My back and forth with Matthew Holt on HSAs continues…

In my previous post, I wrote that Holt’s critique of my paper made it appear that he hadn’t read the paper very closely. As I understand his response, he is “not very interested” in doing so. He is already convinced that we need “compulsory social insurance” with “incentives for providers that induce them to provide cost-efficient care.” Fair enough.

Or maybe not. Holt continues to misrepresent my views and what that paper says. He variously accuses me of believing that his owning an HSA invalidates his criticisms of HSAs; believing that health insurance is unnecessary; and having no interest in (or proposals for) reducing the burden of expensive flat-of-the-curve medicine. These and other errors could have been avoided by carefully reading my paper.

Since this exchange seems to be bearing little fruit, I will not take it much beyond the following brief summary of my actual views on these issues.

There are some medical expenditures that should not be covered by insurance. Beyond a certain point, problems of moral hazard, fraud, low-quality care, medical errors, and loss of control over one’s medical decisions tend to overwhelm the benefits of additional coverage. (This occurs whether the excess coverage comes through the private sector or the public sector, and even if the state limits supply.) Consumers do a better job than government of establishing coverage up to that point and then stopping. That argues for letting consumers control all the dollars involved, which is at the heart of my large HSAs proposal.

In other words, if you want to subsidize uninsurable medical expenses, you don’t want to do it through insurance. You would do less damage by giving them cash.