Rudy Giuliani, certifiable idiot, on medical savings accounts.

[hiaasenrocks]

I watched C-SPAN's Road to the White House last night and saw Rudy speaking to a group of people in a diner somewhere in Iowa.

He said that the best way to solve the under/un-insured crisis is to have a tax deduction. (Surprise!) How this would work is: you would get a $15,000 exemption on your taxes, then you would go out and buy a health coverage plan. This would, he argued, encourage competition because people would want to spend less on their health insurance, thus pocketing the balance of the 15k. And companies would have to respond to the market forces (magic word in Repub circles), so you might find an inexpensive one that was only....$9,000 per year!

Guess what, Rudy! People ALREADY want cheaper health insurance. Furthermore, the majority of the uninsured don't pay over 15k in taxes anyway, so they're not going to get that money in savings, and they don't have $9,000 laying around the house to go out and buy the coverage.

Are people stupid enough to fall for that bullshit? I guess so...