A variety of pro-single-payer blogs gleefully linked to a recent “study” purportedly showing that women are penalized by HSA plans simply because they are female. To quote Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, the study’s author:
High-deductible plans punish women for having breasts and uteruses and having babies.
That tendentious assertion suggests that the good doctor is not as objective as one might wish. This Investment News article puts it as follows:
[Woolhandler] is part of a group of physicians that is leading the charge for a single-payer national health-care system.
This is something of an understatement. In fact, Woolhandler is a founding member of PNHP, an advocacy group viscerally hostile to any market-based health care reform. And, as the following quote from the IN article suggests, her obvious bias taints the study:
The study’s findings seem “twisted,” because most high-deductible plans don’t count preventive care such as OB-GYN exams, mammograms and Pap smears against the deductible, said Vik Kashyap, San Francisco-based chairman of Canopy Financial. The study’s statistics also are skewed, because it appears to be comparing high-deductible plans with socialized medicine, he added.
Moreover, as John Goodman points out on his blog, “the study is not available for public inspection.” But wait! Dr. Woolhandler says it’s OK:
I do believe we need national health insurance, based on my observations of the health-care system, but this was a scientific study, and there were no conflicts of interest.
Oh … well … now I feel better.
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