ObamaCare Cost Curve Strikes Again

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is working toward euthanizing health savings accounts (HSAs). Democrats have barely attempted to hide their preference for a single-payer health insurance system, so it only stands to reason they’d work to pull the plug on the most attractive market option standing in the way.

Democrats have always hated HSAs because they put patients in charge of their own health spending (to a point — in some ways, HSA users are still swimming upstream against the health system’s lack of price transparency.) But the market-driven approach has become increasingly popular in the last decade.

“In the past seven years, [HSA] enrollment has climbed 18% a year on average,” notes Investor’s Business Daily. “Today, there are almost 20 million enrollees who have more than $24 billion in their HSA accounts. Even the number crunchers in the Health and Human Services Department admit that these ‘consumer-directed’ health plans are helping to hold down costs.”

Imagine where we’d be without them.

Back in March, just in time for ObamaCare’s six-year anniversary, HHS issued new rules that will effectively end HSAs. Roy J. Ramthun, an expert on the subject often known as “Mr. HSA” — president and founder of HSA Consulting after having led the U.S. Treasury Department’s implementation of HSAs upon enactment in 2003 — explains the impact of the rule changes:

1) Plans must apply specific deductibles and out-of-pocket limits that are outside the requirements for HSA-qualified plans.

2) Plans must cover services below the deductible that are not considered “preventive care.”

In other words, HSAs will still be legal, but ever fewer plans will meet the requirements. Ramthun writes, “[I]t is only a matter of time before the HSA-qualified plans completely disappear. That could happen as early as 2017 even though the standard benefit designs are optional. By 2018, when the designs likely become mandatory, HSAs will cease to exist in the marketplace.”

So we weren’t the least bit surprised to find out this week that we face a major rate increase this summer for renewing our small business health insurance plan.

Here’s a peek into the window of the internal operations of our humble shop: