SeaWorld Parks doesn't pay any corporate income taxes after record year

You don't use it to get your oil changed or fill up with gas or get new wiper blades. You use it when, and only when, the crap hits the fan.

This is why the incidental stuff has to come out of pocket. The transmission never fails at a good or affordable time. When it goes and you HAVE to fix it…you finance it. That is life.

If everybody demanded that transmissions had to be fixed via a government/employer subsidized 3 party…the COSTS of fixing transmissions would go up over night. We know this is true because we have almost 50 years of seeing this stupidity in action. Just because the intention or outcome is good does not mean the strategies and costs used to achieve the outcome are smart.

a product that already exists--high deductible plan paired with a medical savings account

Yes it exists as an outlier remnant of freedom’s past…there to serve the smallest of niches. What I call for is an equal opportunity for such a system to be trialed on a massive scale for some 45 plus years…with some 90% pseudo-forced participation.

While I applaud your current participation, and have participated myself in years past…our little Star Trek club will never be enough to exert the needed downward pressure on COSTS. It takes more than us. But really...all that is needed is a "fair" market. Even today, only the small niche of the self-employed can enter the MSA market (a seperate argument...but just enough to show you how ass-backwards the government does things...as they want to protect their giant 3rd-party payment fiasco).

If Congress outlawed government subsidies for the first 15K of healthcare expenditures…we would have our participation over night…at the scope and scale needed to affect real change. They wouldn't be forcing anybody to do anything. They would just create an atmosphere for the free market to thrive for the first 15K. Providers could be creative and attack the low end, or high end, with all sorts of opportunities in between. The consumer could benifit from the competition based cost controls and multiple choice atmosphere.

It might take less than 5 sentences to fundamentally change the way we deliver health care, increase choices, and decrease costs.

But the mere mention of such a scenario gains one as much credibility as that Star Trek club mentioned above. Somehow, MSA’s are demonized devil tools of the extreme right…destined to starve grandmas and choke children all across the land.

In the place of some open and honest discussion about MSA’s (the only system out there that introduces a market) we get 2000 plus pages of “more of the same” that is laughably underfunded and over-promised. But that is the point. All the cat calls and messenger attacks in the world do not change the fact that Obamacare is nothing more than a massive 3-party payment scams don’t work. They are ridiculously bureaucratic to the point of paralysis and much more costly than any of the alternatives. Try as you might…there is no way to convince the informed citizenry that what we have seen empirically for the last 45 years is a good way to do it. The key word is informed.

Given such a political fiasco that would result if the truth were known in any large percentages, there is only one thing to do. Paint the MSA crowd as kooks, paint the 2000 pages of Obamacare as the artistic nuances of geniuses at work, and demean those that see through this charade as idiots who talk out their asses. Question: Is 2000 pages of bull**** still bull****?

Funny thing is…IT WORKS politically! Somehow the folks who make their living off the government teat have mastered the vote acquisition process with such careful skill that the truth is a lie. The 45-50 years of abject failure of Medicare to control costs is not enough to change course. The 100% record of the CBO to underestimate the costs of every major social program exponentially is not enough to stop our president and his party from straight-face pointing to the CBO as evidence that their health plan is affordable. It is as if the last 50 years did not happen, and somehow…against all evidence…it is going to work this time if we just try harder and spend more.

I’ve got 40-50 trillion in unfunded mandates that prove trying harder and spending more is stupid policy when your ideas are wrong. Pointing out this reality pisses a lot of people off on a coaster board. Lying about the true costs and pretending that “doing more of the same” will work this time gets you elected President of the United States.



Even today, only the small niche of the self-employed can enter the MSA market

Apparently nobody even glances at my links...

The article talks about Indiana state employees having the option:

".. over 70% of our 30,000 Indiana state workers chose it,..." (That was in 2010.)

No doubt the left hates MSA's, and they aren't widely available, but not as rare as your statement indicates.

In the article, there are paragraphs that contain the exact same things that have been said in this thread by different people.

I happen to work for one of the largest health insurance companies, and as far as I can tell, high deductible plus FSA is pretty popular.

Can anyone explain to me the rationale for FSA accounts being "use it or lose it?" (vs the MSA that rolls over)

No, but MSA seems to be an even more popular choice as time goes by.

