Summary: The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 established a demonstration of medical savings accounts and directed GAO to contract for a study of them. GAO issued an interim report last year. (See GAO/HEHS-98-57, Dec. 1997.) This is the final report of the study. GAO originally planned to survey medical savings account enrollees and employers to obtain a consumer perspective and to survey insurers and financial institutions to obtain a supplier perspective. GAO competitively awarded four contracts to companies with experience in health economics, health insurance, and actuarial science and chose Westat and its partners to design an enrollee survey and to complete a study of insurers' responses to medical savings accounts. However, the relatively low enrollment in medical savings accounts made it impossible to conduct useful surveys of enrollees, employers, or financial institutions at a reasonable cost. Consequently, GAO did not initiate them. The information obtained for this study comes only from insurers, limiting the extent to which the evaluation can address the issues in the mandate.
