Richard, a tax exempt medical savings account solves nothing. If you have an existing disability, all the money in the world won't buy health insurance. Absent health insurance, I would need to save every penny I made for a couple of years to pay for a major surgery and the recovery/rehab afterward. Normal working people simply do not make that kind of money. Medical savings accounts likewise do nothing about insurance companies refusing to renew members who have a major illness, or who refuse to pay for medical care already provided. These are the reasons over a million Americans each year are bankrupted by medical bills.
I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine while on vacation. I don't get to see him often as he lives in another state. He is a CPA with his own consultancy. Before that he was the CFO of a small corporation. He is not the least bit liberal. The topic of health care came up over a beer one afternoon, and his take is that no business should pay for their employees health care. He strongly favors one national health care insurance plan paid for out of our taxes. Why? He wants to see our firms on an equal footing with our competitors abroad who's governments likewise pay for their citizens health care costs. He also has to make ends meet for his many cilents who provide health care for employess, and sees first hand all the difficulties these firms have dealing with insurance companies, and with employees who are often cheated and mistreated by these insurance firms. He has absolutely no love of the insurance industry and would love to see health care removed from private insurance. I was not expecting to hear this from my old friend.