The Biggest Problem With Health Savings Accounts

One of the biggest financial challenges that people face is covering the high costs of their healthcare. Especially as people get older, healthcare costs tend to rise, and so having a nest egg set aside to cover some of your out-of-pocket health expenses can be crucial.

Health savings accounts (HSAs) were designed to help give people an incentive for setting money aside for future healthcare needs. As useful as HSAs are, however, there's one shortcoming in the way that they're set up that has limited their effectiveness. If lawmakers were to borrow a provision from a similar health-related tax break and apply it to HSAs, then it could open the door to millions more workers putting these accounts to good use.

Lawmakers created health savings accounts in 2003 in order to help eligible health insurance policyholders set money aside to pay their healthcare costs on a tax-favored basis. The tax breaks that HSAs offer make the accounts among the most attractive for taxpayers.

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Source Fool.com