Health Savings Account Plans Have Soared

"The biggest trend [in health care reform] is the rapid growth in private Health Savings Account plans," write Investor's Business Daily editors.

HSAs let people buy high-deductible insurance and put pretax dollars into savings accounts to cover — tax-free — out-of-pocket costs. Extra funds are rolled over. The accounts are portable.

For years, conservatives championed HSAs as market-based health reform that gives consumers more control of their health care and their spending.

Democrats, naturally, hated the idea, claiming that HSAs would appeal only to the young and healthy, would destabilize the insurance market and wouldn't hold down health costs. Ted Kennedy, for instance, dismissed them as "an untried, untested, expensive system that could provide billions of dollars of benefits to wealthy individuals and insurance companies."

Republicans were finally able to overcome this intense opposition, authorizing HSAs in 2004. They've proved a big hit ever since.

According to America's Health Insurance Plans, nearly 17.4 million people are in HSAs today, up 12% from last year and more than double the number in 2009.

And none of the Democrats' attacks proved true.