Paul Ryan: “I want to make three points. Number one, we are hearing all of this hue and cry against allowing people to roll their…”

“I want to make three points. Number one, we are hearing all of this hue and cry against allowing people to roll their flexible spending accounts $500 a year over into the next year. There is a reason why it is important to allow a person to roll their money over from one year to the next: We are not getting the kind of consumer activity and consumer reforms we want in health care when we deny an employee the ability to keep the money in their account from one year to the next. What ends up happening with the flexible spending account is when there is a balance at the end of the year, the employee goes and buys a couple pairs of eyeglasses, gets their teeth cleaned a couple of times, more money is spent and it props up health care inflation. What this reform does, it lets the employee know this is their money. More importantly, what this bill does and what the Rangel substitute denies is the ability to roll over $500 from their flexible spending account into a health savings account. They say this health savings account is a new tax shelter. Mr. Speaker, what a health savings account does is it lets people spend money on health care tax free.”