20 Years of HSAs: Exploring the evolution to mainstream status

By Kevin Robertson | Originally posted on BenefitsPro

HSAs have become one of the most popular tools to manage health care and retirement spending but its evolution to becoming a popular benefit offering has been decades in the making.

December marks a historic milestone: It has been 20 years since the creation of health savings accounts (HSAs). Over the last two decades, HSAs have evolved into becoming a core component of benefits offerings that gives employees advantageous tax perks as well as another avenue to invest and pay for medical expenses during retirement. According to calculations based off Devenir’s annual HSA report, over 90 million Americans today benefit from HSAs helping them better manage health care and retirement expenses resulting in $10 billion in additional buying power annually and reducing their income tax burden by a collective $15 billion a year.

HSAs have become one of the most popular tools to manage health care and retirement spending but its evolution to becoming a popular benefit offering has been decades in the making. The health care industry, economy and society we know has continued to change and HSAs evolution was lock step with these shifts to ensure consumers and employers had a clear path to a healthy financial future.