What if: Medical saving accounts were established?

The policy option presented here was chosen to stimulate discussion, but is only one of several options examined by the author in the report "Medical Savings Accounts in Financing Healthcare."

Presenter and author: Raisa B. Deber, University of Toronto

This is one in a series that puts forward tangible policy options for addressing the sustainability of Canada's healthcare. The series presents possibilities and opportunities for improving efficiency and providing additional revenue.

On July 10, 2011, these options were presented to an international audience gathered in Toronto for the annual iHEA conference. They were selected by the presenters themselves, who are also authors of knowledge syntheses about healthcare financing that were commissioned by CHSRF (many other options are presented in their syntheses, which you will also find here).

This proposal: Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) are a family of models that combine a personal or household savings account with a high-deductible catastrophic insurance plan. MSAs represent an explicit rejection of risk-pooling across populations for the services they are intended to cover. They are often designed to encourage individuals to save early to defray anticipated expenditures later in life.

More at www.chsrf.ca

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• CHSRF
• healthcare
• financing
• policy
• options
• iHEA
• health
• economics
• MSA
• medical
• savings
• accounts
• Raisa
• B.
• Deber