Worst. Fucking. Idea. Ever.

Yes, folks, believe it or not--worse than Social Security reform. Bushco proudly presents (tada!!!)--HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNTS! How can you save health, you ask? Well, you can't. What you can do, however, is get taken to the cleaners by another conservatarian scam that seeks to cut healthcare costs by, in effect, cutting healthcare.

Bush Seeks to Increase Health Savings Accounts

In his State of the Union speech last week, President Bush gave short shrift -- just 165 words -- to the subject of health care. Still, administration officials say finding an antidote to rising costs will be a priority for the White House this year.

Bush's prescription includes promoting health savings accounts (HSAs) and "consumer-driven" health plans that he says will trim expenses by prodding Americans to assume greater responsibility for their health care choices.

"We will strengthen health savings accounts, making sure individuals and small-business employees can buy insurance with the same advantages that people working for big businesses now get," the president said in his speech.

So-called "consumer driven" health plans are really nothing of the kind.

Consumer-driven plans typically feature higher deductibles and lower premiums than traditional insurance, and they create a tax-free pool of money that consumers can use to pay health bills and sometimes roll over to the following year. The arrangement is supposed to hold down costs by giving consumers an incentive to shop around for the best price for health services and to forgo procedures they do not need. Catastrophic injuries or illnesses are still covered.

Not everyone is a fan. Dan Adcock, assistant legislative director for the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, said such plans could drive up costs for some workers. "You are going to have a migration to the consumer-driven plans by people who tend to be lower users of health care, and people who tend to be higher users of health care will remain in the comprehensive plans," Adcock said. "When that happens . . . those plans have to increase premiums or cut benefits, or both of those things, in order to stay in business."

So, young people in good health will flock to HSAs, leaving the chronically ill and the elderly in a much smaller, higher-risk pool. Since the likelihood of policy payout to members of this pool will increase dramatically, insurers will have to increase premiums significantly to stay afloat. Either that or they will be forced to slash benefits to those who need them most. It's the Social Security bamboozlepalooza all over again.

To all you conservatives who will no doubt praise Dubya's initiative as though it had been handed down on tablets of stone from on high, all of you who decry removal of the 10 commandments from the public square--I think you've overlooked one of them:

Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land the Lord your God is giving to you.--Exodus 20:12

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