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Healthy
and health-conscious people will save a tremendous amount of money by
insuring themselves with a Health
Savings Plan. A health savings account is a tax-favored savings
account that can be used by those with a qualifying high deductible health
plan. Health savings plans help the consumer by loweing their health
insurance premiums and generating considerable tax savings.
Also
known as Medical Savings
Accounts, these plans give individuals a new way to pay for health
care. Under traditional medical insurance, people make monthly premium
payments to an insurer, and the insurer pays medical bills. With
a Medical Savings Account,
you can confine medical insurance to catastrophic plan that covers all
expenses over, say, $3000. This will typically reduce you monthly
medical insurance premiums by 30 - 40%. You can then make a tax-deductcible
deposit to your HSA that can be used to cover smaller expenses.
A Medical Savings
Plan would pay for expensive treatments that occur infrequently, while
individuals would use their MSA funds to pay small bills covering routine
services.
HDHP's
A key
concept to health savings accounts is the role a High Deductible Health
Plan (HDHP)
will play. All HSA-qualified coverage must be high
deductible health insurance. This causes consumers to be much
more involved in the decision making when they are purchasing healthcare
services. Any money not spent to reach the high deductible on your
health insurance grows tax-deferred in your HSA. The idea is to
simply put market forces back into the medical industry, and have providers
actually compete for your business.
The
key aspect to enabling consumer-driven health care was the creation of
tax-free Health Savings
Accounts (HSAs). The health savings accounts legislation was
part of the Medicare Modernization Act (Public Law 108-173). “Health
Savings Accounts, coupled with affordable high deductible insurance policies,
give health savings account consumers more control over their health care
choices and hard earned dollars. HSA
plans give people a greater stake in their own health care.
The health savings accounts can move with employees from job to job and
can be rolled over year to year. Health Savings Accounts should
increase demand for greater information and transparency.”
You can find up to the minute industy news at HSA for America's Health
Savings Account Blog.
A
Reward for Staying Healthy
Health
savings account sprovide financial motivation and rewards for staying
healthy. The vast majority of HSA
health care spending today is due to degenerative diseases such as high
blood pressure, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease,
and other modern ailments. The characteristic that all these disease
have in common is that they are primarily the result of lifestyle choices.
With a good HSA health
plan, the consumer who wisely spends his HSA dollars on preventative
care (which can be done tax-free from your HSA) and pays attention to
diet and exercise could be rewarded with a substantial amount of money
in their HSA by age 65, possibly several hundred thousand dollars.
In addition
to promoting health we also help people find individual and family health
insurance plans that can be used with health savings accounts. You
can find more information about health savings accounts out our HSA for
America website, http://www.health--savings--accounts.com.
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