title: Health savings accounts: early estimates of national take-up.
abstract: The 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (MMA) approved tax-advantaged health savings accounts (HSAs) for certain high-deductible health insurance plans. We predict that MMA could lead to approximately 3.2 million HSA contracts among Americans ages 19-64 who are not students, not enrolled in public health insurance plans, and not eligible for group coverage as a dependent. We simulate the effect of several additional tax subsidies for HSAs. We predict that the Bush administration's refundable tax-credit proposal would double HSA take-up and reduce the number of uninsured people by 2.9 million, at an annual cost of $8.1 billion.
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health, University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, USA. feldm002@umn.edu
authors.forename: Roger
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Feldman
authors.forename: Stephen T
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Parente
authors.forename: Jean
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Abraham
authors.forename: Jon B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Christianson
authors.forename: Ruth
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Taylor
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003256:Community Participation; D006264:Health Benefit Plans, Employee; D006801:Humans; D020402:Medical Savings Accounts / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D017057:Medically Uninsured; D006278:Medicare / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D008875:Middle Aged; D014481:United States