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Traditional Health Insurance Alternatives

Public Policy Analysis

Traditional Health Insurance Alternatives: Medical Savings Accounts versus Health Savings Accounts

Executive Summary
The rapidly rising cost of health insurance has created a need to look at other alternatives to the traditional health insurance plan. To give possible solutions to this I looked at two alternatives. The alternatives I looked at are Medical Savings Accounts and Health Savings Accounts. While both of these alternatives are very similar, there are some clear differences between the two in which I will make clear. The criteria in which I analyzed these two alternatives are overall costs, availability, benefits, and amount of uninsured. After looking at both Medical Savings Accounts and Health Savings accounts, I would recommend either one although it is much easier to acquire a Health Savings Account.

Statement of the Problem and Research Question
The problem I am going to look at deals with the rate at which the cost of health insurance is rising. Since the cost of health care is rising at such a high rate, it is important to look at other alternatives for health insurance. The two alternatives I will analyze are Medical Savings Accounts and Health Savings Accounts. The rising costs are not the only things worth looking at when comparing alternatives though. Other things, such as the availability, benefits, and effectiveness of each alternative are very important factors as well.

Research method (Models, Theories, Techniques, Data Sources)
When I first started doing research, I first looked at whether there has been an analysis on these same issues in the past. There turned out to be a couple that related to my topic, but not a lot in terms of comparing these two different types of accounts. So then I researched each alternative separately and found different types of studies done on each alternative. So, during my research I analyzed how each different alternative would help solve my problem in some way. To do...