This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, October 6, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Health savings accounts arrived to little fanfare,

but they hold the promise of revolutionizing how we receive, pay for, and even think about health care security.

Michael Cannon directs health policy studies at the Cato Institute,

we spoke about the history, current status, and promise of health savings accounts earlier this week.

Jeff Singer in a recent Cato paper used medical freedom to make the pitch that it used to be a widely respected right in the United States

referring I think to to Thomas Jefferson having said look the freedom of

speech is every bit as important as being able to make your

own decisions about medicines and health.

And he was using that to say that medical freedom was foundational, that it was absolutely critical to our

rights as Americans. So what kind of system do we have now if that those were the views of at least one of the more prominent founders?

Well, we have the right to make our own health care decisions. It's a fundamental human right. The earliest Americans

respected it well into the 20th century, but then Americans started losing their

right to make their own health care decisions through a series of actions

the government took, many of which didn't seem to relate to health care at all.

And one of those was the creation of the income tax.

The creation of the income tax. The creation of the income tax may have done as much as anything

that government has done to violate our rights

to make our own health care decisions.

Among the innovations that have allowed Americans a greater ability to make those kinds of decisions

for themselves, the health savings account.

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