HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNTS HAVE INCENTIVIZED INDIANA’S CITIZENS

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Human Events:

The central contention of a book I recently wrote is that our liberty depends on the personal responsibility and accountability of individual citizens. Unfortunately, many, especially those setting national policy today believe that Americans are too intimidated, gullible or dim-witted to make wise, informed decisions about the important issues affecting their lives, and need their benevolent betters in government to do it for them.

My experience in public life leads me to the opposite conclusion. I have seen that our citizens, properly informed of the facts, are fully capable of governing themselves.

There is no better example of this than healthcare. In this area of policy Indiana has pursued a path that respects the right of all our people to make their own healthcare choices, and trusts their ability to do so. In the process, we have restored the true concept of insurance and returned to it a measure of consumerism that presses for quality and cost control in every other economic sector.

Shortly after taking office I added Health Savings Accounts, personal accounts from which to pay medical expenses, to our state’s menu of healthcare plans, which featured the usual fee-for-service plans. HSAs challenge purchasers to think more carefully about services, which are no longer “free,” incentivizing citizens to look at heath care with a consumerist eye.

Despite resistance from the defenders of the third-party payment system and the proponents of a government-run, single-payer healthcare system, the HSAs have been an unqualified success. In 2006, the first year of availability for Indiana state employees, they were selected by only four percent of us. But over the next few years, this option grew in popularity: by 2012, more than 90 percent of state workers had signed up.