Remove high deductible requirement for HSAs

Currently you can only contribute to a Health Savings Account if you have a high deductible health insurance plan. Everyone’s health deteriorates as they get older and therefore accumulating as much savings as they can towards future healthcare costs just makes sense. Just because you pay a higher premium for increased coverage doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to save money for that health emergency later with a tax advantaged HSA. Additionally people that have chosen to pay cash for for doctor visits (because health insurance deductibles are too high) shouldn’t have to pay those sky high premiums in order to to squirrel away some money for doctor visits.

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Good thought. There’s no reason to limit HSAs to the amount of the deductible, whatever that is. I like the idea of a person being able to buy a cheaper plan (or employer buys a cheaper plan) with a really high deductible, so high that it’s unlikely they ever hit it absent a non-accident (separate insurance) catastrophe. In this case, the employer can afford to put a lot into the HSA, and the patient/employee can basically assume that he won’t hit the deductible, and then he can use the HSA for whatever he chooses, on a cash-pay basis. Then the market for health services and the motivation to be healthy are intact. We’re going to get what we incentivize, so we might as well incentivize the right things.

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PS - then if employee never uses it, it can become like a retirement 401k to be disbursed after a certain age.

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