|
|
Power Play
|
Traditionally, the biggest financial problem for governments -- whether kings or democracies -- have been paying for wars. The Revolutionary War (Robert Morris and the King of France), the War of 1812 (Stephen Girard), and the Spanish American War (J.P. Morgan) were essentially financed by a single institution allied with the government. However, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, were so big that ways of spreading the debt had to be found. In all wars, monarchs seek to maintain control of the nation in spite of their own uneasy dependence on funding sources. The Federal Reserve founded in 1913 was thus founded as a private institution with a Federal partner; it was a public-private partnership.
The enormous sums involved created temptations to extend the Fed's power beyond wars into other cataclysmic financial events. The nature of war changed, both as a cause and a consequence. However, in a sense, politics never change. We hear congressional chairmen ask why the private sector has so much to say, and we hear bankers announce the government has no place in private finance. The Federal Reserve itself maneuvers within boundaries of its "independence". Most central banks have a mission statement limiting them to maintaining price stability (against both inflation and deflation), but the United States Federal Reserve has the additional mission of reducing unemployment. Recently, the targets are stated to be 2% inflation and 6.5% unemployment. The Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, now seems to feel the traditional tool of manipulating interest rates is inadequate for severe economic shocks, and perhaps inadequate to maintain both goals indefinitely. He has therefore introduced a novel approach, mysteriously called Quantitative Easing.
Acting as the lender of last resort, central banks have used their regulatory power over banks and currency to manipulate short-term interest rates. Because commercial banks make a profit in the spread between low short-term borrowing and higher long-term lending, the "yield curve" controlling short term rates is ordinarily an adequate lever for Fed purposes to control long rates indirectly. This is possible because so many short-term loans are rolled over repeatedly; the extra interest for a similar long-term bond represents public attitudes about the risks of the future. However, in major financial upheavals adjusting short term rates may become inadequate, and Bernanke sought a way to control long term rates directly throughout the private economic sector.
By controlling both ends of the spread, Bernanke gained more control, but with lessened market guidance, he acquired a greater risk of misjudgment. In any event, the Federal Reserve began to accumulate huge amounts of dubious or "distressed" debt. Andrew Mellon once advised Herbert Hoover to "wring the rottenness out of the system". Mellon meant that any bank foolish enough to offer loans to weak counterparties, deserved to go bankrupt, while those foolish enough to accept such loans deserved to be punished. Although such utterances by a very rich man were politically unacceptable during a depression, Mellon was surely correct in observing that extreme financial panics were basically a psychiatric problem. Irrational exuberance occasionally drives markets too high, panic then drives them too low. The modern twist is, at the turn, when everyone tries to get out the door at the same time, markets can freeze up. Mr. Bernanke civilized Mr. Mellon's approach somewhat, but the underlying idea was the same: get the bad loans out of circulation, so bankruptcies and foreclosures stop feeding public overreaction. Underneath this approach runs the assumption most people are not hopelessly overextended; the economy is basically sound. However, bankruptcy has one advantage here, over gentler kinder ways of isolating bad from further injuring the good. When an institution disappears, its problems are permanently removed from the economy. To a large degree, "sterilizing" operations are only useful if market crises are really artificial ones, which fail to notice how sound the economy really is. As our measuring systems get more precise, of course, market crises might someday actually represent the facts of the matter.
Three signal events extended Mr. Bernanke's latitude to act. His personal credibility had been enhanced by successful QE1 management of the 2008 freeze-up of financial markets. He had loaned when others were reluctant, unfroze the markets, and returned a profit for the government. Secondly, the two-decade Japanese recession showed how "zombie banks" resulted from paralyzed inaction on bad loans. And third, the Scandinavian countries had a glamorous recovery from a brief depression, apparently as a result of adopting Calvinistic punishment of economic exuberance. It was a fearsome "good bank, bad bank" approach. The general public may not have this view of events, but they meant a great deal to the Federal Reserve Board of Directors. His credibility allowed Bernanke to survive his unsuccessful attempt through QE2 to stimulate the economy with trillions of dollars in make-work employment financed by the public sector. In essence, QE3 consisted of buying every bond the market refused to buy, even including billions of dollars of mortgage-backed bonds where politicians were excoriating into accepting prices lower than their probably worth. The Federal Reserve accumulated trillions in bonds but did not pay for them by printing money, but rather by increasing the reserves of commercial banks. This allowed them to pay essentially zero interest rates, but maintain a steep interest curve (between short and long term) as an inducement to the banks to loan. So far at least, banks have refused to loan, partly because banks are trying to de-leverage thirty years of excessive lending, and partly because chastened borrowers refuse to borrow. Meanwhile, the "hard goods" the public had accumulated, autos and refrigerators, mergers and infrastructure, were gradually wearing out; someday they would need to be replaced and constitute "growth". In the meantime, the Fed seems to plan to retain the bad debts in its vaults, safely immune to "marking them to market", which is to say holding them until the bond markets assign them higher values while proclaiming their current market value is temporarily under-appreciated. Nevertheless, these bonds will eventually reach their expiration date, and the market price at that moment will reveal the true cost of replacing them with new loans. With charming modesty, Mr. Bernanke admits there are many outcomes he is unable to predict.
Although Ben Bernanke has not announced it, he seems presently willing to hold these bad debts indefinitely. Interest rates are low, so not only is it cheap to hold them, but their value is artificially overstated. Presumably, however, he is unwilling to run a Zombie Federal Reserve indefinitely. Interest rates will, therefore, return to normal, sending the interest cost to the government soaring. Somehow, the public repeatedly fails to appreciate that lowering interest rates increases the market value of bonds by making money appear like magic, whereas raising interest rates depresses bond values by making money vanish. It requires a vibrant economy to withstand such a shock, so raising interest rates can easily precipitate a deep recession. At the first sign of interest rates rising, the prices of all bonds could plummet. Almost every investment advisor in the nation is already advising clients to "lighten up" on bonds. Meanwhile, the elderly small savers holding their savings in banks, are suffering from lack of income; it is remarkable there has been so little complaint, but when it comes, it will persist and have political force. Somewhere the spring is coiling. One real danger is the economy will still be unready for normal interest rates when politics force them to go up. It is frequently estimated to require ten years to be sure that (unlike 1937) a major second depression will not emerge when short-term government debts come due. The big problem with all borrowing that never changes is that someone expects you to pay it back.
Another bleak possibility is that a currency war will break out during the vulnerable interval. The U.S. dollar recently declined sharply, and other countries responded immediately with devaluations of their own. That may have been a test, but if it was, we failed. Just as industries will move to a U.S. state with low taxes, they will move to nations with undervalued currencies. The new multinational corporation permits rapid internal transfers within companies that they need not move their headquarters. Immigrants do move, and if forcibly restrained, will start riots or even revolutions. Currency wars are also very bad news, powerfully inhibiting government action. Consequently, there is a tendency to substitute international debt default, which is the same thing as devaluation in being sudden and done with, unlike inflation which can be insidious. Since it cheats foreigners more than local citizens, politicians prefer devaluation of the currency. But otherwise, there is no great difference between devaluation and inflation.
To repeat, there is little difference between Country A inflating, and Country B defaulting. Mr. Bernanke has temporarily sterilized the inflation alternative by funding his QE3 by expanding bank reserves rather than printing currency. Unfortunately, this has so far hardly stimulated bank lending at all, which itself is beginning to tempt private investors to get directly into the banking business because it offers them a chance for high yield. However, if any significant number of university endowments or pension funds try their hand at being bankers, they are apt to learn there is more to banking than they imagine.
If Quantitative Easing becomes widespread in a world-wide recession, some nation is going to prove to be insolvent. That is, when the central bank has sold off the profitable or break-even securities in the portfolio, the probability exists that some country will find it cannot service its debt. That debt anyway has been shown to be worthless because no one will buy it. Its credit may then be worthless, its currency without value, its markets in an uproar, and its people in revolt. Other countries will be urged to support the failing one, and who knows how panic will spread. Somewhere along the line, the bond markets may take "the bull by the horns" and -- and what? If foreign governments try to intervene, their own currency could plummet. There is, indeed, quite a lot we don't understand.
So it all boils down to two disastrous alternatives for the Federal Reserve to start liquidating QE3 bonds before the economy recovers. Either the bond markets intervene, or the Federal Reserve just continues to hold those trillions of bonds indefinitely, as a Zombie central bank. We could have a second recession, or another rush to get out the door. The prospects are so horrifying that we all have to hope Mr. Bernanke keeps his cool, and gets lucky. As a fallback, whether all that sequestered debt could be transformed into the international reserves for a new Bretton Woods agreement, is now too distant a prospect for outsiders to have a reasoned opinion about. Nevertheless, the interest earnings of debt that large might be able to moderate considerable deflation. Further, the seemingly unlimited ability to create or destroy money through interest rate manipulation should be able to modulate considerable volatility of currencies, perhaps of economies. Ever since the gold window was closed in 1971, it has been asked whether currencies without the backing of some commodity can survive, and the present economic travail may be the test of it. But since an international currency exchange probably cannot be created except in a crisis, let's hope we never have to learn the answer.
Lifetime Insurance: Deriving National Health Costs Indirectly.
It's traditional to estimate future health costs by listing the ingredients of cost, then adding them up. How many physicians do we need? How many hospitals? What diseases will have expensive cures, which ones will disappear entirely? And so on. For a century these questions have produced a single answer: It is impossible to foresee the volume or price of ingredients, so it must be impossible to predict overall costs.
Footnote:That isn't quite the case however. Since third-party payers were placed in the middle of the transaction, and particularly after electronic computers arrived, piles of payment data made analysis irresistible. That approach was soon discredited when everyone with a computer found the increased volume of the wrong data never compensates for its lack of relevance. The watchword became GIGO, garbage in, garbage out. Expanding the dataset with large volumes of medical data is a dream lingering on, but eventually runs up against a new stone wall. It makes no sense to shift the clerical data-entry burden to a physician, the most expensive employee in the system. Although the Affordable Care Act mandates something close to that, it is safely predicted it will restrain the impulse when the cost is fully appreciated. Meanwhile, the utility of just applying more advanced mathematics to simple data opened up a vista of revising the health insurance system. In a sense, this book is a product of that sort of thinking. Its difficulty is a radical idea can be developed in six months, but it may take decades to judge if it had the predicted effect.
