Category: Health

Consumer-driven health care (CDHC) allows patients to manage some of the dollars they spend on health care. Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are a mechanism for them to do so.

Critics of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) have a litany of complaints. They are essentially the same complaints critics made a decade ago, at the dawn of the consumer-driven health care revolution. We now have evidence that consumer-driven health care works.

One of the peculiarities of the U.S. health care system is that the health plan most of us have is not a plan that we chose; rather, it was selected by our employer. Even if we like our health plan, we could easily lose coverage because of the loss of a job, a change in employment or a decision by our employer. These problems affect all Americans, but have the greatest impact on older workers, who are more likely to have health problems.

In his State of the Union address, President Bush devoted only a few sentences to health policy. But as the president was speaking, the administration released a five-page document describing health policy proposals so sweeping and bold, they are comparable in scope to Hillary Clinton's proposals of a decade ago. If the White House devotes the energy and political capital necessary to see them through, these reforms will leave a lasting mark on social policy in this country.

These are turbulent times for the Food and Drug Administration. The almost daily barrage of headlines questioning the safety of marketed drugs is probably depleting regulators' personal stocks of aspirin and antacids. But as they try to soothe their own pain, regulators must not forget their mission: to ease the plight of patients who need new medicines.

People displaced by hurricanes and floods in the Gulf Coast region will need health care. How will they get it? Right now, their options are limited.

Despite claims that there is a health insurance crisis in the United States, the proportion of Americans without health coverage has changed little in the past decade. The increase in the number of uninsured is largely due to immigration and population growth.

Today's health consumers are taking a more active role in diagnosing and treating themselves. With new tools to assist them – from Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) that allow patients to control some their health care dollars to an unprecedented wealth of information on Internet Web sites – consumers are more empowered than ever to understand their health condition(s) and participate in decisions about their treatment.

A citizen who lives in any one state can buy a toaster produced in any other state. The same citizen can also buy a lawnmower, a sofa, an automobile or virtually any other product — regardless of the state where the product is made.

This same freedom does not exist in the market for health insurance, however. 

Currently, 30 states have filial responsibility statutes that establish a duty for adult children to care for their indigent elderly parents. When enforced, the statutes can require the adult child to reimburse state programs or institutions that have cared for the indigent parent with either a one-time contribution or installment payments. Today, there is no uniform federal filial responsibility statute, and indeed, it may be difficult to enact one; but if even a few states began to more systematically enforce their laws, their action could help reduce the explosive growth of Medicaid's long-term care benefit.

Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are having an enormously beneficial effect on the design of health insurance in this country. Instead of an employer or insurer paying medical bills, more than one million people are managing some of their own health care dollars. Instead of relying solely on third-party insurance, people can now partly self-insure through these accounts. Yet despite their many advantages, HSAs can be made even better.

Medicaid is the largest single expenditure state governments face today. The country as a whole spends more on Medicaid than it spends on primary and secondary education. We also spend more on Medicaid (for the poor) than we spend on Medicare (for the elderly). And at the rate the program is growing, it is on a course to consume the entire budgets of state governments in just a few decades.

Every year, the Social Security and Medicare Trustees examine the short- and long-term health of these programs, and issue reports that highlight the financial burdens they will create for future generations if nothing is done to reform them. This year's reports show Social Security and Medicare will consume an ever-increasing portion of workers' incomes unless the government either breaks its promises to future retirees or makes significant changes to our elderly entitlement system.

Significant numbers of Americans are traveling across the Canadian border or using the Internet to buy prescription drugs at Canadian prices. These sales are illegal, but should they be? Is importing drugs the solution to high U.S. drug prices?

Consumers recently lost a money-saving opportunity when a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel voted against over-the-counter (OTC) access to the cholesterol-reducer Mevacor. This is the third time the FDA has turned down a request to make cholesterol lowering drugs available without a prescription, thus denying consumers the power to control an important aspect of their medical care.

Support is growing for a proposed solution to the rising number of uninsured Americans: a health insurance tax credit. If properly designed and implemented, a tax credit would allow uninsured, low income individuals and families to purchase affordable, quality health insurance.

While the idealists among us still hope for a major overhaul of our health care system, there are some minor reforms lawmakers could enact that would pay big dividends. Here are 10 suggestions along with the Web addresses of NCPA publications that discuss them in greater detail.

As the year ends, hundreds of thousands of American workers are scrambling to spend down their flexible spending accounts (FSAs). Some buy designer eyeglasses. Others schedule a last minute appointment for teeth cleaning. Some plan a doctor visit or diagnostic test of questionable value. In almost all cases, this year-end spending goes for items and services that are probably worth less than their cost.