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For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
April 2, 2007
President Bush Participates in Meeting on Health Savings Accounts
The Roosevelt Room
In Focus: Health Care
11:24 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: A cornerstone of good health care policy is to make
sure that patients and docs are in charge of medical decisions. And
therefore, one of the objectives of this administration has been to
encourage the expansion of products like health savings accounts. And
today I have met with some small business owners, some employees of
companies that have provided health savings accounts for them.
And I'm pleased to report that people have come to realize the
benefits of health savings accounts, such as, one, health savings
accounts are affordable for individuals and small businesses. In other
words, if you're a small business owner and you're worried about
providing good health care for your employees, you ought to look into a
health savings account as a way to provide that benefit to your
employees.
Secondly, health savings accounts enable a person to save,
tax-free, for medical expenses. By making rational decisions about your
life, you'll end up with more money in your health savings account, on a
tax-free basis.
And thirdly, that savings account is something you can carry with
you from job to job. A lot of people in America change jobs on a
regular basis, and they are deeply concerned about whether or not
they'll have a health care plan when they change jobs. And the health
savings account enables you to carry your money that you've saved on a
tax-free basis from one job to the next.
You know, two years ago there was -- about a million of our
citizens had health savings accounts. And today, over 5 million people
have health savings accounts -- or nearly 5 million people have health
savings accounts. It's up -- actually, you can see from the chart the
growth -- 4.5 million people. And that's a 43-percent increase from
last year to this year, and the number of people that are beginning to
realize the benefits of health savings accounts.
And interestingly enough, of those who purchased -- of individuals
who purchased health savings accounts, about 25 percent of them were
uninsured. In other words, health savings accounts enable someone who
is uninsured to realize the benefits of private insurance, and in an
affordable way.
I strongly believe that the United States Congress needs to
strengthen health savings accounts, just like they need to make sure
that the tax code treats every person in America fairly. And that's why
I've suggested we change the tax code to enable the small business
owner, the self-employed, or the individual worker to be able to have
more affordable insurance. There's a lot we can do together to empower
the individual in this country to be in charge of his or her health care
decisions.
So I want to thank my fellow Americans for joining us. I really
appreciate the discussion we had. We've got people from Minnesota and
Texas and Georgia and Michigan. These are people who are beginning to
realize the benefits of health savings. And I thank you for sharing
your information with me. Thank you.
END 11:27 A.M. EDT
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