The following is a letter sent by writer Scott Holleran of Glendale, California to the New York Times.
Your Oct. 7, 1999 editorial, “The Fight for Patients’ Rights,” is insulting to the reader’s intelligence. By claiming that House Republicans’ attempts to expand medical savings accounts (MSAs) to all Americans masks their motives, the New York Times editorial board is really concealing its own goal of fully socialized medicine–a position the Times has embraced for years.
Your claim that allowing each American to own a medical savings account will “lure healthy and wealthy people out of insurance pools” is preposterous; According to the IRS and private health plans, one third of MSA enrollees were previously lacking any health insurance and the median age is over 40, not at all a record of draining the insurance market and an impressive achievement considering that MSAs are currently restricted to a small group of self employed, uninsured, small business people and 390,000 Medicare recipients.
My own MSA permits me both complete, virtually unrestricted free choice in medicine and true liberation from years of restrictive managed care plans, (i.e., HMOs, PPOs, Point-of Service plans). Quality, MSA-based catastrophic health insurance coverage–affordable at long last for this coupon-clipping contractor whose income is likely a fraction of the national average–puts me in control of my own health care decisions.
But your flawed assault on MSAs is worsened by the following lie: You write that “Democrats oppose such accounts” which is blatantly false. Your own neighbor, Democratic Sen. Robert Torricelli, a liberal supporter of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat from New York, is a staunch, longtime proponent of MSAs. Several blue-collar Chicago Democrats–not exactly country club Republicans–including Rep. William Lipinski, have long championed complete expansion of MSAs and recently proposed lifting all restrictions on the accounts, and the concept’s support among other Democrats and Republicans, while staggering, hardly reads like a list of right-wing conservatives: the Massachusetts state legislature–which recently approved MSAs for residents–several unions, the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, the American Medical Association, George W. Bush, John McCain, and Orrin Hatch.
Your editorial board should have also observed that even stalwart liberal California Sen. Barbara Boxer appreciates the appeal of encouraging a real, free market in health insurance: she recently proposed granting complete tax deductibility for insurance premiums to the individual–and she’s right.
The Declaration of Independence refers to the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Health care, as such, is not a right. The individual’s right, in this context, means free choice to privately contract for health care. Every patient should be allowed to purchase insurance as an individual, neither through an employer nor through government.
The medical savings account restores health insurance which is chosen, provided and paid for by the individual; it is the antidote to the HMO.
Real advocates of freedom in medicine should abandon HMO reform and instead demand an unconditional expansion of medical savings accounts and immediate, full tax deductibility for the individual. It’s a step toward restoration of individual rights to the medical profession: insurance which preserves the right to choose and pay for one’s own health care.