Watch Out for Leftist Bullets Through the Health Savings Account

Government intervention is the bane of the existence of people like me but the silver bullet for people like the socialists, otherwise known as progressives.


[Thanks to street-directory.com.au for the picture.]

They can kill a good idea before you can congratulate yourself.

Widespread adoption of a good version of the Health Savings Account [HSA] would be the best idea that came down the pike since ... well, I'm not sure since when, because there haven't been many good ideas from the government sector in my lifetime.

The HSA is the answer to our exploding medical costs, because it returns the consumer to his position as market player in the health care system, thereby providing the competition that the system now lacks. (See this previous post for a discussion of the healthcare issue.)

But like all good ideas, legislators have been busy trying to kill it, according to this article at the Wall Street Journal.

Don't you fall for the progressives' whining cry for "supervision" or "oversight" of the insureds' use of their own medical savings account funds.

Are we now going to have to submit to the Medical Expense Police every time we write a check for a medical prescription? Can you imagine the cost, even if some company has come up with a computer system to track us all? Will we soon be subject to filing our income taxes through companies like Evolution Benefits?

Do we have to scream "Big Brother" again? Yes, we do, folks. Start howling to your legislators.

If we don't make a fuss, the leftists will put that silver bullet right through the HSA, just like they did the holding of gold (long-term profits from the sale of gold are not taxed at the long-term capital gains rate but at the full rate), the ETA (the treatment of the ETAs is also subject to penalizing tax consequences), the inflation-indexed treasury bond (also subject to taxation penalties), insurance and utility industry activity (subject to state and federal legislation that destroys any semblance of a free market), charity (government has taken over the charitable role and destroyed the ethic that used to exist), property rights (government can now seize your property not just for roads, libraries and parks, but just to make money), and ... well, I could go on and on.