Obama Advisor Advocates HSAs
Roger Ferguson, president and CEO of TIAA-CREF and a member of the Transition Economic Advisory Board assembled by President-elect Barack Obama, includes the following in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:
Encourage health-related savings. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a couple that retires today will need from $200,000 to $635,000 to pay out-of-pocket health-care costs (above Medicare). Few private-sector employers offer workers an account to save for such costs. Last year's agreement among the Big Three automakers and the United Auto Workers to establish tax-free trusts for worker health is an approach gaining favor among academic institutions. Now Congress needs to enable people with these accounts to leave any unused balance to heirs. This will encourage people to hold on to their savings until the last years of their lives, when health-care money is most needed.
Individualism. Self reliance. Individual responsibility. Who knows. Obama might turn out to be better than so many of us fear.
Congress already has enabled HSA balances to be passed on to their heirs.
Now we need to let UAW purchase low cost portable HSA health insurance in the free and open market. A 30-year-old couple and 2 children can purchase HSA insurance in Lansing, Michigan for $207 a month from America’s oldest health insurance company. The $800 a month savings could go into the UAW workers’ tax free HSA instead of Blue Cross of Michigan’s bank account.
The 30-year-old UAW worker could arrive at 65 years of age with more in the HSA than the $635,000 the article says will be required.
Besides, employers should not be choosing the insurance on employee’s children. Employers always pick insurance that children lose when they are no longer full time students. What happens when a child is diagnosed with MS like my daughter?
Employer-based health insurance terminating sick children’s health insurance is depressing at best and deadly at worst.
Save premium, eliminate taxes, build wealth, become informed and empowered. Switch to the security of America’s oldest health insurance company and go tax free with an HSA.
America’s 1st HSA enrolled at http://www.save101.com