Let's start with the final answer to the test. In the year 2000 dollars, the average American spends an average of $325,000 on health care in a lifetime. Women spend about 10% more than men. To ensure the whole lives of 340 million Americans, the cost would be trillions of dollars. That's 110,500 trillion, in fact, give or take a few trillion, or 110 or whatever is one thousand times bigger than a trillion. These mind-boggling figures were developed by Michigan Blue Cross from its own data and confirmed by several federal agencies. By the end of this book, we will have suggested it should be possible -- to cut that figure in half. It is entirely legitimate to be skeptical, since a ninety year lifetime involves a great many diseases we don't see anymore, afflicting many people who would have been readily cured with present medications except they weren't yet invented. It would involve predictions about the health costs of people who are still alive, destined to be treated with drugs we don't yet have. It is roughly estimated that fifty percent of the drugs now in use, were not available
seven years ago. Since we have to go back ninety years to get the data about the childhood illnesses of our presently oldest citizens, the unreliability of looking ninety years forward from 2014 is pretty clear. But some things change slowly, so the problem is how to select.
The value of these calculations is considerable, nonetheless. They give us a technique which the statistical community agrees is reasonable, which tells us lifetime insurance would require something like $300,000 per person. Future trends can be calculated, indicating whether costs are going up or down, and roughly by how much. When you consider they had to account for inflation, you begin to appreciate the achievement. A penny in 1913 money is worth a dollar today, just for illustration. Naturally, we then assume a dollar today will be worth 100 dollars, a century from now. Regardless of numbers games, we have an accepted tool to estimate the general magnitude of health costs, and by how much they will likely change. It's useful, even if its answers are appalling.
Indeed, at first, the health insurance industry skipped the computer details and invented "Risk Adjustment", essentially just basing next year's premium on last year's results. If future medical care changes direction drastically, its payment system might be forced to change. But if health care doesn't change much, the payment system won't need to predict the future. That reasoning reflected the insurance industry's own history, where the marketing department eventually asserted dominance over the actuaries, by declaring it was more important to predict usefully, than with precision. With increasing longevity, all life insurance has to be like that.
The approach has its limits. Insurance did underestimate how much the payment system could warp the medical one over long periods because it gradually misjudged who its customers were. Payment methodology was relentless in affecting its true customers, who were businessmen in the human relations departments of large corporations. Looking back over an expedient system designed for short-term goals, a shocking realization dawns: most current "reform" thinking is about how to twist the medical system to fit some unrelated budget. Even more shocking is that the business customers discovered how modified tax laws could let them buy health insurance with a sixty-cent business dollar. When passed to the employees, another 15 or 20 cents could be clipped off.
Gradually we reach the point of rebellion; if it is legitimate for insurance executives to tell physicians how to practice medicine, it must be equally legitimate for physicians to re-design the payment system. So let's have a go at it.
Footnote: In the thirty years since I wrote The Hospital That Ate Chicago about medical costs, the newspapers report physician reimbursement has progressively diminished from 19%, to 7% of total "healthcare" costs, so perhaps now it's legitimate for some other professions to answer a few cost questions, too.
As patient readers will gradually see, considerable extra money is already in the financial system, leaving difficult problems of how to get it out and spread it around. This isn't snake oil or a mirage. The beneficiaries would scarcely see any difference in medical care if Health Savings Accounts fulfilled their promise. But frankly, the insurance providers would have to make some wrenching changes. Since millions make their living from the present system, it is undoubtedly harder to design a new system which would please them.
Medical care now costs 18% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 18% is pretty surely crowding out other things we might prefer to buy. In a sense, the political beauty of the premium-investment proposal we are about to unfold lies in its primary aim of only cutting net costs by adding new revenue.
Lifetime Health Insurance: General Idea Behind the Proposal.
Let's get more specific than GDP, which is a pretty vague concept. A new primary goal of the Lifetime Health Savings Account proposal is to collect interest on idle insurance premiums, as has been done for decades whenever whole-life insurance replaces one-year "term" life insurance. If the recovered money flows to the management, it increases profits. If it goes to lower prices, the recovered money flows to the consumer. Since this tension always exists between the two counterparties, the final direction of funds-flow begins with subtle differences in the whole design of the insurance, made right at the beginning of the program.
The longer we wait to make drastic changes, the more difficult they become, and more proof of benefit will be demanded. In the proposed case of switching health insurance from term insurance to whole-life, almost a century of health insurance development is threatened. But remember, the past fifty years have seen plenty of dissatisfaction come to the surface, only to be dashed by a (generally correct) opinion that the gain was not worth the pain; the old system was working better than the proposed one. So this time, let's start in advance with establishing a monitor center where our control data is extensive -- the cost of terminal illness in the last year of life. It happens that every American has Medicare, and every American must some day die. It also happens that nearly everybody who dies does so as a Medicare recipient. Not quite, but in a population of 350 million people, it's close enough for information needs. Conversely, in a population this large, enough people of younger ages will also die; so we could still extrapolate what difference our proposals are making to costs, for the beneficiary to have attained almost any age. At least then, the public could base its opinion on what is currently happening, and actually happening, instead of having to rely on the anguished pronouncements of political candidates.
Footnote: An experience forty years ago makes me quite serious about this monitoring issue. While I was on another mission, I discovered that Medicare and Social Security are on the same campus in Baltimore, with their computers a hundred yards apart. So I proposed to the chief statistician that the Medicare computers contained the date and coded diagnosis of every Medicare recipient who had, let's say, a particular operation for particular cancer. Meanwhile, the Social Security computer contains the date of everybody's death, with the Social Security number linking the two data sets. So, why not shuffle one data set against the other, and produce a running report of how long people are living, on average, after receiving a particular treatment or operation. He merely smiled at the suggestion, and I correctly surmised he had no intention of following up on it. This time, I resolved to write a book about it, and see if that has more effect.
SOME BASIC QUESTIONS
No matter what payment system we use, the accounting system has to be clear on a few facts. For example, who produces revenue, who gets subsidized? At least in the healthcare system, it is unwise to assume that everyone pays for what he spends. Even if he does, he may well pay at one age and receive subsidies at other ages.
Answering the revenue question starts out pretty easy, but quickly gets harder. Children under roughly age 25 are subsidized by their parents, and retirees over 65 are living on their pensions and savings. Working people, roughly between the age of 25 and 65, are paying for the entire medical system, directly or indirectly, even though the money comes from the employer, who controls the terms through health insurance family plans. Legally speaking, parents are making an untaxed gift to their children when they pay for the child's healthcare bills. But it often gets further muddled by divorce and orphaning, and divorce at least is getting pretty common. For our purposes here, it is unnecessary to get into biological and legal complexities, to make a broad statement: the whole medical system is in some way supported by people with a paycheck, who are therefore aged 25 to 65. That's the healthiest component of society, so it can be increasingly unstable to base healthcare costs on family values, in a divorce-prone society, further clouded by payment of insurance by employers. Because of the tax laws, employers intrude their wishes, and may sometimes act as pawns for labor unions. But even with all this intrusion, society seems to feel the parent or parents are the best overseers of the kind of healthcare to use for all three living generations, even though effective employer and government control is perilously close to the surface. To some extent, this may reflect the fact that every sick person could become dependent on the assistance of others, and to that extent needs their consent. An employer-based health insurance system may not be the best, so the looser the family control, the more unstable employer-basing may become. Nevertheless, it is also reasonably accurate to say the upper limit of healthy revenue is ultimately traceable to people 25 to 65 and is probably going to remain that way.
Footnote: For children, medical costs can usually be traced to some sort of gift or loan from the pool of working people. And in a general sense, the revenue which pays for Medicare beneficiaries is also indirectly derived from the pool of working people, in this case, themselves at a younger age. In the case of divorce, should the new father or the actual father be assigned these costs? It might simplify things if childhood costs were assigned to the mother. This is the sort of issue we assign to judges in the Orphan's Court, but there is an even more perplexing issue: what do we do with the costs of a pregnancy, share it one way, two ways, or three? If there is a reimbursement, who should get it? Is that a cost to the child, leading to a debt to the mother, or is pregnancy a cost to the mother, unshared by the child? It was not so long ago that all pregnancy costs would have been legally assigned to the father. From the way things are going, it looks as though the insurance ought to regard pregnancy costs as a cost of the child, with a loan or gift coming from one or both natural parents. But in reality, the legislature or the Congress will make the best decision it can, and tell the insurance company what they decided. In considering it, the Congress or Legislature might remember that insurance companies have generally preferred to use family-plan insurance, reimbursing whoever paid for the family insurance at the workplace; and thus it gets back to the employer, even though that is not a socially useful outcome.
Since we confess we are here trying to demonstrate how universal lifetime Health Savings Accounts might support the whole system, let's skip over the sensitive issues and temporarily agree to impose the revenue limits of the maximum HSA deposits permitted under present law. Anyone 25 to 65 are permitted to contribute $3300 a year to a Health Savings Account. They are also permitted not to contribute that much or even anything but suppose for present purposes that everybody did. Ignoring any periods of illness or hardship, the average person is therefore permitted to contribute a maximum of $132,000 in a lifetime. Suppose for further example sake, there is no other source of medical revenue. Would that amount of money suffice to carry the entire nation's health costs, from cradle to grave? To that, the astounding but gratifying answer is a qualified Yes. So with that mildly reassuring news, let's look at the issues related to selecting a new HSA account.
Tax Exemption First of all, every bit of HSA deposits, both contributions, and compound income. is tax-exempt to the individual owner. That immediately makes it possible for anyone to claim the discriminatory tax exemption for health costs which Henry Kaiser devised for employees of profitable corporations. True, unless it is contributed by an employer, employer deductions are still omitted, although that is a separate issue. Big solvent business employers can take a 60% corporate tax deduction in addition to what the rest of us non-employees have been denied for seventy years, by purchasing HSAs for employees. If the employer is already struggling to meet the payroll, of course, he won't do it. Extending this deduction to HSAs makes employers more likely to offer them, although the present confused state of the employer mandate under the ACA makes it uncertain. To a certain extent, it continues to be unfair to confer such a huge tax advantage to a corporation based on the number of employees it has, although even this feature can be overlooked during periods of high unemployment.
