REDUCING AMERICA'S UNINSURED WITH HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNTS
 
Last week on the Senate floor Sen. DeMint discussed the benefits of health savings accounts and how they are helping millions of Americans gain access to affordable, quality health care. As the America's Health Insurance Plans reported recently, the number of Americans using health savings accounts to pay for their health care needs has doubled in the last two years, to over 6 million people using HSAs today. In fact, their report found that 31 percent of HSA holders were previously uninsured, which means HSAs have empowered more than 2 million previously uninsured Americans gain access to quality health plans. In South Carolina today, 116,816 people own health savings account plans.

HSA's allow patients to control their health care decisions. Using tax-free savings accounts you can pay for medical services and products directly, insteady of spending months navigating insurance bureaucracies and going through piles of paperwork. HSAs also allow Americans to actually save the money they don't use: the money rolls over from year-to-year and is fully “portable,” meaning HSA coverage follows you even if you change jobs or retire.

But some members of Congress want to reduce your freedom to control your own health care decisions and continue to push legislation that discourages HSAs for all Americans.


In a recent op-ed posted at RealClearPolitics.com, DeMint explained why it was so important that Congress keep health care in the hands of the people by encouraging free-market competition to help every American get insured:
Why not nationalize health care and allow the government to control the entire system? Because as Americans we believe in the individual and in freedom.

Since the dawn of our nation, Americans have resisted government control over their daily lives. Unlike Europeans who have mortgaged their futures in the name of nationalized health care, we have an innate distrust of big government schemes. We have seen time and time again that the greatness of our nation comes from its people, not from the government. Perhaps most importantly, we understand, as Thomas Jefferson understood, that "Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have." Jefferson went on to explain that "the course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

The history that Jefferson observed then is the same that we do today. Those principles still hold true, and as we consider the health care crisis we face today we would do well as Americans to bear these thoughts in mind.

Do we want a solution that offers American more freedom, more choice and more competition? Or do we forsake our principles and follow the path of the Europeans, which has resulted in rationed health care, less choice, less freedom and future fiscal ruin?

For eight weeks straight on Senate floor, freshman Republicans are pushing a national conversation about health care, offering reforms from a free-market approach. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) kicked off the discussion last month in a floor speech and at a press conference where he was joined by Senators DeMint and Richard Burr (R-N.C.).

For more information on HSAs, check out The HSA Coalition website.

And here is a report from ABC News' "2020" on the ways HSAs are helping employees at Whole Foods supermarkets to take control of their own health care.

 
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