| Meet the Quintuplets
In November 2005, we wrote about the White Stone Group, a Knoxville, Tennessee, firm whose health insurance costs soared after a worker had quintuplets. The Problem Premiums at White Stone had been going up for years. But nothing prepared CEO Guille Cruze for what happened in January 2004, when one of his programmers, Willem van Tol, became the father of quintuplets. It was a complicated birth and Van Tol's medical bills topped $2 million. A few months later, Cruze learned that his insurance company had raised premiums some 30 percent. Cruze's response: Switch from traditional insurance and instead give White Stone's 70 employees health savings accounts. HSAs allow employees to save money on a tax-free basis to pay for medical expenses; such accounts are used in conjunction with high-deductible plans, which have lower premiums.
Alliances: Metavante, Temenos Add Core Value
Core system swap outs are of increasing interest to banks, which need to support new products like health savings accounts and technologies like remote deposit image capture, but find that layering these new functions on top of siloed legacy systems is awkward and inefficient. In spite of the pain associated with core system replacements, banks recognize there's no time to waste if they are to remain competitive. Technology providers, too, realize that enhancing system capabilities must happen if they are to acquire and retain customers. It's that sense of opportunity and urgency that brought Metavante and Temenos together. Under the agreement, Metavante will distribute the Temenos core banking platform (TCB) in the U.S. and Temenos will retain royalties on license and maintenance fees, outsourcing fees and professional services revenues.
Steve Dunn: Health insurers are the underlying ill
The recent article by Michael Tanner and Michael Cannon from the Cato Institute about "universal health care's dirty little secrets" deserves comment. They make a number of claims, or, rather, state claims made by others, like some university research initiative study group that was unable to establish a "causal relationship" between health insurance and better health, or that "health insurance status was largely unrelated to the quality of care." They went on to talk about "risk pools" and higher premiums for older people and health savings accounts and deregulation and so on. So the article attempts to establish that universal health insurance is not a viable solution. I agree. Health insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. Making health insurance coverage for everyone mandatory just won't work.
Health Savings Accounts Offer Tax Benefits To Those Who Qualify
Health care consumers may realize significant financial benefits from health savings accounts. Created under the 2003 Medicare Act, an HSA is a tax-favored savings plan offered by many banks, insurance companies, brokerages and other financial institutions and that can be used to pay for qualified medical expenses. According to the Alabama Society of CPAs, health savings accounts offer significant tax benefits to individuals who qualify. Eligibility To establish an HSA, you must have coverage under a high-deductible health plan. For 2007, these are defined as having a $1,100 deductible for individuals and $2,200 or higher for families, up from $1,050 and $2,100 respectively for 2006. HSAs are designed, in part, to help those with high-deductible policies to pay for health expenses until insurance benefits kick in.
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