Happy New Year! Insert your favorite “2020 sucked” joke here. (It really did, though.) If you missed it over Christmas, last week I ran an interview with Stephanie Williams, a woman in Georgia who was hospitalized with Covid-19, and struggled to pay her bills because she had no paid sick leave. Make sure to check that out; this is the kind of Sick Note content you’ll see every week in 2021.
The thing that has fascinated me most about healthcare since I got into the work force in 2006 is the proliferation of HSA-based plans and the sort of polite assumption we all have that it's a fully safe and permanent way of saving medical expenses. Perhaps cynically, I'm guessing that all goes out the window when the Nü-Republicans try to get unused HSAs drained like Visa Gift Cards in 2050. Any chance there could be some investigation into how HSA accounts function, whether we can expect them to get worse with time and who is lobbying on the behalf of those lucky enough to stuff one of those babies with 5+ figures of money that they think is being kept safe for whenever they might need it?
What do you want to see from Sick Note?
Not sure if you will see this since it’s February, but I would love to see something about people going on game shows to cover medical costs.
The thing that has fascinated me most about healthcare since I got into the work force in 2006 is the proliferation of HSA-based plans and the sort of polite assumption we all have that it's a fully safe and permanent way of saving medical expenses. Perhaps cynically, I'm guessing that all goes out the window when the Nü-Republicans try to get unused HSAs drained like Visa Gift Cards in 2050. Any chance there could be some investigation into how HSA accounts function, whether we can expect them to get worse with time and who is lobbying on the behalf of those lucky enough to stuff one of those babies with 5+ figures of money that they think is being kept safe for whenever they might need it?