Large Health Savings Accounts: A Step toward Tax Neutrality for Health Care

Cannon Michael F. ()
Additional contact information
Cannon Michael F.: Cato Institute

Forum for Health Economics & Policy, 2008, vol. 11, issue 2, 29

Abstract: The creation of tax-free health savings accounts presents a new opportunity to reduce the distortions created by federal tax preferences for health-related expenditures that ultimately could help eliminate those distortions. This paper proposes changes to current law that would allow most workers to receive the full amount that they and their employer spend on their health benefits as a tax-free cash contribution to the worker's health savings account. Restructuring the exclusion for employer-sponsored health benefits in this way would enable more individuals to obtain health insurance that matches their preferences, would increase efficiency in the health care sector, and could reduce inequities created by the exclusion. These changes also offer a means of limiting the currently unlimited tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health benefits that may be more politically feasible than past proposals.

Keywords: health saving accounts; tax; costs; tax reform; nongroup (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2202/1558-9544.1080 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:fhecpo:v:11:y:2008:i:2:n:3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/fhep/html

DOI: 10.2202/1558-9544.1080

Access Statistics for this article

Forum for Health Economics & Policy is currently edited by Dana Goldman

More articles in Forum for Health Economics & Policy from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().