1.1                             A resolution
  1.2             memorializing the Congress of the United States to 
  1.3             remove restrictions on medical savings accounts. 
  1.4      
  1.5      WHEREAS, medical savings accounts (MSAs) allow workers to 
  1.6   save pretax money for first-dollar medical care in 
  1.7   interest-earning tax-advantaged accounts, which can accrue 
  1.8   unused funds until retirement; and 
  1.9      WHEREAS, the average family uses only 30 percent of MSA 
  1.10  funds which then can grow rapidly compared with insurance 
  1.11  corporation managers that on average use the remaining 70 
  1.12  percent of the money for ever larger bureaucracies, salaries, 
  1.13  and corporate profits; and 
  1.14     WHEREAS, the significant difference between MSA insurance 
  1.15  and managed care insurance is that the 40 percent of premium 
  1.16  dollars that are not sent to the managed care entity go into the 
  1.17  worker's savings account; and 
  1.18     WHEREAS, working people want to regain control of their 
  1.19  health care and avoid the increasing expense created by 
  1.20  ballooning managed care bureaucracies; and 
  1.21     WHEREAS, the public has found it costly in dollars and 
  1.22  suffering when their own insurance dollars are used to profit 
  1.23  managed care bureaucrats and underwriters who may profit from 
  1.24  limiting, delaying, or denying medical care and profit from 
  2.1   substituting less skilled providers; and 
  2.2      WHEREAS, Americans and their families want to have 
  2.3   decisions for care based on their medical needs and not on the 
  2.4   profit requirements of a managed care corporation; and 
  2.5      WHEREAS, Americans have demonstrated the wisdom to spend 
  2.6   their own MSA dollars for the care they need, with the result 
  2.7   that health care costs to employers have been stabilized and 
  2.8   sometimes decreased; and 
  2.9      WHEREAS, MSAs are owned by the worker and are thus a 
  2.10  portable fund of health care dollars; and 
  2.11     WHEREAS, MSAs and major medical insurance policies are 
  2.12  viable competition to the current managed care system that 
  2.13  dominates the medical market place; and 
  2.14     WHEREAS, Federal law and regulation has strangled by 
  2.15  artificial limitations the ability of MSAs and major medical 
  2.16  insurance to compete in the medical marketplace; and 
  2.17     WHEREAS, the MSA law is due to sunset December 31, 2000; 
  2.18  NOW, THEREFORE, 
  2.19     BE IT RESOLVED by the Legislature of the State of Minnesota 
  2.20  that it urges the Congress of the United States to remove 
  2.21  restrictions on MSAs and allow any number of contracts to be 
  2.22  sold; to allow any size company, federal employees, and 
  2.23  individual persons to adopt MSAs as the deductible portion of 
  2.24  their major medical insurance policy; to allow the use of pretax 
  2.25  dollars to fund the entire MSA self-insurance fund whether paid 
  2.26  by an employer, an employee, or an individual; and to eliminate 
  2.27  the sunset provision of MSAs in federal law. 
  2.28     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Secretary of State of the 
  2.29  State of Minnesota is directed to prepare copies of this 
  2.30  memorial and transmit them to the Speaker and the Clerk of the 
  2.31  United States House of Representatives, the chair of the Senate 
  2.32  Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, the chair of 
  2.33  the House Committee on Ways and Means, and Minnesota's Senators 
  2.34  and Representatives in Congress.