Political Quotes

“Absolutely. I would like to come back to the Medisave for just a moment. I had the privilege of being briefed by Pat Rooney from the Golden Rule Insurance Co., who first came up with this plan. He explained that on the basis of a person who was working for an employer, where the employer owned the policy, it is made available as a benefit to the employee. I do not think that is the best idea. I think if you owned it, then a lot of problems we now have like portability and preexisting conditions go away, and I think this is a great success. But that is an item for another discussion. But if you took a working family at that time, where the employer paid about $4,500 a year for their health care, and imagine if he took $1,500 of that and bought a catastrophic policy with a $3,000 deductible, he now took that $3,000 and put it in an account for the employee, the employee would, anytime they thought they needed health care, they could go get it. They would not have to ask if it was covered. There was no deductible other than this $3,000 deductible, and then they brought the receipt from that and they got the money. If at the end of the year they had not spent the $3,000, it was their's. But since it was before tax dollars, this is where the medical IRA comes from. Since it was before tax dollars, if they wanted to take it out, they would pay the usual 10-percent penalty. But they could roll it over into an IRA.…”