this morning I was reading the latest edition of Forbes magazine (“free” courtesy of my airline miles–hey at least they are good for something), I came across Steve Forbes brief article encouraging anyone and everyone to sign the “Free Our Health Care NOW” petition.  It is a grass roots campaign to enable little people like me and maybe you to make our collective voices heard.

After the bike ride I perused the petition at freeourhealthcarenow.com and signed it.   It is logical, pragmatic, and supports a position that I too believe in.  It is short, it is simple, it takes less than 5 minutes to read, digest, and sign. 

Check it out, sign it if it makes sense and forward it to a friend.

http://www.freeourhhealthcarenow.com

Your HSAcan help free you too.  Please check out any of the other posts on this blog or check out www.hsaeducator.com  and learn more.