Health Savings Accounts a Step Backward

Like Social Security in 2005, "health savings accounts" will be the buzzwords from the White House for the foreseeable future in 2006.

And just like the scheme to privatize Social Security, critics say replacing insurance with private health savings accounts would be a disaster for most people and a lavish gift for corporate America.

"These accounts would actually increase the burden on workers, while giving employers incentive to cut back or eliminate their plans altogether," CWA President Larry Cohen said. "Business likely will reap billions from health savings accounts, but 45 million Americans will remain uninsured and millions more underinsured."

Presently, about two-thirds of American workers are covered by employer-sponsored plans, though premiums are skyrocketing and services are being slashed. Replacing traditional insurance with health savings accounts would only make matters worse.

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne called the accounts "tax-avoidance investment vehicles — Wall Street can't wait — that will mostly help the healthy and the wealthy while raising costs for the sick."

The AFL-CIO said the scheme is "complicated, fragmented and costly," and "brought to you by the same people who brought you the Medicare prescription drug disaster."

Cohen said the only meaningful option for health care reform is a universal system with access to medical care for every American. "In every other industrialized country, without exception, universal health care is in place. Most countries cover all citizens for about half of what we spend here on health care, which last year was a staggering 14 percent of our Gross Domestic Product.

"It's no coincidence that these countries have much greater union representation than in the United States, where the right to join a union and bargain a fair contract is under assault," he said. "Industrialized nations that respect workers' rights also see the public good of guaranteeing health care for all."

Cohen and the AFL-CIO are urging working families to contact their members of Congress to oppose health savings accounts and push for universal coverage.

"Like his proposal to privatize Social Security, giving more tax breaks for HSAs will go nowhere if Congress sees massive public opposition to Bush's bad ideas," the AFL-CIO said. "That's why we need you to take action immediately."