President Bush likes to say that his health-care proposal would ‘level the playing field’ between people who get health coverage through their job and those who buy it on their own. But experts said yesterday that it would tilt that field toward a kind of health insurance that Bush has long favored — a high-deductible plan paired with a special tax-exempt health savings account, or HSA. ‘I think it would be a big push for HSAs,’ said Mark B. McClellan, a health economist and former top health-policy adviser to Bush. While McClellan thinks that would be a good thing, other experts said it would benefit the wealthy and undercut Bush’s goal of bringing fairness to the private health insurance system. In contrast with traditional health plans that typically charge $20 co-payments for visits to the doctor, high-deductible plans require consumers to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars out of pocket for medications, physicians’ services and hospital care before most insurance coverage kicks in. The deductibles are steep, at least $2,200 for family coverage, compared with about $220 in a traditional plan. But the special savings accounts enable people to accumulate a tax-free pool of their own […]