Why Oh Why Are We Ruled by These Liars? (HSA Edition)

Mark Thoma points us to Edwin Park and Robert Greenstein of CBPP writing about the Bush administration's numbers on Health Savings Accounts.

They lie. About everything. No surprise:

http://www.cbpp.org/2-16-06health.htm ADMINISTRATION DEFENSE OF HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNTS RESTS ON MISLEADING USE OF STATISTICS By Edwin Park and Robert Greenstein: [T]he Administration is proposing significant new HSA-related tax breaks that it estimates would cost $156 billion over ten years....

Allan Hubbard, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, stated at a press briefing on February 1 that 40 percent of HSA enrollees have incomes below $50,000. Treasury Secretary Snow repeated this statement at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on February 7, and President Bush repeated it in a speech in Ohio on February 15. Hubbard, Snow, and the President implied that this refutes claims that HSAs are disproportionately attractive to the affluent.... [D]ata are available from three recent surveys of HSA enrollees. These surveys found, respectively, that 29 percent, 33 percent, and a little over 40 percent of HSA enrollees had incomes below $50,000. Mr. Hubbard and Secretary Snow ignored the two surveys with the lower figures and presented the 40 percent figure... as though it were the only one available.... [T]he survey cited by Hubbard and Snow was restricted to HSA enrollees in the individual health insurance market, who tend to have lower incomes than HSA enrollees who have employer-based coverage....

Mr. Hubbard also said... that 37 percent of people with HSAs were previously uninsured.... Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Levitt rounded this figure up to 40 percent... ignored the results from other surveys.... Mr. Hubbard cited only the results from a survey, conducted by America’s Health Insurance Plans, that produced the higher number....

Claim #3: HSAs are not disproportionately attractive to healthy individuals.... Past studies have consistently found that plans with higher deductibles tend to attract a disproportionate number of healthier people. (This is not surprising, given that people with significant medical conditions and high medical costs would end up paying large out-of-pocket medical costs under high-deductible plans.) Preliminary studies indicate that this seems to be occurring with high-deductible policies tied to HSAs... survey conducted by the Employee Benefit Research Institute and the Commonwealth Fund... a study by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, as well as two recent GAO studies....

Serious concerns have been raised about HSAs, and the experience of HSAs thus far has not dispelled those concerns. It would be unwise to enact additional costly, deficit-financed tax cuts aimed at promoting HSAs until these concerns are resolved.