Posted on 10/15/2010 5:01:40 PM PDT by ColdOne
Under the new health care law, consumers using workplace pre-tax health savings accounts will soon need a doctor's note to pay for Tylenol and an estimated 15,000 other over-the-counter drugs.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
FU 0bama...and the horse you rode in on.
This allows you to save pretax to buy glasses or you can use it if you have a medical emergency. At the end of the year because it is "use it or lose it" you can use it to buy medical supplies such as aspirin, ace bandages or what ever else over the counter items you might need in the coming year.
This takes that ability away from you.
It is a waste of his time and a waste of money.
Where I work (maybe anywhere) you have to be psychic in order to take advantage of a HSA. So if you have money left over at the end of the year, the manager (government?) can keep it. So don’t think of draining your account by buying tylenol, aspirin, etc.
yah...the accounts are going to be capped at $2500 too. That’t a defacto tax increase on anyone who maxed out their account this year, because those dollars are “pre-tax”.
This really sux, and is another feature of Obamacare that makes him a bold-faced liar.
Ministry of Love/Plenty bookmark.
Someone in Britain proposed that idea. At least the fact that the pay would be forwarded from the employer to the government and then dispersed to the serf.
I saw this coming and cancelled my plan after last year. Didn’t know if obama would change rules midyear, so I couldn’t take the chance.
The new rules make it official. I will not re-enroll ever again.
That was funny.
You'd be surprised how much OTC stuff a family with active kids and a few headache-prone members can use. This includes our bandages, antibiotic ointments, allergy medicines, contact lens solutions, eyeglasses, pain killers, etc. It's quite a bit when you add it up, and as others have said, it's a way to mop up any remaining balances at the end of the year so they aren't lost. Reducing the maximum allowable contribution to $2500 isn't so nice either. Try putting kids in braces. Even with a decent dental/orthodontic plan, there can be a lot of extra costs. They are currently eligible for FSA treatment, but the cap will be an issue for families.
A couple earning $55,800 and contributing $5800 to an HSA, who have $2800 in medical expenses (with, of course, no other adjustments to income) could reduce their TXI to $50,000, pay their $2800 medical expenses (%5 approx.) from the HSA, and still have $3000 in the HSA earning tax free interest. No HSA, and they have $55,800 TXI, with no medical deduction since they did not exceed %8.75 of their AGI for medical costs, and, of course, no savings.
These are the tax features of HSAs that are so disliked by Democrats. Less tax, more savings. It should be obvious that HSAs most benefit younger people with fewer medical issues who are more likely to be able to save from year to year.
“I get so upset about this”
Same here. We don’t need such complexity in our lives. We need a simple, small government, with little or no Political involvement of the people. Just good representation. It’s really NOT that much to ask for.
bump
Unless you have a dependent with some kind of ongoing need for pharmacy products, like Depends, etc, most people only buy over the counter to exhaust the remains of their account. It is a use or lose scenario.
Won't probably be a factor for much longer since they also capped the max contribution to $2500 a year. That won't go a long way, which is why a lot of people are calling this the special needs tax. It will hit families with kids that need therapy and medical equipment especially hard.
I can't see how capping FSA's is supposed to reduce medical costs or make medical care more affordable. It is just another way to get more taxes out of the middle class.
You can do what I do and look at your out of pocket expenses from the year before. I am lucky because my insurer participates in a paperless program. They forward medical bills to my FSA office and the money is direct deposited into my account. I don’t do anything, but watch the total claims agains the FSA and make sure I’m on glideslope.
You have no idea what you're talking about, do you?
Maybe, maybe not. Some plans require copays to talk to your doctor, which, if you needed to do before getting a note about aspirin so that you could apply its cost against your HSA, might still be applied against you. So that bottle of aspirin would cost $1.89, plus the $40 copay for a doctor visit to get the note, for a grand total of $41.89 that you can bill to your HSA, for that bottle.
The tone of your question to me suggests that you think this scenario is so very impossible that condescension is necessary. I’m glad you’re so confident of your knowledge of the text of the health care law, what was intended by its authors, and how it is going to be interpreted in the courts (if it isn’t repealed or struck down), but I’m not so sure you are correct.
Who knows, maybe the Death Panels will write notes for bottles of aspirin for free - for those who happen to be card-carrying members of ACORN or the SEIU.
I take Prevacid, which is OTC. When it was prescription, my insurance didn’t pay for it, so I did - nothing else works. It’s cheaper now, but still pretty pricy since my order is for 30 mg. a day. (OTC is 15 mg pill per day.) It really adds up.
Add that to the new cap of $2500/year, and this is dreadful. My FSA was 3K this year, and I reached that limit last month.
I think you are describing a Flexible Spending Account.
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