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Snake oil NOT for sale. [1]

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Date: 2023-02-19  

...Or rather, it's being sold as the solution to a problem. So why hasn't anyone even heard about it?

For the past couple weeks, as tax season has heated up, I've been volunteering with a group that helps people file their taxes for free. The gratitude for this service has been overwhelming. Our group is fully booked with appointments. And why not? A lot of the people have minimal income, and a paid preparer would drain away any refund.

Mind you, I'm still training to enter the data. But I am allowed to do the first interview. I walk taxpayers through the complicated federal interview form, pushing people (in a gentle way) about their responses.

Often I'm doing a little education. The biggest gap is about interest. Quite a few ask, "What's interest?" They've never heard of it. Or they make conceptual mistakes: "Yeah, interest. The bank pays me that on my mortgage." Not hardly. And, naturally, if someone does know about interest, the next question is usually, "Wait, I pay tax on THAT?" (And for the most part I've worked with people who have had education!)

But what drives me nuts is the question, "Do you have a health savings account?" The answer, with rare exceptions, is "What's that?" I'll describe it, and they'll say, "I've never heard of that."

Okay. It shouldn't be a surprise that people who don't understand interest don't know about an HSA. What galls me is that this was supposed to be the solution to all our health insurance problems. Not single payer. Not Medicare for all. Not "socialized" medicine. Certainly not Obamacare. Instead, the private market. Personal responsibility. High deductibles. These little accounts that the common man (sic) could access.

You know and I know that two years of high deductible bills would wipe these accounts out. It doesn't matter; Republicans loved touting them. R candidates in three states loved telling me about them. My wife's employer was convinced and set them up. We closed our working years taking enormous risks. And I'm not sure it saved anyone any money.

These accounts already exist. But if my weird sample of Americans is at all representative, nobody knows about them. I described our accounts to one person, someone not poor, and he said, "Damn. If I'd known about this, I could have saved some money over the years." Yes! Not a lot, but something.

Which says something clear to me. R chatter about health care fixes--it's utterly useless. They don't care. If they did, and if they truly believed what they've told me, they would be out there getting folk signed up. People might still check No. But it would be their choice. It wouldn't be hidden out of sight.

As one client said, "Leave it to rich guys to not say nothin' would help no poor guy."

Exactly.

I think we need a genuine poll to find more accurately who knows about HSA's, and who doesn't. If what I think is true, Dems need to campaign on that silence. It says so much.

In the meantime, we're left with a strange situation. I think HSA's are snake oil. They don't cure anything. And I'm pretty sure Republicans know they're snake oil. They say it's a cure. But they aren't selling it.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/19/2153799/-Snake-oil-NOT-for-sale

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