In the early days before the tax-free MSAs, we got a high deductible policy and the employer made an after-tax contribution to the MSA. The money still belonged to me and would grow with interest, which was also taxed.

As the early adopters, we -- patients and insurers -- were feeling our way along with MSAs; it was a fundamentally new way of thinking about health care coverage and how I as a patient/consumer and insurers should and would respond to the new incentives.

But one thing was pretty clear to me from the beginning: one of the great values of the new MSA product was that it was supposed to bypass all of the insurer oversight of my health care decisions and spending. Insurers wouldn't be involved -- or so those involved in health policy reform thought and said as we discussed them in public policy forums -- in processing all of those minor and routine claims. That, we believed, would help lower administrative costs.

Except that shortly after starting the program, the insurer decided it should be looking over all of our MSA-related receipts. So those of us with these accounts were instructed that we would have to send our receipts in before the insurer would reimburse us from our MSA (note: because there was no MSA legislation, there were no separate accounts like those patients can open at a bank today).

Fortunately, the insurers backed off of that initial approach, freeing up HSAs to work like they were intended.

Well, new legislation being proposed would take us back to that early-adopters' era. There is Democratic-sponsored legislation that tries to reinsert a micromanager into all of our health care transactions.

The justification is that someone might use the tax- free HSA money for something other than health care, in essence cheating on their taxes.

But columnist George Will pointed out a long time ago that we have a "voluntary" income tax system, where individuals monitor their income and finances and report it to the IRS . . . with the threat of an audit just to keep those who might cheat a little more honest.

Will was adamant that we, as a country, wanted to maintain our voluntary tax system. He's right, and that goes for HSAs as well.