Health Savings Account Blog

Under that system, Medicaid recipients would receive dollars to purchase high deductible health insurance or catastrophic-only plans. Additional money would be placed in a separate account for routine health care, and the recipient would decide how best to spend those funds. The annual amount available to each individual could vary based on income, age or medical history.

Virginia would need permission to adopt such a plan from the federal government, which helps fund Medicaid. Florida and South Carolina have already gotten permission to experiment with health care accounts.

“We’ve got a broken system, and we need to fix it,” said House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford. “You’ve got more and more people eligible that are not necessarily using their services in the most efficient, most economical way, and we just need to redesign the whole system.”

For example, Howell said, too many Medicaid recipients depend on emergency rooms for routine health care even though it is the most costly way to receive treatment.

Del. Phillip A. Hamilton, R-Newport News, the leader of a task force that will develop the new legislation, sounded a more cautious note, saying he does not believe the state’s health care system is fraught with waste.

“We have a well-managed Medicaid program but there’s nothing wrong with modernizing it, seeing if there are some better ways to be more efficient and more effective,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton said his group also is considering measures that would expand the number of recipients under managed care programs and create an electronic reimbursement system to speed up payments to doctors who treat Medicaid patients.

Hamilton said he hopes to have final recommendations before Christmas.