Today Dean Clancy announced the formation of a new national organization: HSAs for All.
Mr. Clancy, who is president and founder of the organization, released the following statement.
I am proud to announce the official launch of HSAs for All.
We are a nonprofit advocacy organization with a simple vision: a future in which all Americans are free to choose their own doctors and therapies, and pay for their own health care, without arbitrary limits.
HSAs for All will seek to give every American access to affordable, high-quality health care by giving every American access to a tax-free Health Savings Account owned and controlled by the patient.
Let’s liberate patients to take charge of their own health care—and thus dramatically reduce health care costs—by turbocharging Health Savings Accounts.
Today, that vision is not a reality, thanks to the growing problem of health insurance bureaucracy, public and private.
The antidote to health insurance bureaucracy is HSAs-for-all.
Health Savings Account (HSAs) are our last, best hope for patients and consumers to preserve their fast-diminishing health care rights and freedoms.
Our goal is to enable everyone, including the uninsured, to have an HSA, and to allow everyone to make unlimited after-tax contributions to, and unlimited tax-free withdrawals from, their HSA for legitimate medical expenses.
HSAs-for-all means unlimited eligibility for HSAs, unlimited after-tax contributions to HSAs, and unfettered spending out of HSAs for legitimate medical expenses.
Currently, HSAs are wonderful, and enjoyed by tens of millions of Americans. But they could be improved. Today, you can’t have an HSA if you’re on Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security, nor if you’re receiving military, veterans, or Indian health benefits. Today you can’t use your HSA for alternatives to insurance like health care sharing or direct-pay medicine (direct primary care).
Today’s tax code discriminates in favor of bureaucratic, overpriced health insurance, and against people who choose to rely on alternatives to insurance.
These problems need to be fixed.
If a medical expense is legitimate, you should be able to spend your own money on it, without arbitrary limits, on a level tax playing field, even if you’re uninsured.
Why HSAs-for-all? Because tax-free HSAs are a proven model for reducing health care costs and an excellent tool for helping patients take a greater role in decisions affecting their own health care.
When it comes to putting patients in charge of their own health care, and reducing costs, nothing beats an HSA. HSAs are the only tax-advantaged savings vehicle that allows you to save for your own health care needs in retirement. According to a recent analysis by Fidelity Investments, the average retired couple today faces an estimated $275,000 in health care costs in retirement—costs not covered by Medicare. An HSA user can accumulate as much as $360,000 after contributing to an account for 40 years assuming a rate of return of just 2.5 percent, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. With a rate of return of 5 percent, an HSA user can accumulate $600,000 over 40 years.
That’s the power of compound interest at work. It’s a power patients should be able to harness.
It’s time to turbocharge HSAs and make them available to all.
HSAs for All.
Because health care freedom is a human right.
For more information on HSAs and HSAs for All, visit our website.