[EagleClaw]

My employer offers a medical FSA. It is a very popular benefit, and I have used it for many years. You have to establish how much you want to put into the FSA at the beginning of the year, so you are essentially guessing about what your eligible out of pocket costs will be during the year. The catch is that FSAs have a “use it or lose it” provision, so any unexpended balance at the end of the year is forfeited. Everybody uses OTC drugs (ibuprofen, aspirin, claritin, zyrtec etc.) to use up any remaining balances on eligible items they know they will need. This is no longer possible.

We also just received our health insurance costs for next year, and they are up significantly. I have talked to many, many people here who were on the HopenChange bandwagon who are not happy campers.

[zzeeman]

The catch is that FSAs have a “use it or lose it” provision, so any unexpended balance at the end of the year is forfeited.

I've never had one of those FSA accounts but I had heard about the "use it or lose it" aspect. My question is, where does that forfeited $$$ go?

[Second Amendment First]

The MSA’s will now be limited to $2500.

[LearnsFromMistakes]

We just had our annual explain-benefits meeting. It was awesome. I work in a very liberal city, and I would be 60-70 percent of the workplace voted for ‘the one’. The meeting was ‘liberals, meet healthcare reform’.

As the guy pointed out current and future changes to plans, outlined costs going up (covering grown kids), cuts to benes (5k to 2.5k fsa), ‘cadillac tax’ (you mean companies that take good care of their employees have to pay a fee to the govt?), and the hits just kept coming. Companies opting out of coverage, or scaling it back to not have to pay caddie fees...too funny.

My liberal friends walked out of the meeting shaking their heads, and my conservative friends have been getting together just to laugh.

Glad it happened just before the election, hope they didn’t vote early.