Health Savings Sabotage

Democrats have made affordable health care a mainstay of their election agenda, but apparently only if you're willing to get insurance through the government. Witness their stealthy assault on Americans who prefer the private-sector option of Health Savings Accounts. This week, the House passed legislation that included a provision to require every HSA transaction be reviewed and verified as a legitimate medical expense. Democrats say this is to ensure that consumers are using their tax-free withdrawals for a knee replacement, rather than a new iPod. In reality it adds a layer of bureaucracy that could sharply reduce the appeal and cost savings of HSAs.

A key player here is Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Pete Stark, whose main purpose in politics is to give the U.S. a government-run health-care system. He is a known opponent of HSAs – once comparing them to "weapons of mass destruction" – because they introduce more individual choice into the health-care marketplace.

Pushing for the provision was a company called Evolution Benefits, which has patented a system for the substantiation of health-care expenses. Evolution's lobbyist, John McManus, was the former staff director of the Health Subcommittee under Republican Bill Thomas. The company first lobbied for the HSA provision, then withdrew its support when Republicans began to focus on its role. But Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel helped make sure the provision was in the bill, which passed largely on partisan lines.

Liberals claim HSAs are insurance for the "healthy and wealthy," but there's little evidence this is true. How they work is that an employer or individual first buys a cheap, high-deductible policy for large, unexpected medical costs. Then the insured can open an HSA and make an annual contribution up to $2,900 for an individual in 2008, which he can use to pay for ordinary health needs. Savings not spent in any given year can build up tax-free.

This is health insurance many Americans can afford, and it doesn't force those who have better use for their scarce dollars to buy gold-plated insurance with special-interest mandates (cover the chiropractors!) that Democrats want to force on everyone. HSAs also give consumers more reason to care about prices, bringing much-needed market discipline.

Since HSAs were created in December 2003, 3.2 million HSA accounts have been opened, covering 4.5 million Americans. Nearly a third of new HSA users previously had no insurance and bought coverage on their own. Thirty-three percent are small businesses that had not previously offered coverage to their employees. Isn't this what good progressives claim to want?

Apparently not if it means a free market in health insurance. Having lost the policy argument when HSAs were created, Democrats are now trying to kill them with regulatory subterfuge. The new scheme purports to ensure that money saved tax-free in an HSA is actually used for health expenses. But this is a nonproblem: Any withdrawal from an HSA is already subject to a federal tax audit, just as individual tax returns are. In any case if people cheat on their HSAs, they are only cheating themselves. When a medical expense arises below the insurance deductible, they will be the ones paying for it, whether from their HSA or another bank account.

Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, decry the high and rising costs of health care, including insurance "overhead." Mr. Stark and his friends want to impose the same bureaucratic overhead even on spending that consumers do with their own money. The Senate should stop this one dead in its tracks.

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Australian (NSW) public hospital kills cop

Concord Hospital and a leading specialist have been secretly [SECRETLY?? How obnoxious!] disciplined by the Health Care Complaints Commission after a patient was found dead on the floor in the middle of the night. Widow Jacqui Day complained about the treatment of her husband Andy, a top undercover police officer, after an anonymous letter from nurses at the hospital said: "Mr Day should not have died." Detective Inspector Day, 45, was being treated for pneumonia and died when his oxygen tube fell out of its wall tap for the second time in six hours.

After an inquiry behind closed doors, the HCCC found that Concord, a major teaching hospital, had provided below standard care to Mr Day "in a number of respects", The Daily Telegraph can reveal. The commission also found that Professor Matthew Peters, the head of respiratory medicine at the hospital, had "departed from the acceptable standard of care" in two areas. He was referred to the Medical Board's conduct committee for "counselling" for not transferring Mr Day to the intensive care unit and for failing to appropriately monitor his oxygen needs.

Mrs Day will today appear before the Government's special commission of inquiry into the state's ailing health system, sitting at Concord, to demand answers and ask why the complaints procedure is shrouded in such secrecy. There was evidence before the HCCC from four medical experts that Mr Day should have been moved to intensive care. Professor Peters told the inquiry there were no intensive care beds available and Mr Day did not want to be moved.

The commission's report, obtained by The Daily Telegraph, said there had been at least one bed available on five of the eight days Mr Day was in hospital and there was no record in the medical notes of Mr Day's comments. "In 2008, you can't leave your loved one in a public hospital on their own," Mrs Day said yesterday, adding that all adverse HCCC findings should be made public. "I still do not know how a 45-year-old man can be admitted to hospital and die on the floor in the middle of the night."

It will be Mrs Day's first visit to the hospital since her husband died at 3.30am on November 14, 2003, after eight days treatment. The HCCC took 18 months on its inquiry. The anonymous letter from nurses was sent to the coroner who conducted a 2006 inquest into Mr Day's death. The cause of death was recorded as a lack of oxygen "due to displacement of oxygen supply", however coroner John Abernethy found Mr Day's condition was so serious he would have died even with different care.

HCCC executive officer Kim Swan said legislation limited what the commission could release to the public. The Medical Board did not return calls. Professor Peters is overseas.

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