Fwd: Medicare: Tax-Free Health Savings Accounts Rejected

[Guest guest]

" luckypig "

Tue, 28 Oct 2003 10:52:40 -0500

Medicare: Tax-Free Health Savings Accounts

Rejected

 

 

> washingtonpost.com

>

> Health Savings Accounts Rejected

> Medicare Negotiators Rebuff Conservatives on Tax Break

>

> By Amy Goldstein

> Washington Post Staff Writer

> Tuesday, October 28, 2003; Page A04

>

> Congressional negotiators struggling to find a compromise on Medicare

> prescription drug legislation have rejected a $163 billion plan favored by

> House conservatives that would create a major tax break for Americans who

> set up savings accounts for their medical expenses, according to

> congressional sources.

>

> The sources said that the lawmakers participating in the secret

> negotiations have, in recent days, abandoned the most expensive of several

> tax provisions the House grafted onto its bill to redesign Medicare.

> Senators had warned that the issue would ruin the chances that a final

> agreement could pass in that chamber.

>

> The tax-free savings accounts, known as " health savings security accounts "

> (HSSAs), are tangential to the main goals of separate House and Senate

> bills that would add the first drug benefits and carve out a larger role

> for private plans in the nation's health insurance system for the elderly

> and disabled. But the tax question reflects the delicate balance

> negotiators are attempting as they seek an agreement palatable to

lawmakers

> on the left and the right who bring longstanding agendas to the issue of

> Medicare.

>

> Yesterday, lawmakers participating in daily bargaining sessions

> acknowledged that, even as they strive to finish their work this week,

they

> have not resolved a few elemental disagreements between the House and

> Senate positions. The most polarizing is whether Medicare should be

> fundamentally restructured, as House Republicans want, so that the

> traditional insurance program must compete for patients against private

> health plans.

>

> Other persistent differences, lawmakers said, include whether Americans of

> all ages should be able to import U.S.-manufactured drugs back from

Canada,

> where medicine costs less, and whether Congress should place unprecedented

> reins on Medicare expenditures in the future if the program's costs

> increase more rapidly than expected. Yesterday, the Bush administration's

> top budget official, Joshua B. Bolten, met with negotiators as they

haggled

> over ways to constrain the program's spending.

>

> The White House will attempt to inject momentum into the issue Wednesday,

> when President Bush is to deliver another speech on Medicare in the White

> House Rose Garden. His press secretary, Scott McClellan, yesterday

> reiterated that Bush considers the issue a high priority.

>

> The idea of tax-free savings accounts for medical expenses has been a goal

> of conservatives for more than a decade. In 1993, as President Bill

Clinton

> was assembling his ill-fated plan to restructure the nation's health care

> system, conservatives proposed medical savings accounts as an alternative

> to help more Americans afford care.

>

> Proponents say the accounts give people greater control over their health

> care and incentives to seek only medical services they need. Critics say

> the idea would reward mainly people affluent enough to set aside money for

> medical expenses, removing them from the traditional health insurance

> market so that coverage would cost more for people who are poor and sick.

>

> The idea was tried on a limited basis under a four-year experiment

Congress

> approved in 1997; it attracted fewer people than predicted, most of them

> already insured.

>

> The House GOP has included such accounts every time it has passed Medicare

> bills in recent years, but this year's version would have been more

> generous and available to more people. The HSSAs, the idea eliminated by

> the negotiators, would have accounted for $163 billion of $174 billion

> worth of tax provisions in the House bill. The negotiators have not

removed

> a similar but smaller form of tax break called " health savings accounts. "

>

> Last month, 13 House conservatives issued a letter in which they vowed to

> reject a final agreement unless it contained several elements, including

> the tax provisions. Some of those lawmakers yesterday declined to say

> whether the negotiators' decision would cost their support.

>

> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26501-2003Oct27.html

>

 

 

 

 

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