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Thursday, December 12, 2013

Republicans liked Health Savings Accounts, before they were against Health Savings Accounts...in ObamaCare.

Beating me to the punch, Ezra Klein wrote about the Republican hypocrisy and outrage over ObamaCare’s high deductible plans: The GOP has been pushing high deductible plans, health savings accounts (HSA’s) for years as the solution to our health care problems.

Every conservative, including our own Dumb Ron Johnson, had been pushing HSA’s. Now they hate it.

I had a health savings account for nearly 10 years, and believe me, they were a complete scam. Year after year insurers increased the deductible as a way to soften the blow of increased monthly premiums, sometimes in the middle of the policy. I couldn’t handle it anymore once they raised it to $10,400. And that about 10 years ago. Here’s what Ezra dug up:
Republicans have zeroed in on two things that people really will hate about insurance under Obamacare: The high deductibles and the limited networks. Brendan Buck, press secretary for House Speaker John Boehner, tweets... 
What's confusing about this line of attack is that high-deductible health-care plans -- more commonly known as "health savings accounts" -- were, before Obamacare, a core tenet of Republican health-care policy thinking. In fact, one of the major criticisms of Obamacare was that it would somehow kill those plans off. "Obamacare may be fatal for your HSA," warned the Heritage Foundation on 2010. "Health Savings Accounts Under Attack" blared Red State.

When Republicans were forced to come up with alternatives for Obamacare, high-deductible plans were core to those proposals. "Conservatives have suggested deregulating Obamacare’s exchanges to make it easier to provide policies with high deductibles," wrote Ramesh Ponnuru. One of those conservatives was right-wing darling Dr. Ben Carson. "In order to right the ship, we need to return the responsibility for good health care to the patient and the health care provider," he said. "One of the best ways to do this is through health savings accounts, which patients can control."

This always baffled Obamacare's supporters. "The minimal, or bronze, insurance option allows out-of-pocket spending of up to $12,500 for a family of four," wrote Jonathan Cohn. "Those are some pretty high deductibles!"

Now that those high deductibles are here, Republicans have decided that they are, if anything, too high.
"As I travel across Kentucky, I hear from many constituents who are seeing premiums increase along with higher co-pays and higher deductibles as a result of Obamacare," wrote Mitch McConnell in an op-ed for the New Democrat Leader. "Adding insult to injury, these constituents are discovering that despite these higher costs, they have no guarantee that they will be able to continue using the hospital of their choice." 
How dare Democrats implement these policies Republicans have been pushing for years! 

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