Do MSA Plans Deplete The Risk Pool?
Another frequent argument was, “MSAs will deplete the risk pool and raise rates for those left behind.” In fact, the United States has no single risk pool. It has tens of thousands of risk pools, and not one of them subsidizes the others. This simple fact of life was largely ignored until researchers from the (then called) Agency for Health Care Policy and Research pointed it out in the Journal of Health Economics. They said, “[Previous MSA studies] treat the employment-related health insurance market as a single entity (pool). In practice, however, the insurance market may not function as a single pool, and the insurance choices in one pool need not affect the premium in another pool.” Are MSAs Bad for the Sick? Still another argument was that MSAs might be good for 90 percent of the population but not for the 10 percent that consumes most of the health care in a given year. The argument might have merit if the same 10 percent consumed all the services every year. But researchers with