A related mathematical issue is that a deposit when you are young is much more valuable than the same deposit later. Since young people are relatively healthy, while older ones are relatively sick, a deposit by a young person has many decades to grow before it is used for health care. True, young people have colleges and cars and houses to compete for their savings but just listen to this: If it were allowed by the fund managers, you could pay for a 90-year lifetime with a deposit of less than $100 at birth. The contrast is so staggering, that even raging hormones cannot compete with it in any rational analysis. Therefore, pay for administration and trivial medical expenses from some other account (in order to build this tax-sheltered one up), whenever you can do so without running up high-interest charges. By the same reasoning, discounted tax-exempt bonds might lock it up until an investment manager would charge reasonable fees to manage it as a fair-sized HSA. But let's not exaggerate. The main financial differences between an HSA and an IRA, are that an HSA is tax-exempt when you withdraw it for health purposes, whereas the IRA has a top limit of $6000 (for persons over age 50, $5000 below that age), not $3300, for annual contributions. The big obstacle is that IRA contributions are limited by the amount of money paid by an employer in that year, something a newborn obviously cannot match. Therefore:
(Proposal 7a) Waive the limit to annual HSA contributions for underaged subscribers, for single-premium contributions of less than a thousand dollars. While resistance to this provision might focus on class distinctions, the subsequent benefit to Medicare and/or Medicaid might ultimately be so large as to overcome it.
Portable, without Job-lock. No matter where you move, or where you work, this fund moves with you. Or leave it where it is, and communicate by mail.
Individually owned and selected. If you don't like one advisor or his results, choose another.
Investment Control. Here, we advise caution. If you surrender control of investments, there is some danger the broker could select an investment that gives him a kickback. Although they should be, stockbrokers are not fiduciaries. A common overcharge is an excessive commission for liquidating withdrawals, which ought to be no more than $7.50 per trade. Your goal should be to get a 10% annual return, safely, before making withdrawals to pay medical expenses, which will be discussed separately. (Unless you control fees, or deal with a fiduciary, you will be lucky to get 1%) Even during an economic recession with negligible interest rates common stock total return is 5%, and a recession is an especially good time to buy stock and hold it, where 30-50% becomes conceivable. In a tax-exempt fund, ignore dividends. Buy and hold, is the thing, with no commissions above $10 a trade (either buy or especially on sale), highly diversified for safety, index funds of common stock. Either hold back a little cash for medical issues or pay small medical bills with other funds. At least until you are sixty, try not to spend HSA money unless you have no other source of funds.No advice is absolute, but the reasoning behind this little homily appears in other sections of the book.
(Proposal 7b) Limit eligible investment agents who handle HSAs to legally defined fiduciaries. Needless to say, the brokerage industry will oppose this, and should be asked if they can suggest alternatives.
Pooling of funds. Pooling is what you only partially get with the present H.S.A as provided by present law. The law requires that an H.S.A. be accompanied by a high-deductible or "catastrophic" health insurance, which is expected to pool the experience of subscribers. But really suitable low-cost high-deductible policies are not provided by Obamacare. For cost comparisons, we initially pretend that you do not have Catastrophic re-insurance, although in real life and for the present, the best available alternative is the Bronze plan. For outpatient expenses, you are expected to pay out of your own funds, or else draw on the H.S.A. to cover them. When the law was written, the big expenses were hospital expenses, but the prepayment system enacted in 1983 limited their profitability, so hospitals have tended to shift from inpatient toward outpatient care where profits are more unconstrained. There was a time when fixing hernias and removing gall bladders as an outpatient was unheard of, but that has changed, so a pooling system for outpatient costs would be a desirable addition. There might be plenty of money in this approach which could be pooled, but a comfortable average will still be disrupted by an occasional high-cost outlier. For example, major auto accidents might run up a very high accident room cost which would not be covered, even though the average was well in surplus. A credit card would cover such eventualities, but their interest rates are high, and it might be better if investment houses provided loan funds for this purpose at a lower cost. If you must borrow, liquidate the loan at the earliest possible moment.
Compound Investment Income. Here, we have the heart of the whole arrangement. It's not a bonus, it is the source of the new revenue to pay for burdensome health care expenses. Call it the Ben Franklin approach, that allowed him to retire at the age of 41 and live comfortably for another forty years. John Bogle's discovery of buy-and-hold index fund investing is safe and effortless. It makes it unnecessary to rely on a high-commission stock picker to achieve first-class results. So trust, but verify. If you are prudent, a cash deposit of $132,000 spread over 40 years, can pay for $325,000 of lifetime health care, the present national average. That's not exactly free, but it represents an average saving of $192,000, multiplied by 350 million people, which seems to mean $68 trillion in health revenue released for medical use. These back-of-the-envelope calculations are so dizzying that, pick all the nits you please, and the same conclusion would emerge. We'll return to that after going into more description of how the proposal should work.
Caution About Averaging. Remember, it does you no good at all to have $10 in your account and receive a bill for a $1000. That is just as true if the national average of HSAs contains $50,000, which unfortunately isn't yours. Money to pay your bill is in the system, but you can't get at it. The first thing to point out is that the national curve of health accounts shows most expensive illness takes place after the age of 60, when chronic diseases and terminal disease makes an appearance, and where funds in HSAs ought to be ample. Therefore, you are cautioned to pay medical bills from any source of money you have, in order to avoid depletion of the HSA later in life, when it really ought to have money to spare. And within reason, even borrowing (short-term, and at low-interest rates) is usually better than depleting the account for diseases that won't kill you soon. Since most high medical bills are caused by hospital care, the catastrophic insurance requirement was added. Ordinarily, that feature has been fortuitous, but the migration to outpatient surgery caused by DRG payment is threatening, and the inflation of normal outpatient prices, as well as monopoly new-drug pricing, threaten to upset the payment system before it can adjust. Short-term loans from a premium pool, or else a new layer of semi-catastrophic insurance inserted between the two existing classes appear to be a coming necessity. In the meantime, short-term borrowing at what we hope are bearable rates, seems to be the only available expedient.
SOME BRIEF EXAMPLES, EXPLAINING LIFETIME HSAs .
Obamacare does not include Medicare recipients. However, it is a familiar topic, and its data are fairly accurately available in a unified form. So future Obamacare costs are readily understood by subtraction of Medicare costs from lifetime totals, and future changes can be more readily integrated. The average lifetime medical costs are roughly $325,000, as calculated by Michigan Blue Cross, who devised a system for adjusting costs to the year 2000. The results have been verified by several Federal agencies, although the method includes diseases and treatment which we no longer see, and adjusts for inflation to a degree that is startling. Medicare data are more precise but have the same trouble adjusting for the changes of half a century. By this method, we get the approximation of $209,000 for Medicare. By subtraction, we get the data approximating what Obamacare would cover, slightly confounded by including the small costs of children. That is estimated by subtraction to be $116,000. The revenue to pay for these costs is assumed to come entirely from the working years of 25 to 65. In the examples which follow, the Health Savings Account data are the maximum annual allowable ($3350) multiplied by 40, representing the working years, so they represent the maximum contribution, adjusted for compound investment income at 6.5%, and paying for lifetime costs. The aggregate cash contribution is thus $134,000, which without being disturbed by withdrawals, at 6.5% would hypothetically grow to the astonishing figure of $3.2 million by age 93. A more conservative interest rate of 4% would reach nearly a million dollars. The conclusion immediately jumps out that there is plenty of money in the approach, with the main problem remaining, somehow to devise a way to get it out in adequate amounts when the average is adequate but an occasional outlier cost is extreme. In these examples, inflation in revenue is assumed to be equal to inflation in costs, an assumption which is admittedly arguable.
HSA and ACA BRONZE PLAN: A FIRST LOOK. Although a catastrophic high-deductible plan must be attached to a Health Savings Account, and the Affordable Care Act provides a catastrophic category, those plans are not available after age 30 except in hardship cases. Therefore, at the present writing, it is necessary to select the plan with the highest deductible and the lowest premium, which happens to be the Bronze plan. "Lifetime" coverage with this, the cheapest ACA plan, would amount to $170,000, or $38,000
more than the most expensive HSA allowed by law. That's about a 22% difference. And furthermore, the bronze plan does not allow for internal investment income accumulation, which could amount to five times the actual premium revenue if held untouched until the end of projected life expectancy.
A more conservative analysis would end at age 65 because that is where the Affordable Care Act presently ends. Stopping the investment calculation at age 65 would lead to the same $170,000 for the bronze plan, compared with an adjusted price of HSA of $132,000, less a 6.5% gain of $xxxx, or $xxxx. To be fair about it, the gain would have to be adjusted for inflation, which at 2% would amount to $xxxx, an xx% difference. Let's make a more dramatic assertion: The difference between the most expensive HSA and the cheapest Bronze plan would be $xxxx. In a minute we will discuss the reasoning applied to Medicare, but it will show that a deposit of $80,000 at the 65th birthday would pay for the entire average lifetime of twenty years as a Medicare recipient. In a manner of fast talking, you get a lifetime of Medicare coverage free, somehow buried within the HSA approach. That's an exaggeration, of course, but at a quick glance, it could look that way. We haven't accounted for Medicare payroll deductions or premiums. Or government subsidies. And we haven't depleted the fund for the medical expenses it was designed to pay.
HSA AND MEDICARE. Medicare Part A (the hospital component) is free, and the system while generous, is pretty ramshackle. Furthermore, it isn't free, since it collects a payroll tax from working people, and collects premiums from the beneficiaries. Almost no one understands government accounting, but it has the unique feature that its debts are often described as assets. That is, transfers from another department are assets, so money which is borrowed, from the Chinese, let's say, is placed in the general fund and transferred internally, so such debts are assets. And the annual report (available from CMS on the Internet) shows that 50% --half-- of the Medicare budget is such a transfer asset, otherwise known as a subsidy. Medicare is a popular program because a fifty percent discount is always popular; everybody likes a fifty-cent dollar.
