The Opinionated Bastard

So this paragraph from this article pissed me off:

Bush is proposing a tax credit of no more than $1,000 to individuals and $3,000 to families to purchase health insurance, though the health care premiums for a family of four come to roughly $9,000 a year. A huge aggregate increase in opportunity, if you define opportunity as risk.

But I suppose its a chance to clear up something about Bush’s Health Insurance plan.

Bush's plan is twofold, and you have to put them together to see how they will work as a whole. Its a combination of a medical savings account, so that minor stuff is tax-free, and _catastrophic_ health insurance, which is much cheaper then the "We'll do everything for you, but badly." HMO insurance many people have now.

The catastrophic health insurance takes most of the risk out of health care for much smaller premiums. After that, you can save money away to pay for visits to the doctor, band aids, etc., but those are much smaller risks. You can get a catastrophic health plan for whatever level of risk you’re willing to take. Last time I researched this, it was $60/month for me to get a catastrophic insurance plan that would pay 100% after the first $2000 worth of expenses.

Since a medical savings account would carry over from year to year, that means that once I’ve saved up $2000, my insurance could drop to $720/year, for which I would get a tax credit!

Compare that to an HMO, which would charge me a bunch of money every year, but then they pay for the doctor visit, and catastrophic insurance can look like a pretty good deal. That combined with a tax-free savings account just makes sense.