Mark Kennedy: “I can tell my colleague that the health savings accounts let your father and your family be in control. If a young…”

“I can tell my colleague that the health savings accounts let your father and your family be in control. If a young person starts out and they are putting away the maximum amount you can into a health savings account and they live a healthy life and they spend their money frugally for health care costs, they can build up a pretty significant nest egg by the time they get to be your father's age. When you talk to people approaching their senior years, making sure they can have that control over their medical life and make the medical decisions that they want to are vitally important to them. That is what I think these health savings accounts will do, ultimately. If they can build up $100,000 or $200,000 of a nest egg over a lifetime, they can make the decisions and have the resources for whatever the health care plan is saying to get that kind of treatment. If they have to go into some type of senior care rather than being forced to spend their way to poverty before we do anything in terms of long-term care, they can work with their children and say, hey, listen, I have this nest egg, so that you can buy the services I need, buy home health care and take care of me, and here is the resources for it. So I think the flexibility, combined with the market-based services availability we have here in America, is vitally important.”