Unfortunately, the elderly Medicare recipients perceived the Obamacare costs were underestimated and became suspicious Medicare would be raided to pay for it. Therefore, every elected representative regards Medicare as the "third rail of politics" -- just touch it, and you're dead.
THE OUT-OF-POCKET CAP FUND. The Affordable Care Act contains two innovative insurance ideas for which it should be given full credit: the electronic health insurance exchanges which unfortunately caused such havoc from poor implementation, nevertheless have great potential for reducing marketing costs with direct marketing, and should be given full credit. And secondly, the cap on out-of-pocket payments is really a form of reinsurance without the cost of creating a re-insurance middleman. It is this which is the present focus. Three of the "metal" plans have deductibles of about $6000, and two of the plans have $6000 caps on out-of-pocket cash expenses by the beneficiary. How these two features will be co-ordinated is not yet clear, and does not concern the present discussion.
The point which emerges is the original Health Savings Account was based on the concept of a high deductible, matched with enough money in the fund to pay it. Effectively, it provided first-dollar coverage without the cost-stimulating effect, and experience in the field showed it worked out that way. However, the forced match of HSA with one of the metal plans interfered to some unknown degree with the comfort of virtual first-dollar and the cost reduction of a psychological high deductible. The premium is higher, because an increased volume of small claims is covered, and may be exploited. And an increased pay-out means less cash is available for investment. The result could be either higher costs or lower ones. And therefore, the idea arises of a single-payment fund of initially $6000, deposited at age 25 (Since that might well be a hardship for many young people, an additional feature is required). But the power of compound interest is such that this reserve would eventually become seriously overfunded. If the hypothetical client deposited $6000 at age 25, he would have accumulated $80,000 from this source alone. That's enough so that if it were paid to Medicare on the 65th birthday, it would pay for Medicare for the rest of the individual's life. But since it would not be needed from age 50 to age 65, further compounding (at the arbitrary rate of 6.5%) to $320,000 or some such amount, at age 65. Therefore, the following uses can be envisioned: ( 1.) Lifetime health insurance without premiums after 65. (2.) Since Medicare premiums would not be required, the Medicare premiums would not be required and should be waived. Money which flows in from earlier payroll deductions could be diverted to paying off the Chinese Medicare debt. (3.) We have glossed over this matter, but everyone was born at someone else's expense and should pay off his debt for the first 25 years of his own life. (4.) If circumstances permit, the client should be able to transfer $6000 to other members of his family for the same funding as he got it. (5.) Surpluses might persist in exceptional circumstances, and the option to supplement his own retirement funds might be offered. Eventually, it seems inevitable that the premiums for "metal" plans would be reduced.
At the very least, one would hope that this dramatic example of the power of compound investment income would encourage wider use of the principle.
How Certain Numbers Were Derived
These are important numbers to know, but difficult for most people to understand what they mean. That will, of course, depend on how they are derived, a subject of much less interest to many people. Therefore, the more controversial numbers are discussed in this chapter, which the reader may skip if he chooses.
WHAT IS THE AVERAGE LIFETIME HEALTH CARE COST, PER PERSON, AT PRESENT RATES?
Most people in the past did not live as long as they do today, so the "average person" is a composite of older people who had illnesses as children which we seldom see today, plus some who may well live beyond recent expectations, but who live beyond the age of death of their parents. One surmises this tends to include among "average" some or many hypothetical people who had both more illnesses as children, and who will have more illnesses as retirees. This would lead to an average with more illness content than the future likely contains.
Prices in the calculation have been adjusted to 2000 prices, slightly less than in 2014. Furthermore, there has been a 2% inflation adjustment, which reflects that a dollar in 1913 is now worth a penny, so we expect the penny to be worth 0.0001 cents in 2114. It is hard for most people to wrap their heads around such calculations. There is a $ 25,000-lifetime difference between the sexes, but the highly hypothetical result is this statement: The Average Person Can Expect Lifetime Health Costs of $325,000. Since most assumptions lead to an overestimate of future real costs, this number is conservatively on the high side. Comparatively few people would think they can afford that much. That is, plenty of people are going to feel stretched to adjust their savings to that level of inflation. It's the best estimate anyone can make, but by itself alone it seems to justify organizing a government agency office to match average income with average expenses, and to make the ingredient data widely available to many others outside the government on the Internet, to maximize the recognition of serious errors, unexpected financial turmoil, the development of new treatments, and changes in disease patterns. Inevitably, these calculations will be applied to other nations for comparison, but that is a highly uncertain adventure.
HOW DO YOU CALCULATE CHILDREN'S HEALTH COSTS?
Like Archimedes announcing he could move the World if he had a long enough lever and a place to stand, accomplishing this little trick could arrive at impossible assumptions. Our basic assumption is that paying for your grandchildren is equivalent to having your parents pay for you, even though the dollar amounts are different. It's an intergenerational obligation, not a business contract, and you are just as entitled to share good luck as bad luck when the calculation is shaky at best. Since children's costs are relatively small, little damage is anticipated from taking present costs, adjusted for inflation, for both past and future.
Is it reasonable and/or politically possible to lump males and females together, when females include all the reproductive costs, and have a longer life expectancy? How do we apportion the pregnancy costs between mother and child, with or without including the father? What is fair to those who have no children? What costs do we include as truly medical? Sunglasses? Plastic Surgery? Toothpaste? Dentistry? The recent hubbub about bioflavonoids threatens to convert what was mainly regarded as a fad, into a respectable therapy for allergy. When allergists and immunologists agree it is a fad, you don't pay for it; if substantially all of them think it is medically sound, pay for it. The opinion of the FDA informs the profession, it does not substitute for that opinion. Quite aside from cost issues, all of these issues affect the statistical ground rules, and may not have been treated identically among investigators. Unverifiable 90-year projections must be thoroughly standardized to be useful, and that's one committee I shall be glad to avoid because I do not believe the improved accuracy is worth the dissention. When somebody discovers a cure for cancer or Alzheimers, rules may have to be revised, net of the cost of the treatment, and net of the increased longevity. Government accounting, private accounting, and non-profit accounting are three different schools of thought for three different goals; when a government borrows outside of its accounting environment to reimburse providers of care, misunderstandings of the "cost" consequences result, in the three definitions of medical costs. In short, only broad qualitative trends can be credible at the moment.
CRUCIAL FINAL QUESTION: FUNGIBILITY (Shifting money around)
Some of the foregoing examples are lurid, and perhaps a little dramatized for effect. But the effect of compound investment income is so impressive, that there really is a little question there is plenty of money to do just about everything which needs to be done in health financing. The problem, however, is how to get enough money to pay the right bills, at the right time. The temptation to steer the money into the wrong places has been present since Isaac and Esau, and while the pooling principle of insurance (and government) solves that problem, excessive use of that flexibility is what mainly got us into the present mess. The intrusion of government can be traced to the "pay as you go" system, which amounts to paying long-term debts with current cash flow. This money has been present right along, but political considerations created pressure to begin the government system, right away, and for everyone right away. The citizens are partly responsible since they have taught politicians they must respond to people taking off their shoes and pounding the table with them. So, yes it's true that compound interest gives an advantage to frugal people, and to some extent to people who are already prosperous. But egalitarianism doesn't justify refusing to do what is in the general interest of everyone. We are currently in a pickle because we took egalitarian short-cuts in 1965, and have preferred to borrow money for healthcare, ending up paying many times what we need to pay, rather than yield to mathematical principles discovered by Euclid, or perhaps it was Archimedes.
But while Health Savings Accounts, individually owned and selected, have more investment flexibility to take advantage of the necessarily higher returns of the private sector, and the flexibility to choose superior investment techniques as they are invented, and the flexibility to adjust to personal circumstances rather than universal absolutes,-- they lack the flexibility to pool resources between different persons and times. Perhaps this flexibility could be extended to whole families since there are shared perplexities of pregnancy, age group, and divorce which must be addressed in a communal forum, and perhaps churches or clubs could fill that role. But in our system sooner or later you get mixed up with a lawyer, judge or investment advisor. And therefore must contend with moral hazard and disloyal agents. By this time, I hope we have learned the weaknesses of that new branch of government, the government agencies. As Adlai Stevenson quipped, "It used to be said, that a fool and his money are soon parted. But nowadays -- it could happen to anyone."
So I recognize that although some people in a Health Savings Account system will have barrels of money, while others will be desperately in need, the fact that on average there is plenty of money to fund everybody isn't quite good enough. Somewhere a pooling arrangement must be created, and the fact that the people running it will be overcompensated must be shrugged off as inevitable. But since the people who trust it will be fleeced, they might as well be the ones to create or select it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How Do I Pay My Bills With These Things?
To summarize what was just said, on the revenue side of the ledger, we noted the evidence that a single deposit of about $55 in a Health Savings Account in 1923 would have grown to more than $300,000, today in the year 2014, because the economy achieved 10% return, not 6.5%. Therefore, with a turn of language, if the Account had invested $100 in an index fund of large-cap American corporate stock at a conservative 6.5% interest rate, it might have narrowly reached $6000 at age 50, which is re-invested on the 65th birthday, would have been valued at $325,000 at the age of 93, the conjectured longevity 50 years from now. No matter how the data is re-arranged, lifetime subsidy costs of $100 can be managed for the needy, the ingenuity of our scientists, and the vicissitudes of world finance-- within that 4% margin. We expect that subsidies of $100 at birth would be politically acceptable, and the other numbers, while stretched and rounded, could be pushed closer to 10% return. Much depends on returns to 2114 equalling the returns from 1923 to 2014, as reported by Ibbotson. At least In the past, $55 could have pre-paid a whole lifetime of medical care, at the year 2000 prices, which include annual 3% inflation. An individual can gamble with such odds, a government cannot. So one of the beauties of this proposal is the hidden incentive it contains, to make participation voluntary, and remain that way. No matter what flaws are detected and deplored, this approach would save a huge chunk of health care costs, even if they might not be stretchable enough to cover all of it.
