Ed Royce: “let me just make the observation that today is Tax Day, and effectively what we are doing to the American taxpayers is…”

“let me just make the observation that today is Tax Day, and effectively what we are doing to the American taxpayers is making them jump through more hoops. Certainly if they have an HSA, and the costs of this program are projected to be about a half a billion dollars a year, what we are going to be doing, what we are doing in bringing this bill to the floor, is enacting burdensome bureaucratic regulations that are going to undermine those health savings accounts which have been proven successful at slowing the growth of health costs and cutting insurance premiums for millions of individuals and small businesses. And my colleague has just listed all the business groups that are opposed to this legislation. The question I guess I have is in the last session, we had a largely bipartisan bill that the Republicans put forward, with Democratic support, 407-7 it passed. But now we have this provision dropped into this bill that cripples health savings accounts. Now I know we have a philosophical difference of opinion on whether we want to keep health care private and do it through the marketplace, or whether we want to have a government nationalization and takeover of health care. What I am sharing with you is if you cripple HSAs in this way, I guess you do build momentum for a government takeover of health care. But that is not going to make savings for the American consumers. HSAs are effective in reducing costs for the consumer.”