[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 56 (Tuesday, April 8, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H2867-H2868]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        MEDICAL SAVINGS ACCOUNTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to talk about an issue that 
everyone should be aware of and I think more and more Americans are 
becoming concerned about and that is the rising cost of health care 
here in the United States. Some of the estimates this year, and we are 
talking to small businesspeople in my district, they are looking at 
increases in the cost of their health care of anywhere from 10 percent 
to 40 percent and some even more than that. One of the ideas that has 
been around for a number of years in terms of controlling the costs of 
health care in the United States is the concept of medical savings 
accounts. This is a plan that really goes back a long ways. As a matter 
of fact, in my district where we have an awful lot of farm families, 
they in effect have had medical savings accounts for a very long time. 
What they do is they essentially use their checking account as the 
medical savings account, but the principle is relatively simple and 
that is where people can put money away, either through their employer 
or individually, into a medical savings account to pay those ongoing 
medical bills. At the same time, they buy a catastrophic insurance 
policy that will pay those catastrophic expenses if they should come 
down with cancer, if they should need a major surgery, something like 
that. Catastrophic insurance is relatively inexpensive. And so in the 
last several years we have allowed more and more of the employers to do 
these medical savings accounts, to set up these programs on a pretax 
basis so that they get the advantages of the Tax Code. But there was 
one major, glaring error and omission from the legislation we passed in 
the past here in the Congress and that is that public employees could 
not participate in these. And so I have been talking to my public 
employees back in Minnesota. They would very much like to participate 
in medical savings accounts for a whole variety of reasons, one of 
which is it is a way that they can begin to save money for long-term 
care, because we are now beginning to

[[Page H2868]]

realize we are all getting older. I happen to be 52 years old. I was 
born in 1951. There were more babies born in 1951 than any other year, 
we are the peak of the baby boomers, and we are looking at this thing 
and saying, are there ways we can begin to put money away for long-term 
care. One of the ways you can do that is with medical savings accounts. 
But it is a glaring omission and it is terribly unfair to say that 
private employees in the private markets can go ahead and have access 
to these medical savings accounts but public employees cannot.
  And so today I am introducing along with my colleagues the gentleman 
from Minnesota (Mr. Sabo), the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Peterson), 
the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ramstad), the gentleman from 
Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy), the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. McCollum) 
and the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kline) the Minnesota MSA 
Empowerment Act of 2003. Essentially what this bill will do is allow 
public employees on a pilot program basis to have access to the same 
kind of programs that private employees have access to. It is a very 
good bill. It is a way for us to actually find out just how well these 
MSAs will work, especially with public employees. I am confident that 
they will work if they are given a chance. This is a pilot program just 
for Minnesota to demonstrate that MSAs will work for the consumer, they 
will work to help reduce the cost of health care and ultimately make it 
possible so people can begin to set aside dollars long-term for long-
term care.
  This is a good piece of legislation. I hope the people of the 
appropriate policy committees will give it a fairing hearing and if 
they will I am confident that ultimately this will become law. Mr. 
Speaker, I hope my colleagues will join me in support of this important 
legislation.

                          ____________________