The quiet rule making health care worse for American families

Most Americans don’t spend much time thinking about health care policy. They don’t have to. They feel it every year when premiums rise, deductibles climb, and another chunk of their paycheck disappears into a system that rarely seems to work in their favor.

American health care is expensive, confusing, and quietly disempowering. Money moves constantly — from workers to employers to insurers to administrators and eventually to providers — but too rarely stays with the people who earned it. When the bills arrive, families are told what they owe, not what they saved or controlled.

A system that won’t let people save for their own medical needs is not protecting them. It is protecting itself.

That should bother us.

Health savings accounts were designed to fix part of this imbalance by giving people something rare in modern health care: ownership. An HSA lets individuals set aside money for medical expenses, invest it if they choose, and carry it with them year after year. The money is theirs. It doesn’t expire. It isn’t reassigned. Institutions do not manage it on their behalf.

Ownership changes behavior. People who control their own money plan differently. They ask questions. They think long-term. They stop acting like passive participants in a system that treats them as cost centers instead of decision-makers.

Yet millions of Americans are barred from opening an HSA.

Not because they don’t need one or cannot afford health care. It’s simply because the law says they are not allowed.

Under federal rules written more than two decades ago, HSA eligibility is tied to a narrow category of insurance plans. As a result, more than 140 million Americans — including many with traditional employer coverage and rising out-of-pocket costs — are blocked from saving for health care the way they save for retirement or education.

In no other area of American life do we accept a rule that says: You may pay continually, but you may not save.

No one is barred from opening a retirement account because of the kind of pension an employer offers. No one is blocked from saving for college because of where a child goes to school. Yet in health care — often the largest and most unpredictable expense a family faces — ownership remains conditional.

That is no accident. It’s the predictable result of a system built around institutions rather than individuals. Complexity gets rewarded. Intermediaries profit from it. Ordinary people are expected to navigate the maze without meaningful control over the dollars they contribute.

Prices often remain opaque until after care is delivered, which means families learn what something costs only when the bill arrives — too late to make an informed choice.

RELATED: Would you want AI making decisions for your doctor while you are under the knife in the operating room?

PhonlamaiPhoto via iStock/Getty Images

The result is a system where spending rises, trust erodes, and prevention gets talked about far more than it gets practiced.

Expanding access to health savings accounts would not solve every problem in health care. But it would address one of the most basic ones: the absence of real personal agency.

The fix is not complicated. It requires trusting people with their own money.

Every American should be able to open an HSA, regardless of insurance type.

This is not a call for a new entitlement or government program. HSAs are privately owned accounts. They rely on responsibility, not mandates. They rest on a simple belief: When people have control, most will use it wisely.

That assumption may feel unfashionable in modern policymaking. It still reflects how Americans live. People save for retirement. They save for education. They save for emergencies. Health care should not be the lone exception — especially when the costs are so high and the stakes so personal.

A system that won’t let people save for their own medical needs is not protecting them. It is protecting itself.

If we want health care that costs less and works better, the answer is not more management. It is more ownership.

The real question is not whether Americans can be trusted with their health care savings. It is why we have spent so long pretending they can’t.