Another Look At Medical Savings Accounts
A Health Care Reimbursement System Of The People, By The People, and For The People

Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) utilize a high deductible health insurance, financial incentives, wellness programs, life style modification incentives and direct patient participation in their health care decisions. These elements preserve and improve employee and family health. MSAs reduce health care spending, increase compensation, improve productivity, strengthen company competitiveness in the market place and most importantly place purchasing power under control of the consumer.

Medical savings accounts have been advanced by a number of people since 1993, including people like J. Patrick Rooney, Chairman of the Golden Rule Insurance Company, who was among the first to offer this innovative program to his employees, and Dr. Steven Barchet, who was the principle investigator and primary author of an extensive report "Medical Savings Accounts, A Building Block for Sound Health Care". This proposal expands on their work and experiences in order to carry MSAs into a universal health plan for your thoughtful consideration. My contributions are to advance MSAs, introduce credit card companies as MSA fiduciaries, data banks for morbidity and mortality statistics, providing a provider profiling, single payer features, health plan portability and use of state of the art smart card technology.

It is recognized that the "devil is in the details" but oddly, economics must be the driver to change human behavior for the better and in the shortest time possible, especially when the MSAs offer equity in a comprehensive health care program for all.

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