People can characterize my statements about HSAs as "smug" if they want, but as someone without access to insurance myself, and having attempted to get insurance through an HSA, I am very suspicious of people trying to divert health care reform in that particular direction. It really does boil down to a matter of life and death for some of us, myself and JtS included. So please excuse me if I take this matter very seriously.

The problem I have with using New York's medicaid program as an example is that New York state may have (and probably does have) much better medicaid coverage than states like West Virginia, where I had medicaid coverage for several years. In some states, medicaid has huge gaps in coverage. Does Wyden-Bennett use New York's medicaid coverage as the standard for the whole country?