And if something does go wrong, where does that leave us? Well, the government would have to find a way to bail us out, because the health of the public is "too big to fail" if anything is. That's why a responsible monitoring agency is essential, with a bailout provision. Congress must retain the right to revert to a bailout position, which might include the prohibition to use it without a national referendum or a national congressional election.
This illustration is, again, mainly to show the reader the enormous power of compound interest, which most people under-appreciate, as well as the additional power added by extending life expectancy by thirty years this century, and the surprising boost of passive investment income to 10% by financial transaction technology. The weakest part of these projections comes in the $300,000 estimate of lifetime healthcare costs during the last 90 years. That's because the dollar has continuously inflated a 1913 penny into a 2014 dollar, and science has continuously improved medical care while eliminating many common diseases. If we must find blame, blame Science and the Federal Reserve. The two things which make any calculation possible at all, are the steadiness of inflation and the relentless progress of medical care. For that, give credit to -- Science and the Federal Reserve.
Blue Cross of Michigan and two federal agencies put their own data through a formula which creates a hypothetical average subscriber's cost for a lifetime at today's prices. All three agencies come out to a lifetime cost estimate of around $300,000. That's not what we actually spent because so much has changed, but at such a steady rate that justifies the assumption, it will continue for the next century. So, although the calculation comes closer to approximating the next century than what was seen in the last, it really provides no method to anticipate future changes in diseases or longevity, either. Inflation and investment returns are assumed to be level, and longevity is assumed to level off. So be warned.
The best use of this data is, measured by the same formula every year, arriving at some approximation of how "overall net medical payment inflation" emerges. That is not the same as "inflation of medical prices" since it includes the net of the cost of new and older treatments and the net effect of new treatments on longevity. Therefore, this calculation usefully measures how the medical industry copes with its cost, compared with national inflation, by substituting new treatments for old ones. Unlike most consumer items, Medicine copes with its costs by getting rid of them. Sometimes it reduces costs by substituting new treatments, net of eliminating old ones. It also assumes a dollar saved by curing disease is at least as good as a dollar saved by lowering prices, and sometimes a great deal better, which no one can measure. Our proposals therefore actually depend on steadily making mid-course corrections, so we must measure them.
Our innovative revenue source, the overall rate of return to stockholders of the nation's largest corporations, has also been amazingly steady at 10% for a century. National inflation has been just as non-volatile, and over long periods has averaged 3%., perhaps the two achievements are necessary for each other. Medical payments must grow less than a steady 10%, minus 3% inflation, before any profit could be applied to paying off debt, financing the lengthening retirement of retirees, or shared with patients including rent seekers. But if the profit margin proves significantly less than 10%, we might have to borrow until lenders call a halt. No one can safely say what the two margins (7% + 3%) will be in the coming century, but at least the risks are displayed in simple numbers. Parenthetically, the steadiness of industrial results (in contrast to the apparent unsteadiness of everything else) was achieved in spite of a gigantic shift from control by family partnerships to corporations. Small businesses (less than a billion dollars annual revenue) still constitute half of the American economy, however, and huge tectonic shifts are still possible. Globalization could change the whole environment, and the world still has too many atom bombs. American Medicine can escape international upheavals in only one way -- eliminate the disease. Otherwise, the fate of our medical care will largely reflect the fate of our economy. To repeat, it is vital to monitor where we are going.
Revenue growing at 10% will relentlessly grow faster than expenses at 3%. Our monetary system is constructed on the gradations of interest rates between the private sector and the public sector. It would be unwise to switch health care to the public sector and still expect returns at private sector levels. Repayment of overseas debt does not affect actual domestic health expenditures, although it indirectly affects the value of the dollar. Without all its recognized weaknesses, a fairly safe description of present data would be that enormous savings are possible, but only to the degree, we contain last century's medical cost inflation closer to 3% than to 10%. The simplest way to retain revenue at 10% growth is by anchoring the leaders within the private sector.
How Do You Withdraw Money From Lifetime Health Insurance?
Four ways should be mentioned: Debit cards for outpatient care, Diagnosis pre-payment for hospital care, Transfers from escrow, and Gifts for specified purposes.
Special Debit Cards, from the Health Savings Account, for Outpatient care. Bank debit cards are cheaper than Credit cards, because unpaid credit card payments are a loan, whereas the money is already in the bank for a debit card. Some pressure has to be applied to banks or they won't accept debit cards with small balances. Somehow, the banks have to be made to see that you start with a small account and only later build up to a big one. So it's probably fair, for them to insist on some proof you will remain with them. The easiest way to handle this issue is to make the first deposit of $3300, the maximum you are allowed to deposit in one year. That's difficult for little children and poor people, however, so some way must be devised to have family accounts for children. At the moment, you just have to shop around, that's all.
After that, you should pay your medical outpatient bills with the debit card, although we advise paying out of some other account if you can, so the balance can more quickly build up to a level where the bank quits pestering you for more funds. Remember this: the only difference between a Health Savings Account and an ordinary IRA for practical purposes, is that medical expenses are tax-exempted when paid with money from an HSA. Both of them give you a deduction for deposits, and both collect income without taxes. If you can scrape together $6000, you are completely covered from Obamacare deductibles, and since co-payment plans are to be avoided, an HSA with Catastrophic Bronze plan is your present best bet. If you have a bronze plan, you probably get some money back if you file a claim form, but those rules are still in flux at this writing. The expense of filing and collecting claims forms is one of the reasons the Bronze plan is more expensive, but that's their rule at present.
There are some other important things to say about outpatient vs. inpatient care, but it seems best to describe how inpatient care is envisioned to work in this system, before returning to the tension between the two. As will then become apparent, increasing the ease of use might create the problem of making it a little too easy to spend money.
Payment by Diagnosis Bundles, for Outpatient care. In 1983 a law was included as an unnoticed part of the annual Budget Reconciliation Act, which nevertheless later proved to have a huge effect on the health financing system. The proposal was to stop paying for Medicare patients on the basis of the itemized services each patient received as a bill, but to pay a single lump sum for the main diagnosis of each patient, using the argument that most cases of a given diagnosis were pretty much the same, and what variation there was, would soon average itself out after a few cases. Such a meat ax approach to the complexity was justified by the argument that a patient sick enough to be in bed in a hospital, was too overwhelmed by his frightening situation and too uneducated in its issues, to be able to dispute what was done to him. Market mechanisms, in short, were futile is situations with such imbalances of information and power. Consequently, a great deal of money was being wasted on accounting systems to arrive at prices which were ultimately set in an arbitrary way.
This argument prevailed in Congress, which was becoming desperate about relentless cost increases in Medicare, even sweeping aside the grossly primitive details of a system defining the solvency of vital institutions. The misgivings from economists that the accounting system was a large part of the internal hospital administrative information system, were also treated like mutterings of pointy-heads. To the extent these objections were valid, they would probably lead to a collapse of the experiment, so why worry about it. In fact, the expedient emerged that the prices of the DRG ( diagnosis "related" groupings) were simply revised to result in a 2% profit margin on the bottom line, no matter what the medical issues happened to be. It was a highly effective rationing system, not terribly far removed from a lump sum payment with a 2% markup, so live with it. Since the Federal Reserve targets 2% annual inflation, 2% profit is no real profit at all.
The hospitals might have rebelled, or might have collapsed. Instead, they accepted 2% for inpatients and set about adjusting the subsidies, aiming for a 15% profit margin on the Emergency Room, and a 30% profit on outpatient services. Subsidies from such accounting were difficult to achieve at first, so Emergency rooms were enlarged, and much-expanded outpatient facilities were built, requiring hospitals to purchase physician practices to keep them filled. The entire healthcare system was put under strain, and hardball was the game of the day. New lifesaving drugs were priced at $1000 per pill, institutions were merged out of existence, the office practice of medicine was in turmoil, and a year in business school could make you a millionaire if you could appear calm in the midst of confusion.
I tell this story to explain why, with great reluctance, I advise the management of Health Savings Accounts to base their inpatient payment system on some variation of Diagnosis Related Groups. It's a terrible system, designed by rank amateurs, which results in distortions of a noble profession. But there is no other rational choice. It does protect the paying agency from being fleeced, once it gets past negotiation of a small list of prices which aggregate to a profitable bottom line. By protecting the payment system, it protects the patients from a chaotic price jungle which, unchecked, will rapidly destroy health care. If we experience more than 2% inflation, the destruction will be quicker.
Resolving Tension Between The Two Payment Systems. Evidently, some clear thinking by some smart people have brought them to the ruthless conclusion that a two-class system of medical care is preferable to the way we are otherwise going. Rich people will have their way if their own health is at stake, and poor people will have their way if they exercise their votes. Both of these conclusions are correct, but they lead to Medieval monks retreating into monasteries. The cure for cancer and a few brain diseases might make monasteries unnecessary, and so would a drastic reduction in health care costs. Huge research budgets and major regimentation are big-government approaches, of willingness to accept some loss of freedom to achieve equality of outcome.
But we can't completely depend on either choice, so the remaining choice is to undermine a lot of recent culture change, by devolving back to leadership on the local level of small states and big cities. This is a small-government approach, willing to accept wider inequalities in order to seek freedom to act. Mostly using the licensing power, the competition will reappear if retirement villages and nursing homes are licensed to be hospitals. If not, nurses and pharmacists can be licensed as doctors. Some of this could become pretty brutal, and all of it leads to patchy results. But of its ability to restrain prices, there can be little doubt.
Escrow Subaccounts within HSA Accounts. Whether anything can restrain reckless spending of "found" money, is quite a different matter, however. It may be that supply and demand will balance, even if it takes generations. There is some hope to be gained from watching reckless teenagers become penny-pinching millennials, but there remain dismal reminders of improvidence to be found in ninety-year-old millionaires marrying teen-aged blondes, further reinforced by watching the blondes run off with stable-boys. The net conclusion is that if certain portions of a Health Savings Account must be set aside for mandatory later expenses, then the money should be set aside within partitions, like an escrow account. Even that will have limits to its effectiveness, as I have noticed when trust-fund babies in my practice worked around the restraints their grandfather's lawyer took care to put in place.
