After having an HSA Account for the past several years I am completely convinced that this approach to health care would solve many of our health care related the problems. Not only does it save you money on a monthly basis but you can also use the money for things not normally covered by most health insurance policies like acupuncture.
In January of this year they took away the ability to purchase OTC drugs with your HSA which annoyed me as I don’t use any prescriptions, but other than that my experience with it has been great. We all get one free physical each year which is more than I have ever done before. The only thing that sets us back much is our daughter routinely wanting to go to the doctor during cold/flu season. Since we have to cover the entire cost of the office visit it normally costs $150 each time she gets a sore throat. At least it comes out of our HSA Account and not our check book!
That leads me to another nice advantage of the HSA, any money that is not used in a calendar year simply rolls over to the next year. This way the money can build up on a tax deferred basis until a time when you need it. Any money that remains in your account at age 65 can be used for any purpose, similar to IRA funds so that’s a very cool bonus!
It is my belief that people should be partially responsible for the cost of their medical expenses. Otherwise people run to the doctor every time they have a sniffle or ache and that is what is driving up the cost of health care. If the government is going to be involved in health care there has to be some way of making people partially responsible otherwise it will be another huge black hole like Medicare. By the way, the IRS recently announced the 2012 HSA Contribution Limits and they basically raised them by 1.63%. Does anyone believe that the cost of health care only increased by 1.63% last year?
