John W. Olver: “Mr. Speaker, among the many provisions, hundreds of pages of provisions which the insurance industry added to the…”

“Mr. Speaker, among the many provisions, hundreds of pages of provisions which the insurance industry added to the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill that passed the Senate with, God forbid, bipartisan support, the most insidious of those provisions are those that provide for the medical savings accounts because they would set off a chain reaction. First, they encourage the healthy and particularly the wealthy who can afford the high deductibles of MSA's to opt out of their current insurance pool. That shrinks the insurance pool needed to keep premiums more affordable for everybody. Next, that is injury to hard-working middle-income people left behind in the pool because they are going to see their premiums go up, they are going to have to make up the loss of the healthiest and wealthiest. And, finally to add insult to injury, the same middle-income workers paying higher premiums will also be paying taxes to replace the tax breaks handed to those who can afford these accounts. Mr. Speaker, that is wrong, and I urge my colleagues to support the substitute which is a clean Kennedy-Kassebaum-Roukema bill. It is real reform with several clean good steps toward real health insurance reform.”