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IRS Reporting Form For HSA Activity
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 The IRS has released the 2008 versions of Form 8889 (Health Savings Accounts (HSAs)) and its Instructions. HSA account holders (and beneficiaries of deceased account holders) must attach Form 8889 to their Form 1040s to report HSA activity.
Reportable items include contributions and deductions, distributions, and any income and additional 10% tax triggered by failing to remain HSA-eligible throughout the applicable testing period for qualified HSA distributions, qualified HSA funding distributions, or last-month rule contributions.
To get a copy of the form, click here.
To get a copy of the instructions, click here.
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Comparing Baseball And Healthcare?
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 Any time you see an editorial on health care co-written by former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Democratic Senator John Kerry, you have to sit up and take notice. Rarely would you think that those two agree on very much at all. Then when you see the third collaborator is Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane, you figure maybe you ought to see what they are saying. In a New York Times op-ed last fall, they did just that. The unlikely trio called for a reformed health care system driven by "robust comparative clinical evidence."
Some points they made:
- This season, the New York Yankees, Detroit Tigers and New York Mets - the three teams with the highest payrolls, a combined $486 million - are watching the playoffs on television, while the Tampa Bay Rays, a franchise that uses a data-driven approach and has the second-lowest payroll in baseball at $44 million, are in the World Series.
- For decades, executives, managers and scouts built their teams and managed games based on their personal experiences and a handful of dubious statistics. This romantic approach has been replaced with a statistics-based creed called sabermetrics.
- A doctor today can get more data on the starting third baseman on his fantasy baseball team than on the effectiveness of life-and-death medical procedures.
- Studies have shown that most health care is not based on clinical studies of what works best and what does not - be it a test, treatment, drug or technology. Instead, most care is based on informed opinion, personal observation or tradition.
- Just as baseball success today is reliant on wisely using key data, they argue, appropriate data can revolutionize the health care system, saving lives and money.
It is not the answer to the industry's problems, but it makes for an interesting read. |
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Social Security - The Mother Of All Bailouts?
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 $700 billion here, $150 billion there, $17.4 billion for the auto makers. After a while, they almost seem to not be numbers and be just words. That is the scary part.
$700 billion
= $700,000,000,000
= a 7 with ELEVEN ZEROES!
With those NEW money amounts the US government is tossing around as a back drop, let me talk to you about some CURRENT obligations we have on the books - namely Social Security and Medicare. Consider this:
* If the federal government ended Social Security and Medicare TODAY, it would still owe $52 trillion in payments.
* $9.5 trillion is owed to current retirees.
* Those nearing retirement are owed approximately $11 trillion.
* Younger workers, those between 22 and 55, can expect more than $31 trillion in payments from Social Security and Medicare.
Source: National Center for Policy Analysis
Another way to put this in perspective - the 2008 U. S. Federal budget was (only?) about $2.7 trillion.
Almost makes the bank bailout seem like spare change. Almost.
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I Wish I Had Said That... |
"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it."
- George W. Bush
 (click on picture
for the full cartoon)
- courtesy of Investor's Business Daily's
Michael Ramirez
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