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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • It’s not a hardship, though. I’m healthy with no chronic conditions, and I’ve made the specific choice to go with a HDHP to get the HSA, which I treat like a pre-tax Roth IRA. If some catastrophe happens, it’ll be easier to pay for surgery out of the HSA than a real Roth, but I don’t expect to see doctors until Medicare. I don’t even pay for glasses out of the HSA, because its future value is too great.

    This is a perfectly rational individual choice to maximize my personal benefit, but it is terrible policy at the population level. It means there are less resources available for the small minority of people who do have expensive health issues, because I’m diverting my insurance premiums into a retirement fund. This is a recurring theme in right wing policy - it’s fine for people whose lives have no major complications, and people with special circumstances are too few to consider. You have to look out for yourself, and a few people will fall through the cracks, which is a borderline sociopathic attitude.




  • I think the HSA is a big attraction for the GOP - tax advantaged encouragement to get more people investing more money in stocks. Practically, though it also means more people effectively self-insuring. My deductible is $6500, but I’m allowed to put $3500 into HSA, so 2 years’ HSA savings covers the deductible. Fine, for individuals that are reasonably healthy, but it reduces the pool of money that insurers have to pay benefits to people who do have claims.

    Essentially incentivizing individuals to sabotage the system.



  • This is just an extended rationalization for apathy. I’m sorry to say, but government is boring. Politicians are boring. An exciting politician is probably trying to sell you a line of unrealistic, unachievable bullshit, and in the system the US has, by the time it gets down to the general election, your choices are Donkey, Elephant, and several flavors of Don’t Care. You can have more excitement and a greater sense of choice in the primaries, but voting twice in a year is too much work for even many ‘political’ people.

    If positive messaging got people to the polls, I guarantee you would see positive campaigning: even 10% of the non-voters would be enough to swing any competitive race.