Consumer Directed Healthcare: Except for the Healthy and Wealthy It’s Unwise

Many politicians and business leaders are advocating high deductible health insurance plans linked with health savings accounts—so-called consumer-directed healthcare. These policies penalize the sick, discourage needed care (especially primary and preventive care), and direct tax subsidies towards the wealthiest Americans. They offer little hope of slowing the growth of health care costs and add further bureaucratic costs and complexity to our health care financing system.