I just received an e‑mail notice from the GAO about a report issued last month on health savings accounts. From my cursory read, the report doesn’t seem to contain anything unpredictable or earth-shattering. Corroborating that impression is the fact that I cannot find where Sen. Max Baucus (D‑MT) — a longtime HSA opponent who commissioned the study from the GAO — has released any statement on it. (The GAO doesn’t release its reports until a couple of weeks after it delivers them to the congress-critter who made the request. That lets congress-critters be the first to spin release any GAO report.)
In all, the report brings to mind an observation by the Congressional Research Service that I included in a recent paper on HSAs:
Read the rest of this post →Some less healthy people may find HSA plans attractive because they enable them to circumvent the restrictions of managed care plans. Conversely, some healthy people may find them unattractive because they are very risk-averse; they would prefer to pay more for comprehensive insurance with low deductibles. Older people may find HSA plans attractive because of the tax advantages: being in higher tax brackets (since average earnings increase with age until people are in their 50s), their tax savings from contributions would be greater. People who are 55 but not yet 65 years of age would also be attracted by the additional catch-up contributions they may make. By the same token, younger people with low incomes may consider the HSA tax advantages inconsequential.