Funmurphys: the Blog

Health Savings Accounts bring Market Forces to Health Care

as Kevin wrote almost a year ago:

But healthcare is something too important to be left to the market you say. Or healthcare doesn't work like other goods because you have to have it inorder to live you say. Doesn't food meet those same requirements? Yet we allocate food in this country via the free market, and the crisis du jour is obesity. If we stopped allocating healthcare in this country via the current odd employer standing in for government system, and instead allocated healthcare via a free market, the crisis du jour would be longevity.

Michael Barone now observes that HSA accounts are bring market forces to health care:

How many times have you heard that health care costs are rising at record rates? Well, they aren't any more.
[...]
Something is going on out there. Politicians and political commentators always assume that government must do something new and different if health care costs are to be held down to bearable increases. But the evidence is that health care costs are being held down, by the workings of the marketplace, partly in response to health care legislation passed in the last four years.
[...]
The other interesting development is the emergence of health insurance policies that encourage healthy behavior. Health care experts note that the increasing incidence of diabetes and other obesity-related diseases threatens to hugely increase health care costs in future years.
[...]
The overriding assumption in much commentary on health care finance is that individuals and companies are helpless automata waiting for government action before anything can be done anything about health care costs. But recent developments suggest that, in fact, employers and employees are active players, and that provisions of recent legislation that were not much noticed by the commentariat have enabled them to take action that reduces costs and provides increased benefits and incentives for healthier behavior.

We have problems, yes, but we are not helpless.

I don't know that we are at risk for a longevity crisis yet, but it's a welcome developement that market incentives are finding their way into the health care equation.