Does anyone here have a medical savings account or know about them?

[Paz]

We are self-employed and our health insurance premium is going up regularly. We are looking into medical savings accounts. If you have one can you tell me how it works and recommend some companies to look at?

[newbie]

:bigear::lurk5:

[KS_]

We are self-employed and our health insurance premium is going up regularly. We are looking into medical savings accounts. If you have one can you tell me how it works and recommend some companies to look at?

 

I would suggest checking the banks locally and seeing if any of them offer MSA/HSA's. Some of them have Federal tax benefits and some do not (our credit union offers one with state tax benefits only, while another bank in town offers the one with Federal tax benefits).

 

Ours doesn't have any fees, either - which is a consideration. I was checking other banks online before I found the one in town, and the fees for different ones varied.

 

Other than that, we just deposit money every month and use the checking account to pay for our insurance premiums and other medical costs.

[tammi]

My husband has one through his work. He has it through Blue Cross Blue Shield of TN. He puts money in every pay period and his empolyer puts money in too. BCBS gave us a Visa Debit Card that we use when we buy Rx. You can use it for basically anything: toothpaste, birthcontrol, shampoo, just about anything. You use it like a credit card even though it says debit on it.

We get a statement once every three months saying how much we have contributed and how much we have left.

You are not taxed on the money you put in. It can roll over from one year to the next.

Tammi

[momto4greatkids]

My husband has one through his work. He has it through Blue Cross Blue Shield of TN. He puts money in every pay period and his empolyer puts money in too. BCBS gave us a Visa Debit Card that we use when we buy Rx. You can use it for basically anything: toothpaste, birthcontrol, shampoo, just about anything. You use it like a credit card even though it says debit on it.

We get a statement once every three months saying how much we have contributed and how much we have left.

You are not taxed on the money you put in. It can roll over from one year to the next.

Tammi

Ours is just like this, except we are with United. It has worked quite well for us this year. Since the money we save is really "ours" we shop around more for medical services and prescription drugs. We still enjoy the "negotiated" amount from the insurance company.

[MamaT]

We have one through Golden Rule. I think they must be stricter about the money deposited every month going toward actual medical expense. It has worked well for us. We have paid for three sets of braces (so far), glasses, dental bills, etc. with our savings account.

[Erica in OR]

I'm not familiar with the requirements for an MSA, but for our HSA we have a high deductible policy with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oregon. As a family rather than a single policyholder, we are eligible to contribute a little over $5800 per year to the HSA. Our contributions are not taxed. An employer can contribute as well, non-taxed. The amount in the account remains ours at the end of the year; it does not need to be spend by year-end as with the flex-type accounts. We use an out-of-state bank for the account, largely because of its lack of fees. We've had no problems and have been quite happy with them the entire time (Town Bank in Wisconsin).

 

Erica in OR

[Alice]

We have an HSA through Carefirst Blue Cross Blue Shield with dh's company. Ours is similar to what others stated. We can put money in anytime, although we do it monthly through his payroll and his company also contributes. The contribution is pre-tax, although there are limits on how much can be pre-tax. We can use it to pay for anything medical/health related, even things not covered by insurance (Tylenol for example). But we also have a dedcutible on our insurance and to meet the deductible it must be specific covered things. So for example, we have a $2400 deductible. We can use the money saved in the HSA to meet that. We can use it for other stuff too, but it doesn't apply to the deductible. The amount rolls over each year if we don't use it all.

 

Now that I"m used to it I like it. I thought it would be really difficult at tax-time to figure out, but I used Turbo Tax this time and it was easy to figure it all out. You do have to make sure you save all receipts and stuff for taxes.

[ChristyB in TN]

The previous posters all had good advice, check with a local bank about the HSA or even talk to your insurance representative. I recommend (I'm an inactive insurance agent) finding a good, reputable, local insurance agent who represents many companies. We are self employed at our house and have had an HSA for a few years. The HSA lowers your taxable income! :001_smile: You can use it to pay for anything medical related: dentist, deductables, band aids, prescriptions, etc. We don't have dental insurance so the HSA comes in very handy. We pay no fees for ours, either. We disciplined ourselves to put in a certain amount every month so there is always a nice balance. Once we got to a certain point, we upped our deductable on our health insurance which lowered our premiums and we just keep the deductable amount in the account so we never have to worry! You can actually get a deductable of $10,000 at a lot of good insurance companies and this saves a fortune in pemiums.