Health Savings Accounts

If you are in a certain income bracket, health savings accounts let you avoid some taxes while saving up for future medical emergencies.  I have no issue with them but the people they benefit are generally middle class and up.

They like to avoid paying taxes and they have disposable income that they can put away.

Of course, if you are struggling to make ends meet and can barely pay your bills, you aren't likely to put money into such an account, in fact statistics show you aren't likely to put money into a retirement account already.

Now the people who can benefit from these accounts are not "wealthy" per se, but probably live comfortably, have a good job and a good income.

The new Republican plan will allow them to use this money to pay for health insurance premiums, something that was prohibited under the current law for some reason I never understood.

So to benefit you have to have one of these accounts and buy your own health insurance vs am employee sponsored plan, where the amounts you pay in already get favorable tax treatment.

Its hard for me to estimate how many this will help and I'm pretty confident in saying that a tax break on your health insurance premium, while certainly nice, isn't going to be a life changer the way losing your health insurance entirely when you are poor is likely to be.

This was the big benefit touted by the party today, a nice little positive thing they can focus on but something which has very minimal impact.

The fact that this is what they are using as justification actually shows how bad the bill really is, you would think they would find something more meaningful, if it existed.

I guess it doesn't.