Specified Gifts to be Encouraged. Only limited restraints on spending the client's own money can ever be justified, but certain types of gifts can still be better justified than others. One of them would be the special $6000 escrow fund for deductibles and caps on out-of-pocket spending. Particularly in the early transitional years, the fund's solvency may be threatened by leads and lags, where these escrow funds could save the day. Therefore, if someone accumulates large surpluses in his account by the fortuitous conjunction of events, he should be encouraged to consider donating a $6000 escrow to one of his grandchildren or other impecunious relatives. Quite often, a prudent gift to a grandchild can lighten the burdens of his parents or other members of the family. If they wish, any number of $6000 transfers to the escrow funds of others should be encouraged.
Spending Health Savings Accounts. Spending Less. In earlier sections of this book, we have proposed everyone have an HSA, whether existing health insurance is continued or not. It's a way to have tax-exempt savings, and a particularly good vehicle for extending the Henry Kaiser tax exemption to everyone, if only Congress would permit spending for health insurance premiums out of the Accounts. To spend money out of an account we advise a cleaned-up DRG payment for hospital inpatients, and a simple plastic debit card for everything else. Credit cards cost twice as much like debit cards, and only banks can issue credit cards. Actual experience has shown that HSA cost 30% less than payment through conventional health insurance, primarily because they do not include "service benefits" and put the patient in a position to negotiate prices or be fleeced if he doesn't. Not everybody enjoys haggling over prices, but 30% is just too much to ignore.
No Medicare, no Medicare Premiums. We assume no one wants to pay medical expenses twice, and will, therefore, drop Medicare if investment income is captured in lifetime Health Savings Accounts. The major sources of revenue for Medicare at the present time fall into three categories: half are drawn from general tax revenues, a quarter come from a 6% payroll deduction among working-age people, and another quarter are premiums from retirees on Medicare. All three payments should disappear if Medicare does, too. Therefore, the benefit of dropping Medicare will differ in type and amount, related to the age of the individual. Eliminating the payroll deduction for a working-age person would still find him paying income taxes in part for the costs of the poor, as it would for retirees with sufficient income.
Retirees would pay no Medicare premiums. Their illnesses make up 85% of Medicare cost, but at present, they only contribute a quarter of Medicare revenue. However, after the transition period, they first contribute payroll taxes without receiving benefits, and then later in life pay premiums while they get benefits, to a total contribution of 50% toward their own costs. But the prosperous ones still contribute to the sick poor through their income taxes. There might be some quirks of unfairness in this approach, but its rough outline can be seen from the size of their aggregate contributions, in this scheme. At any one time during the transition, working-age and retirees would both benefit from about the same reduction of money, but the working-age people would eventually skip payments for twice as long. Invisibly, the government subsidy of 50% of Medicare costs would also disappear as beneficiaries dropped out, so the government gets its share of a windfall, in proportion to its former contributions to it. One would hope they would pay down the foreign debt with the windfall, but it is their choice. This whole system -- of one quarter, one quarter, and a half -- roughly approximates the present sources of Medicare funding and can be adjusted if inequity is discovered. For example, people over 85 probably cost more than they contribute. For the Medicare recipients as a group, however, it seems like an equitable exchange. This brings up the subject of intra- and extra-group borrowing.
Escrow and Non-escrow. When the books balance for a whole age group, the managers of a common fund shift things around without difficulty. However, the HSA concept is that each account is individually owned, so either a part of it is shifted to a common fund, or else frozen in the individual account (escrowed) until needed. It is unnecessary to go into detail about the various alternatives available, except to say that some funds must be escrowed for long-term use and other funds are available in the current year. Quite often it will be found that cash is flowing in for deposits, sufficient to take care of most of this need for shifting, but without experience in the funds flow it would be wise to have a contingency fund. For example, the over-85 group will need to keep most of its funds liquid for current expenses, while the group 65-75 might need to keep a larger amount frozen in their accounts for the use of the over-85s. In the early transition days, this sort of thing might be frequent.
The Poor. Since Obamacare, Medicaid and every other proposal for the poor involves subsidy, so does this one. But the investment account pays 10%, the cost of the subsidy is considerably reduced. HSA makes it cheaper to pay for the poor.
Why Should I Do It? Because it will save large amounts of money for both individuals and the government, without affecting or rationing health care at all. To the retiree, in particular, he gets the same care but stops paying premiums for it. In a sense, gradual adoption of this idea actually welcomes initial reluctance by many people hanging back, to see how the first-adopters make out. Medicare is well-run, and therefore most people do not realize how much it is subsidized; even so, everyone likes a dollar for fifty cents, so there will be some overt public resistance. When this confusion is overcome, there will still be the suspicion that government will somehow absorb most of the profit, so the government must be careful of its image, particularly at first. Medicare now serves two distinct functions: to pay the bills and to protect the consumer from overcharging by providers. Providers must also exercise prudent restraint. To address this question is not entirely hypothetical, in view of the merciless application of hospital cost-shifting between inpatients and outpatients, occasioned in turn by DRG underpayment by diagnosis, for inpatients. A citizens watchdog commission is also prudent. The owners of Health Savings Accounts might be given a certain amount of power to elect representatives and negotiate what seem to be excessive charges.
We answer this particular problem in somewhat more detail by proposing a complete substitution of the ICDA coding system by SNODO coding, within revised Diagnosis Related Groupings,(if that is understandable, so far) followed by linkage of the helpless inpatient's diagnosis code to the same or similar ones for market-exposed outpatients. (Whew!) All of which is to say that DRG has been a very effective rationing tool, but it cannot persist unless it becomes related to market prices. We have had entirely enough talk of ten-dollar aspirin tablets and $900 toilet seats; we need to be talking about how those prices are arrived at. In the long run, however, medical providers are highly influenced by peer pressure so, again, mechanisms to achieve price transparency are what to strive for. These ideas are expanded in other sections of the book. An underlying theme is those market mechanisms will work best if something like the Professional Standards Review Organization (PSRO) is revived by self-interest among providers. Self-governance by peers should be its theme, ultimately enforced by fear of a revival of recent government adventures into price control. Those who resist joining should be free to take their chances on prices. Under such circumstances, it would be best to have multiple competing PSROs, for those dissatisfied with one, to transfer allegiance to another. And an appeal system, to appeal against local feuds through recourse to distant judges.
Deliberate Overfunding. Many temporary problems could be imagined, immediately simplified by collecting more money than is needed. Allowing the managers some slack eliminates the need for special insurance for epidemics, special insurance for floods and natural disasters, and the like. Listing all the potential problems would scare the wits out of everybody, but many potential problems will never arise, except the need to dispose of the extra funds. For that reason, it is important to have a legitimate alternative use for excess funds as an inducement to permit them. That might be payments for custodial care or just plain living expenses for retirement. But it must not be a surprise, or it will be wasted. Since we are next about to discuss doing essentially the same thing for everybody under 65, too, any surplus from those other programs can be used to fund deficits in Medicare. But Medicare is the end of the line, so its surpluses at death have accumulated over a lifetime, not just during the retiree health program.
That may not be more accurate, but it displays its assumptions better. Michigan Blue Cross has calculated we calculate lifetime costs and Obamacare costs by starting with lifetime average health costs of $325,000 and subtracting Medicare. Although Medicare is reported by CMS to have average costs of $xxxx, for which we prefer to assume a Health Savings Account "present value" cost of $80,000 on the 65th birthday (at a 6.5% interest rate). At the same 6.5% rate, a $3300 annual deposit from age 25 to 65 (the earning years) would total $132,000 of deposits. Preliminary goals for a hypothetical average person are: To accumulate $80,000 in the Medicare fund by the age of 65, to pay off the 25-year health costs of 2.0 children per couple as a gift to them, and to pay his own relatively modest average healthcare costs from 25-45, somewhat higher costs 45-65. The Medicare goal of $80,000 is what is estimated to be what is required for a single-deposit investment fund (paid on the 65th birthday) to pay the health costs for an average person aged 65-93,(a guessed-at future average longevity), with an estimated compound investment income of 4%, also guessed, but conservative. Inflation is ignored, assuming revenue and expenses will inflate at the same rate. Our average consumer will have to set aside $1250 per year from age 25 to 65, and earn 4% compounded, to do it.
Those who disagree with the underlying assumptions should feel free to substitute their own assumptions. The interest rate of 4% is deliberately low, in order to make room for disagreements which are higher. The upper limit is set to match the HSA contribution limits of 3300 times 40, becoming hypothetically the upper bound of revenue which can ever be anticipated. Anticipating two children per couple and full employment from 25 to 65, this revenue effectively covers one full lifetime, from cradle to grave. Childhood illnesses and elderly disabilities notwithstanding, this is all the revenue we allow ourselves in this example.
Let us assume that an average person can start contributing to an H.S.A. at the age of 25, even though perhaps a quarter of the population at that age are burdened with college debts, etc. and cannot. We are well aware of the Pew Foundation poll that xxxx% of those under 30 are still living with their parents, and that xxxx% have college debts. (Congress ought to examine this condition, which could apply at any age, and provide for make-up contributions later.) The present ceiling of $3300 annual contribution is otherwise taken as the upper boundary of what is possible for the sake of example, and theoretical deficits would have to be made up from the $68 trillion dollar surplus created by such legal maximums. To plunge ahead with the example, our average person sets aside $3300, starting at age 25 toward lifetime health costs. To simplify the example, he does so whether he can afford it or not, and what he can't supply himself is provided by a subsidy or a loan. Since present law prohibits spending from the H.S.A. for health insurance premiums (this should be reconsidered by Congress, by the way), an estimated premium of $300 for his own Catastrophic insurance is taken from the set-aside, and the remainder is placed in the H.S.A., paying an estimated 4% tax-free. Within this he eventually needs to set aside a Dependent Escrow premium (remember, this example covers lifetime expenses, even though everyone has Medicare), which for twenty years (until age 45) is zero for Medicare and available for medical gifts to Children, and after that is exclusively used for Medicare, both of which will be explained in later sections.
