Medical Savings Accounts Study MSA Programs Provide Comprehensive Health Insurance
Since MSAs by themselves impose no arbitrary limits on the nature of purchased services, they can be truly comprehensive. The patient and the physician determine what care is appropriate. There are no distant government bureaucrats or claims clerks matching code numbers against a master list of "approved and allowed" services.
As described in the previous section, higher deductible insurance covers health care spending above the amount deposited annually in the employees' Medical Savings Account. In insurance industry language, this is "catastrophic" or "umbrella" coverage.
At a March 23, 2005, House Appropriations hearing on a bill to gut the voter-approved I-601 spending limit, Rep. Jim McIntire (D) asked a supporter of I-601’s two-third supermajority requirement for the legislature to raise taxes the following question:
"Can you name a time when we [legislators] have actually not just set it [supermajority requirement] aside by majority vote? I mean, this is in many respects a procedural motion that has no bearing. It’s a statutory constraint that cannot constrain any legislature that chooses as a majority to set it aside . . . have we ever used a supermajority [to raise taxes]?"