Public policies to reward healthy behaviors are emerging as part of a national trend in health care toward consumer direction. Consumer-directed health care encourages people to take charge of their health and health care, by promoting personal responsibility and quality and cost conscious decision making. In Medicaid, there are a growing number of consumer-directed policies that give consumers control over their own health care purchasing.

Two states, Florida and Idaho, are pioneers in implementing consumer health savings accounts as part of larger Medicaid reform efforts. This brief briefly describes Florida and Idaho’s incentive account programs and summarizes early lessons from these two states in encouraging consumers to adopt healthier behaviors. This brief is based on the CHCS resource paper: Medicaid Efforts to Incentivize Healthy Behavior, by Jessica Greene, PhD, University of Oregon.