Health Savings Accounts are tax-exempt, and they can earn investment income. Except it isn't all it could be. Professor Ibbotson of Yale, the acknowledged expert in the long term results of investment classes, has regularly published data going back nearly a century. In spite of military and economic disasters of the worst sort, investment classes have remained remarkably steady throughout the past century and presumably will maintain the same relationships for some time to come. John Bogle of Philadelphia has translated that into index funds of investment classes, with almost negligible administrative costs. (Caution: Many index funds are sold with very high trading costs, typically in charges when money is withdrawn. Be careful of your counterparty, particularly if he specifies the index fund, because he may limit it to one who gives kickbacks to him.) With this warning, there is a reasonably good chance of getting returns approaching 10% for investments in index funds of well-known American stocks, even though the typical HSA at present is yielding much less. This investment income can grow to the point where it constitutes a fairly large part of the health revenue.
SIX PIECES OF THE LIFETIME PIE
Instead of starting at birth and ending at death, this book will reverse the process. Let me explain. There is a big transition problem in a proposal like this, since the readers will be of different ages, and the system must work without gaps. Everybody has already been born, and for a long time to come, everybody will have a piece of his life behind him that he does not want to pay for. The time is past when Lyndon Johnson could solve the transition problem by simply giving a gift of many years free coverage to most of the new entrants to his system. So, although it will probably spook a number of old folks just to hear the discussion, let's begin for completeness with the Last Year of Life Coverage, and end up with the First year of Life coverage. Both of those apply to 100% of Americans in a theoretical sense, and in a sensible system would be the basic coverage. If any health insurance should be universal, these two have the strongest arguments. Unfortunately, they have the least chance of political success. Therefore, it is likely that they will be voluntary and self-pay if they are adopted at all.
The Duchess of Windsor was reported to say, a woman can never be too rich or too thin. Perhaps, but with insurance you state -- in advance -- how much insurance you can buy, best not expect more. In healthcare, it's my hunch something drastic would have to change before the American public voted an assessment for more than $3300 per person, for every working year from age 26 to age 65. In fact, if it went much higher, many people would probably look for a way to escape the burden. Perhaps we could supplement 3% per year, the historical rate of inflation for the past century. That's fair because although it would reach $10,000 at age 65 instead of $3300, everything else would have readjusted to give it the same financial impact. Similarly, asking people 26-65 to pay for all ages is more palatable if it's arranged as your own childhood and retirement to be supported.
Excluded: Past debts and Custodial Care. In any event, any payments for past debts, for health or otherwise are not envisioned in the following plan. The term "fixed income" reminds our debt and equity obey different rules, and the premise is the income supplement of this calculation will be based on equity, common stock. Furthermore, we know the National Debt, but how much of it once paid for health services, is fuzzy. When I started this analysis, I really never dreamed all of the current healthcare costs might be covered by investment income from common stocks, and it's going to take some experience to be sure even that is reasonable. It allows us to take a stance: if it won't pay current costs, at least it will pay for some of them. If it more than pays for them, annual deposits should be reduced, never confiscated. To avoid circumvention by changing definitions, it might be well to state custodial care costs are not included, either, because they are treated as retirement income.
Medicare. Making it easier to explain, let's begin at the far end of the process, the day after death, looking backward. This proposal didn't initially include a Medicare proposal, but the accumulation of its unpaid debt has become so alarming, considering Medicare within Health Savings Accounts could fast become a national priority having no other solution. In addition, most factual health data come from Medicare, so the reader gets accustomed to hearing about it. So, while the Medicare situation is fraught with political obstacles, we might have to risk them. While debt overhang from earlier years continues to grow, Health Savings Accounts cannot be confidently promised to rescue Medicare by itself. But perhaps at least the Savings Account discussion could put a stop to going deeper into debt. Even a stopgap would have to get started pretty soon, but there is also a chance an improving economy might partially reduce the indebtedness.
Medicare-HSA Overlaps. At present, Catastrophic coverage is required for Health Savings Accounts, but its premiums are not tax-exempt. To extend HSA for the life expectancy, therefore, requires an additional average of 18 years of after-tax premiums. We have split lifetime HSA into two parts at age 65 and assume a single-premium ($80,000) exchange for Medicare, possibly traded for partial forgiveness of premiums and rebate of payroll taxes. It is important not to count the $80,000 twice if it assumed to be self-financed. One quarter from payroll taxes, one quarter from premiums, and a half from the $80,000 which used to be from the taxpayers. If pre-payment begins at an early age, Medicare costs might be quite modest after growth from income. Even when we show all the costs, including double payments, using an HSA at conservative rates like 4% will reduce the Medicare cost by 75%. Better performance depends heavily on approaching 12.7% by passive but hard-boiled investing. To pay down the existing debt back to 1965 is not contemplated by this proposal. At present, it grows by 50% of annual costs by addition; and an unknown amount by compounding. The amount of debt service is probably going to depend on the national ability to pay it down, regardless of its written terms. The same is likely to be true of subsidies for the poor. Ultimately, both of these decisions are political, limited by the ability to pay. Because of the long time periods, comparatively modest interest rates could convert this impending disaster into a manageable cost, but it should not be contemplated until net investment returns approach 12.7 %. The outcome of these intersections is that the terms and benefits become largely a matter of political choice. That has been true for a long time, yet no effective corrections have been made. It is perhaps unbecoming of a citizen to say so, but the political system needs some steps taken to increase its sense of urgency.
Disintermediation of Investment Returns. By this reasoning, the rescue of Medicare depends on the political choice to do it, and the avoidance of a collision with the financial industry. Without a solution to the Medicare problem, a solution to paying for healthcare at younger ages becomes quite feasible, but it would be useless. Conversely, solving Medicare would be possible if the problems of younger people were ignored, but that is equally unlikely. To solve healthcare financing for all ages depends on introducing some new feature, and the easiest solution to imagine is to raise effective net interest rates. Interest rates are unusually low at present, and the Federal Reserve probably feels it would be dangerous to raise them. However, that's the easy part, because interest rates are certain to rise, eventually. What's much harder to envision is to flow the improved rates and the transaction-cost efficiencies through the financial system without wrecking it. What's hard to imagine is not hard to seem feasible, however. It is to take investments averaging 12.7%, flowing 10% past the intermediaries to the investor; and keeping it up for a century. Disintermediation, so to speak.
Rationalizing Fragmented Payments The transition to a solvent system could be greatly eased by the present premiums and payroll deductions, which are largely age-distributed, and can, therefore, be forgiven in a graduated manner for late-comers to the program. Most redistribution of high-cost cases should be handled through the catastrophic insurance, which is well suited for invisible and tax-free redistribution. Because of hospital internal cost-shifting, inpatients are overpriced, rapidly heading toward underpricing. This distortion of prices is achieved by squeezing inpatient prices with the DRG to shift costs and overpricing to hospital outpatients. In the long run, distorting prices has the effect of raising them. This will more immediately affect the relative costs of Catastrophic and Health Savings Accounts and should be more carefully monitored, with an eye toward re-achieving equilibrium.
Dual Reimbursement Systems are Better Than One At present costs, statisticians estimate average lifetime healthcare costs at about $325,000 in the year 2000 dollars; we could discuss the weaknesses of that estimate, but it's the best that can be produced. Women experience about 10% higher lifetime health costs than men. Roughly speaking, how much the average individual somehow has to accumulate, eventually has to equal how much he spends by the time of death. At this point, we must work around one of the advantages of having separate individual accounts. On the one hand, individual accounts create an incentive to spend wisely, but it is also true that pooled insurance accounts make cost-sharing easier, almost invisible, and (for some) tax-free. Therefore, linking Health Savings Accounts with Catastrophic insurance provides a way to pool heavy outlier expenses, while the incentive for careful money management resides in the outpatient costs most commonly employed (together with a special bank debit card) to pay outpatient costs. Such expenses are much more suitable for bargain-hunting anyway because dreadfully sick people in a hospital are in no position to bargain or resist.
Internal Borrowing. Furthermore, there is a significant difference between mismatches of aggregate revenue-to-expenses of an entire age group, and outliers within the same age cohort, the latter much likelier to be due to chance. To put it another way, somebody has to pay these debts, and the plan has been designed to break even as an entirety. Surely we must have a plan about who should pay them when enough revenue is not yet present in a new account. Surely some groups are always in surplus, other groups are always in arrears; the two should be matched, at low or zero interest rates. Borrowing between sick outliers and lucky good people within the same age cohort should pay modest interest rates, and borrowing between different cohorts for things characteristic of the age (pregnancy, for example) should pay none. Unfortunately, some people may abuse such opportunities, and interest must then be charged. Until the frequency of such things can be established, this function of loan banking should be part of the function of the oversight body. When it's limits become clearer, it might be delegated to a bank, or even privatized. While it is unnecessary to predict the last dime to be spent on the last day of life, incentives should be identified by the managing organization, separating structural cash shortages from abusive ones. Much of this sort of thing is eliminated by encouraging people to over-deposit in their accounts, possibly paying some medical bills with after-tax money in order to build them up. Such incentives must be contrived if they do not appear spontaneously. User groups can be very helpful in such situations. People over 65 (that is, those on Medicare) spend at least half of that $ 325,000-lifetime cash turnover, but just what should be counted as their own debt, can be a matter of argument (see below.)
Proposal 10: Current law permits an individual to deposit $3300 per year in a Health Savings Account, starting at age 25, and ending when Medicare coverage appears. Probably that amount is more than most young people can afford, so it would help if the rules were relaxed to roll-over that entitlement to later years, spreading the entire $132,000 over the forty-year time period at the discretion of the subscriber.
Bifurcated Health Savings Accounts. When Health Savings Accounts were first devised, it never seemed likely that Medicare might be supplanted. However, Medicare has grown both highly popular and severely under-funded, probably running at a large loss. The rules should be modified to permit someone who has health insurance through an employer to develop a Health Savings Account which the funds but does not spend while he is of working age. The funds would then build up, enabling him to buy out Medicare on his 65th birthday or thereabout, with a single-premium exchange at present prices, (exchanging about $100,000 funded by the forgiveness of Medicare premiums and some portion of payroll deductions from the past). He would have to purchase Catastrophic coverage at special rates. If this approach proved popular, it might supply extra funds for loaning to HSA subscribers in the outlier category. While there is no thought of phasing out Medicare against the subscribers' will, Congress would certainly be relieved to have subscribers drop out of a program which must be 50% subsidized.
