this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Privacy
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Those HSA accounts are thinly veiled state legalized theft for political cronies. At least they are in my state.
Money goes in. Administrator determines if money goes out. Money (by law) does not roll-over from one year to the next and the administrator keeps the balance.
Just don't use them.
Anecdote: A coworker of mine secretly had cancer. He was putting tens of thousands of dollars each year into his HSA. They denied him use for his chemo or whatever and it rolled his funds into the wood chipper. Tens of thousands of dollars.
You're thinking of FSA
HSA is a health savings account. It doesn't go away unless you're using some unheard of vulture one. I had one from an old employer that I stacked up thousands in and it took me 5 years after I left to use it all
There are deposit restrictions, like you need to be on a high deductible plan
FSAs, Flexible Spending Accounts don't have those same deposit restrictions. But you lose it after a year minus a usual $500 carryover
I find it hard to believe they denied actual chemotherapy treatments, though. They're annoying to deal with but I've never once had a claim denied other than trying to buy an ankle brace at Walgreens
Even an electric toothbrush at the dentist was covered
The other commenter is comparing FSA to HSA which is right I think. I think FSAs work for some people (I never understood who though) but there's literally no downside to an HSA. It basically can end up as another tax sheltered investment account, if you have enough money/luck to be able to pay off your healthcare costs out of pocket.
Like everything in the US, it's amazing for people with money. Less useful for those that don't. But at the very least it provides a buffer for the insane deductibles that US persons need to pay to keep living.