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Director of Health Policy Studies Michael Cannon has just released Dr. Today we'll find out from Michael Weather. In fact, they do.

HSA supporters often cite that HSA is give Americans more control over their medical

expenditures as if that's a good thing.

But Americans are not all health care

experts. So why are we trying to put consumers in the driver's seat?

Well Americans aren't all health care experts, nor are they all experts with

computers or automobiles or these sorts of things but

consumers tend to do pretty well at making their own decisions in these areas.

The problem when it comes to health care is that they've been encouraged by the

government to surrender control over their health care dollars to their employers.

And in the process what we've done is we've created a marketplace that does not give consumers the information that they need to make those decisions so that

consumers can't find out the price or information on the quality of health care

like they can find out information on the price or quality of automobiles or computers.

So one of the beneficial aspects of health savings accounts is that by putting consumers

in control of more of their health care dollars, we're going to be changing the dynamics of the marketplace so that

hospitals, doctors, other health care providers are going to be giving consumers

the tools that they need to make those decisions for themselves.

Could you address some of the criticisms that have been leveled against HSAs?

Well, there are many, and some of them are actually valid,

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