Twenty-eight months ago, I had never heard of health savings accounts.  I did not know what an HDHP was.  Consumer directed health was as foreign to me as consumer driven health.  COBRA was something I knew about, but was only just beginning to experience, and I was enjoying it about as much as a snake bite. 

If you are reading this, there is a decent chance your knowledge of HSAs is somewhat limited.  Your employer may have just switched to a high deductible health plan in the past year, or maybe 2009 is the first year they've been offered.  You may have recently been let go from or left your job and being bitten by the COBRA snake yourself.

You may be hearing a lot of buzz from the Executive office, from Capitol Hill and in the media about health care, but, unless you follow it closely, it probably sounds like Miss Othmar, the teacher in the Peanuts TV specials.

The purpose of this posting is to cut through the noise.  I believe the HSA train has left the station.  It is by no means too late to climb aboard, but I believe CDH/HSAs/HDHPs have enough momentum to be sustainable over the long term and are  ultimately being proven to be good for individuals and the American health care system overall.

HDHPs and HSAs are all about personal responsibility.  Personal responsibility is challenging for many individuals, especially when it comes to health care, because of the historically paternalistic nature of the companies for which they work.  This is fine, but we are in a period of great change in our country, and those individuals who seize control of their own destinies will be those who are successful and healthy moving forward.   Your employer is not like your mother and/or father, and unless they are your mother, father, spouse or very close relative they do not love you unconditionally.  Private employer's "love" is the bottom line.  Government employer's love is "power".  And neither need you in their "love" equation.   If you are banking on your employer to take care of you, you can count on a subsistence existence at best.

BUT, if you embrace personal responsibility and yes….CHANGE, you are on your way to greater health at every level.

Back to health saving accounts for a minute.  Toward the end of last year and through last month I read tons of articles about employers, both private and government, shifting toward consumer driven health.  Their motivation, no surprise, was the extraordinary cost of providing health care and its impact on their ability to make money (private sector) or meet their budgets (private and public sectors).

If you are used to your employer serving as the financing arm of your health care, I can tell you from experience that it does suck, as the cost of health care is shifted onto your shoulders.  Especially when your benefits package is being pinched from other directions as well.

BUT, my personal experience, as a scrapping, struggling, fighting entrepreneur, has been that my overall health care expenses have decreased, my personal health has improved and I am way smarter about my own health and the my health care financing. 

The legislation that enacted HSAs was put into place in December of 2003.   Small employers and individuals, in general embraced them first as an alternative to spiraling health care costs.  Large employers generally watched from the sideline to see if they were real or a passing fad. 

The train has left the station.  I believe that CDH and HSAs specifically are no fad.  I read an article last week that cited some research that stated 10 million folks would have HSAs by the end of they year.  I actually believe that when we get some new data from the just ended enrollment period, the number will be far greater than that. 

ALL ABOARD!!

This is a  classic.