HSA News for January 6, 2020
HSA news is compiled weekly by Mr. HSA, Roy Ramthun.
News from Washington
Even in a Time of Impeachment, Health Care Is On the Agenda
As we begin 2020, the impeachment cloud continues to hang over Washington and threatens to keep members of Congress from working on many of the nation’s problems they were hired to solve. There is one issue, however, that lawmakers can’t avoid during this impeachment fight — health care. Any lawmaker that ignores the issue does so at their peril.
HSA Best Practices
Optimizing Your Organization’s HSA: Getting Your People to Contribute
Most HDHP participants use HSAs to set aside money for essential healthcare expenses, such as copays, prescription costs and unexpected hospital visits. But the benefits of an HSA don’t stop there. Getting your employees to contribute or increase their contributions to their HSAs for more than just basic healthcare necessities is a task to be tackled from multiple angles.
HSAs & Retirement
I Consider My HSA to Be My Secret Weapon for Retirement Savings, and I'm Maxing It Out Before the Year Ends
An HSA is a tax-advantaged account you can use to save and invest for medical expenses. The account is a secret weapon for retirement and something I'm always sure to take full advantage of — in fact, just last week I put $7,000 in my family's HSA for 2019. Here's why anyone eligible should take advantage of an HSA.
4 Ways to Plan for Healthcare Costs that Could Derail Your Retirement
When you retire, you wind up spending a lot of your wealth on your health. To most people it’s the great unknown that can derail the best-laid plans. You never know when you’re going to get sick or come down with a disease. How do you plan for that great unknown — healthcare costs in retirement? Here are four tips.
Maximizing Your HSA
Are You Making This Major HSA Mistake?
If you have an HSA, there's a good chance you're not flexing its full financial muscle, since research shows that only 5% of HSA holders are using one of the account's most powerful features. It's the last tax perk (investments grow tax-free) that's sorely underused, with a study by EBRI concluding that 95% of HSA accounts contain only cash balances and no investments.
What's the Difference Between an HSA and an FSA? It Matters for End-of-Year Health Spending.
Every December, it can seem that the only break we get from holiday shopping ads is pitches to buy new eyeglasses, so we can use up all our pretax health dollars before the new year and not lose them. But those ads are referring to FSAs. If you have an HSA, there's no need to drain the account. And that's not the only important distinction.
How to Design an HSA Portfolio
HSA investors must balance two potentially contradictory goals: Firstly, we wish to maximize account balance at age 65 to take advantage of the retirement account features. Secondly, we may also wish to have funds on hand to pay for emergency medical expenses if our emergency funds become depleted.
Consumer-Driven Health Care
How to Pay for Pricey Prescriptions
Let your doctor know you’re in a high-deductible plan and ask if there are cheaper alternatives to the prescribed drug. It may be that an expensive new drug is a combination of older, cheaper treatments. If there aren’t cheaper alternatives, compare prices across pharmacies and find out whether coupons for certain prescriptions are available on sites such as WellRx.com and GoodRx.com.
Health Insurers and Retail Pharmacies Are Making a Play for Primary Care
A handful of companies that are better known for operating pharmacy counters and managing health plans are now turning into primary care providers. CVS Health, Humana, Walgreens, Walmart, and UnitedHealth Group now operate hundreds of clinics that directly market themselves as primary care providers or provide a majority of primary care services. And they all plan to open more clinics in 2020.