I stopped putting money into FSA this year after deciding the system, for me at least, was a scam. I'd rather pay a little bit more in taxes than scramble to buy things I don't need at the end of the year just so I can recoup all my money.

I'm not a fan of the high deductible plans at all, mostly because I'm stuck with one. My employer used "Obamacare" as the golden goose to reduce how much they spend on healthcare. We used to have good plans, but they've gotten worse every year while they point the blame at the regulation. In reality, when you really dig into the benefits statements nobody actually looks at, the employer contribution has been shrinking by large amounts every year (yet no one has gotten a raise...)

The high deductible plans only reduce costs by forcing people to go to the doctor less. That might be good if you're a hypochondriac, but for most people with real problems, it just delays the diagnosis and allows the problem to get worse and more expensive to treat.

...scramble to buy things I don't need at the end of the year just so I can recoup all my money.

This is an example that was brought up earlier--we've created a system designed to increase costs. Everyone with money left in a FSA near the end of the year spends that money on absolutely anything they can think of, so they don't lose it. It's an easy fix--let it roll over. Why shouldn't it, it's the account owner's money to begin with?

The high deductible plans only reduce costs by forcing people to go to the doctor less. ... it just delays the diagnosis and allows the problem to get worse and more expensive to treat.

First, these two sentences contradict each other. Second, where exactly is the "forcing"? No one is stopping you from seeing a doctor--and hopefully you have money in a dedicated account(FSA, MSA) for such a reason, anyway.

But this "the people are too stupid to go to the docter if it costs them anything" arguement has been somewhat addressed by making preventative care 100% covered. You can buy a high deductible plan that still covers basic checkups 100% (at least in some states...)

As an aside, I think we'd be much better off if the rationale for so many of our laws wasn't "the people are too stupid to...."

CP Chris said:

My employer used "Obamacare" as the golden goose to reduce how much they spend on healthcare. We used to have good plans, but they've gotten worse every year while they point the blame at the regulation.

I hope you're not saying that you believe that. No provisions of the law have kicked in yet that would fundamentally change what your employer offers, and I don't think any of them will. It's not like the insurance carriers are going to stop offering "good" plans with low/no deductibles and co-pays, but employers may choose not to pay for them.

Something to be careful of...

My employer has offered an MSA-based program for years, and I have always refused it because of the "use it or lose it" provision, which to me sounds like outright theft. Particularly since *I think* it isn't the employer who gets the money back at the end of the year.

My current plan is a high-deductible plan coupled with an HSA that covers much of the deductible. For me, it's been a great plan because there are almost no restrictions (this year they changed the rules so it's no good for OTC medical expenses...) on what the HSA money can be spent on. (Actually there are *no* restrictions on what it can be spent on, but non-qualified expenses are subject to a 10% income tax at tax time...which is fair, given that the HSA money is pre-tax money) That means that I can spend it on medical expenses I have that are not covered by my insurance at all, like certain dental and optical expenses. Even better, the HSA is nothing more than a specially-designated, tax sheltered savings account, so at the end of the year, any unspent balance rolls over. My employer contributes to that account in lieu of a much higher insurance premium, and if I keep my medical expenses down, I get to keep the money. The first $1500 or so (after insurance adjustments) of medical expenses other than certain preventive care comes out of my pocket (or out of my HSA). I know that the scheme has made a difference in the medications I take and in some of the medical decisions I have made...

It's a good scheme. It means I am paying an awful lot for catastrophic care coverage, but it means that without actually giving me a raise my employer saves money and covers more of my actual needs. Pity my understanding is that it may not survive once the coverage mandates kick in.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Jeff said:

I hope you're not saying that you believe that.

Quite the opposite. As I pointed out, digging into the parts of the benefits package nobody ever looks at, it's clear they're spending much less on our plans than they used to. It ticks me off to no end that they're using the healthcare reform as a scapegoat, rather than admitting they've cut our benefits, and most people have been foolish enough to believe it.

The really confusing part about it is, that our particular industry has much to gain if more people have access to doctors.

I may not agree with everyone here, (and I have not read through the whole thread) but I am impressed with the intelligent and civil discourse. We have some really smart people on this site.