Proposal 11: The present closing age for HSA enrollments at the onset of Medicare should be extended a few years older. And single-premium buy-outs of Medicare coverage, including the possible return of payroll deductions where indicated, should be permitted as an option.
Proposal 12: Congress should create and fund a permanent Health Savings Account Agency. It should have members representing subscribers and providers of these instruments, with the power to hold hearings and make recommendations about technical changes. It should meet jointly with the Senate Finance Committee and the Health Subcommittee of Ways and Means periodically. It should be involved with the appropriate Executive Branch department, to review current activity, detect changing trends, and recommend changes in regulations and laws related to the subject. On a temporary basis, it should oversee inter-cohort and outlier loans, leading to recommendations concerning the size and scope of this activity.
Single-Premium Medicare, age 65 Hypothetically, if anyone could live to his 65th birthday without spending any of the accounts, a prudent investor would have accumulated $132,000 in pure deposits on his 65th birthday. He only needs $80,000 to fund Medicare as a single-payment at age 65, however, so he can even afford to get sick a little. If he starts later than age 25, he has already paid for Medicare somewhat, with payroll taxes. That could be considered payment toward reduction of the Medicare debt.
If someone makes a single deposit of $80,000 on his/her 65th birthday, there will accumulate $190,000 in the account over the next 18 years, the present life expectancy if he spends nothing for health and invests at 5%; and $190,000 is what the average person costs Medicare in a lifetime. Since the average person spends $190,000 during 18 years on Medicare, enough money will accumulate in Medicare to pay its expenses, and after some shifting-around, this should make Medicare solvent, in the sense that at least the debt isn't getting bigger because of him. Furthermore, index funds should be returning 10-12% over the long haul, so there should be some firm discussions with the intermediaries about some degree of dis-intermediation. Please don't do the arithmetic and discover that only $40,000 is needed. That seems plausible, but that's wrong because the costs remain the same , and previously the government has been borrowing half the money from foreigners. In effect, the subscribers have been paying the government in fifty-cent dollars, while claiming the program is entirely self-funded. There has been an exchange of one form of revenue for another, so the required revenue actually does demand $80,000 for a single deposit stripped of payroll deductions and perhaps premiums. An end would be put to further borrowing, but the previous debt remains to be paid. I have no way of knowing how much that amounts to, but it is lots. All government bonds are general obligations, mixed together, while access to Medicare reports back to 1965 is not easily available. What we can more confidently predict is the limit young working people can afford for the sole purpose of paying off the Medicare debts of the earlier generation. If there are other proposals for paying off this foreign debt, they have not been widely voiced. And the debt is still rapidly growing.
Escrow the Single Premium A young subscriber would have to set aside an average of $850 per year (from age 25 to 64) to achieve $247,000 on his 65th birthday, assuming a 5% compound investment income and relatively little sickness. This might seem like an adequate average, but occasional individuals with chronic illnesses would easily exceed it in health expenditures. Assuming a 10% return, he would have to contribute $550 yearly. It is not easy to estimate the size and frequency of expensive occurrences in the future, so someone must be designated to watch this balance and institute mid-course adjustments. As an example, simple heart transplants costing $200,000 are already being discussed. To some unknown extent, the cap on out-of-pocket expenses would have to be adjusted to pass these cost over-runs indirectly through the Catastrophic insurance. Insurance does greatly facilitate sharing of outlier expenses, but usually requires a time lag whenever new ones appear.
It does not require much political experience to know taxpayers greatly resent paying debts that benefitted earlier generations. They complain, but complaining does not pay off the debts of the past. To double required deposits in order to pay off past debts, as well as using forgiveness of payroll deductions and premiums, would require an additional $120,000 per year escrow, for each year's debt accumulation. At present, roughly $ 5300 per beneficiary, per year, is being borrowed, and there are roughly twice as many current beneficiaries as people in the tax-paying group, but for only 18 years, as compared with 40 years as a prospective beneficiary. So that comes to liquidating roughly $1300 a year of debt to balance the two populations or $2600 a year to gain a year. That's for whatever the debt happens to be, which surely someone can calculate. To accomplish it, one would have to project an average of ??% income return. That's definitely the outer limit of what is possible, and it probably over-reaches a little. Therefore, to be safe, one would have to assume some other sources of income, a change in the demographic patterns, or an adjustment with the creditor. Assuming inflation will increase expenses equally with inflation seems a possibility. And it also seems about as likely that medical expenses will go down, as that they go up. You would have to be pretty lucky for all these factors to fall in line over an 80-year lifetime.
Medicare: Optional, Mandatory, or Third Rail? It is this calculation, however rough, which has made me change my mind. It was my original supposition that multi-year premium investment would only apply up to age 65, and that would be followed by Medicare. In other words, it should only be implemented as a less expensive substitute for the Affordable Care Act. It seemed to me the average politician would be very reluctant to agitate retirees by proposing a plan to eliminate Medicare. They would feel threatened, the opposing party would fan the flames of their fears, and the result would be a high likelihood of undermining the whole idea for any age group, for many years. Better to take the safer route of avoiding Medicare, and confining the proposal to working people, where its economics are overwhelmingly favorable.
But when the calculations show how close this proposal under optimistic projections would come to failure, and when nothing remotely close to it has been proposed by anyone, the opportunity runs the risk of passing us by. So, I changed my mind. The moment of opportunity is too fleeting, and the consequences of missing it entirely are too close, to worry about the political disadvantages of doing the right thing. The transition to a pre-funded lifetime system will take a long time to get mature, and the political obstacle course preceding it is a daunting one. However, there is another way of saying all this, which is perhaps more persuasive that Medicare must be changed. It begins to look as though the unfunded and accumulated debts of Medicare are such a drag on our system of government, that very little can be accomplished by anyone, until this central problem is addressed. In that sense, our problem is not the uninsured or the illegal immigrants, or an expensive insurance system. Our problem has become Medicare underfunding, and our second problem is that everyone loves Medicare.
The "simplified" goal is therefore for everyone to accumulate $80,000 in savings by the 65th birthday, remembering that savings get a lot harder when earned income stops and definitely remembering that people approaching retirement are not likely to part readily with $80,000. With the current law, you would have to start maximum annual depositing in an HSA of $3300 by your 52nd birthday, to reach $80,000 by age 65, and you would still need 10% internal compounding to make it. With a 5% return, you would have to start at age 48. But notice how easily $200 a year would also get you there, starting at age 25 (see below) but it immediately gets questionable to assume $700 a year deposit for a 25 yr-old receiving 5% returns. We are definitely reaching a point where the ideas proposed in this book will no longer bail us out of our Medicare debt. Because -- the most optimistic of these projections are achieved by assuming there will be no contributions at all from people aged 25-65, for their own healthcare, babies, contraceptives and whatever. Many frugal people might skin by with looser rules; But the universal goals of the past are just that, the goals of the past. If we are going to cover lifetime health costs instead of just Medicare, many more will need $80,000 to do it and have something left to share with the less fortunate. But to repeat, that still compares very favorably with the $325,000 which is often cited as a lifetime cost. Unfortunately, that just isn't enough, the Chinese will have to wait for repayment. This book was not written to propose a change in Medicare, but in writing it I do not see how we get out of our healthcare mess without addressing Medicare. If politicians can be persuaded of that, at least we will no longer need to invent reasons for urgency.
Starting with the Medicare example. Notice that forty years of maximum contributions would amount to far more than the necessary $40-80,000 by age 65. We haven't forgotten that the individual is at risk for other illnesses in the meantime, so in effect what we need is an
individual escrow fund for lifetime funding intended (at first) only to replace Medicare coverage. (We are examining lifetime coverage, piece by piece, trying to accommodate an extended transition period.) Depending on a lot of factors, that goal could cost as little as $100 a year deposited for forty years at high-interest rates, or as much as the full $1000 per year with low rates. It all depends on what income you receive on the deposits in the interval. In a moment, we will show that 10% return is not impossible, but it is also true that a contribution of $1000 per year would not seem tragic, compared with the present cost of health insurance (now averaging over $6000 a year). I have unrelated doubts about the current $325,000 estimate of average lifetime health costs, but that is what is commonly stated. For the moment, consider these numbers as providing a ballpark worksheet for multi-year funding, using an example familiar to everyone, but not necessarily easy to understand after one quick reading.
The Cost of Pre-funding Medicare. Rates of 10% compound income return would reduce the required contribution to $100 per year from age 25 to 65, but if the income were only 2% would require $700 contributed per year, and at 5% would require $300 per year. Remember, we are here only talking of funding Medicare, as a tangible national example, Obviously, a higher return would provide affordability to many more people than lesser returns. Let's take the issues separately, but don't take these preliminary numbers too literally. They are mainly intended to alert the reader to the enormous power of compound interest. Let's go forward with some equally amazing investment discoveries which are more recent, and vindicated less by logic than empirical results.
Originally the "lower counties" of Pennsylvania, and thus one of three Quaker colonies founded by William Penn, Delaware has developed its own set of traditions and history.
Start in Philadelphia, take two days to tour around Delaware Bay. Down the New Jersey side to Cape May, ferry over to Lewes, tour up to Dover and New Castle, visit Winterthur, Longwood Gardens, Brandywine Battlefield and art museum, then back to Philadelphia. Try it!
Millions of eye patients have been asked to read the passage from Franklin's autobiography, "I walked up Market Street, etc." which is commonly printed on eye-test cards. Here's your chance to do it.
In 1751, the Pennsylvania Hospital at 8th and Spruce was 'way out in the country. Now it is in the center of a city, but the area still remains dominated by medical institutions.
Grievances provoking the American Revolutionary War left many Philadelphians unprovoked. Loyalists often fled to Canada, especially Kingston, Ontario. Decades later the flow of dissidents reversed, Canadian anti-royalists taking refuge south of the border.
