Seems like Washington's got more trial balloons than trial lawyers these days.

Not sure what it is about health care reform that no one wants to come out of committee and actually own up to any of their ideas. Wait a minute, maybe I do. If I see one more piece of angry town hall footage ...

One of the latest lead balloons to float wearily out of the Capitol before crashing into the Potomac concerns consumer-driven health plans. Seems there are some proposals that would actually do away with - or at least cripple - both FSAs and HRAs.

Sure, not the brightest of ideas on the best of days (or worst). But in light of a new United Benefit Advisors study, consumer-driven health plans have become more popular than HMOs.

Consumer-driven plans exploded at a 33.9 percent clip this past year and now cover more employees (15.4 percent) than HMO plans (13.6 percent), according to the study. The Northeast region of the country had the largest concentration of CDHPs with a 23 percent participation rate. Better yet, the average cost increase for all CDHPs hovered around 6.3 percent, slightly lower than that of the average of all plan types, which climbed an average of more than 7 this year.

Yeah, that makes about as much sense as Heidi Montag's career.