Will health care reform kill Health Savings Accounts (HSAs)?

Health Savings Accounts were created by Congress in December, 2003, to foster a kind of health insurance with built-in incentives to encourage individuals and families to consider cost in their health-care decisions. Millions of Americans have embraced this innovative concept in the few years that it has been available. It was reported that by January, 2008, more than 6.1 million Americans were covered by HSA-qualified plans. By now, the number has likely reached 10 million. HSAs are popular with low and moderate-income Americans—it is estimated that 83% of HSA account participants have household incomes less than $75,000. President Obama and many others have often stated that if you like your present health-care scheme you can keep it. Yet the health-care reform bills under consideration in Congress propose to kill the increasingly popular Health Savings Accounts. In killing HSAs, the bills will destroy the only important attempt to “bend the cost curve” toward reduced health-care spending. Do you intend to kill HSAs?