That Ain’t Insurance
But that isn’t the worst problem with medical savings accounts. Basically they encourage young and healthy people to not buy health insurance, which makes the pool of insurance buyers on average older and sicker and more expensive, further driving up insurance rates, further driving healthy people out, etc… And good luck getting any insurance after you’ve gottten a couple pre-existing conditions (Translation: gotten sick once or twice) under your belt, unless you can get it through your employer.
In areas that don’t require car insurance, you don’t hear people worry that the system “encourages alert and defensive drivers to not buy car insurance, which makes the pool of insurance buyers on average more careless and more aggressive and more expensive, further driving up insurance rates, further driving good drivers out, etc.”
The reason you don’t hear that is because good drivers don’t pay that much into the car insurance system. With real insurance, you pay for the amount of risk you impose. With goofy American health “insurance", you divide up the costs for everybody’s risk equally.
This just isn’t insurance. It’s redistribution. Maybe it works, and maybe imposing it on whole countries via government is a good idea, but insurance it’s not, and we all need to stop calling it that.