Allowing insurers to step in the middle of smaller, everyday health transactions by empowering them to negotiate price fundamentally screwed up the system.
There's no reason insurance should be involved in non-catastrophic or routine pharmaceutical purchasing.
The root problem is most Americans are too poor to afford healthcare at the current prices of doctors/medicines/medical equipment/liability protection/etc, period.
I think you're not supposed to use it actually for healthcare, at least not in your young age.
Also, the ideal way to use an HSA is to not use it. Every year, transfer the HSA funds to Fidelity, invest in VOO or whatever, and let it ride as long as you can. PDF all the receipts, and then pay yourself with tax free income when you finally need to.
My understanding's that direct withdraws are possible after 65, taxed as income. Does your "when you finally need to" mean only withdrawing for healthcare reasons or is there a way to transfer or withdraw without a tax hit, besides for health costs?
But pretty much everyone will incur healthcare costs as they get older, so you should be able to withdraw tax free for those. And all healthcare costs incurred by your family during your lifetime while you had an HSA are eligible for reimbursement.
Quite frankly, I do not know how auditable a 40 year old medical receipt is. Is the IRS' plan to just take everyone's word for it?
https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc502
Never needed it, so don't know all the rules are, but I'd imagine the IRS gets a lot of fraud through it (since hospitals wouldn't report from their side).
> Fidelity offers HSAs for employers and, as of November 2018, individuals.[36] Individual HSAs have no account opening or transaction fees.[37] In a favorable review of the Fidelity HSA's features, the The Finance Buff wrote: "No other HSA provider comes close to what Fidelity offers."[38]
I would go to Fidelity.com/toa and start a transfer of assets from your current HSA. If it is an employer sponsored HSA where your employer contributes to it, then leave $25 to avoid it getting closed. But every year, move the remainder to Fidelity and invest the remainder like any other IRA.
Every HSA I've had[0], I just reimbursed myself for eligible expenses[1] by transferring from the HSA to my regular bank account. That amount then gets reported on line 15 of form 8889[2] the following April. If it's not an eligible expense, that's between me and the IRS—not the bank at which my HSA is held.
[0]: I highly recommend Fidelity, for anyone reading this and thinking they need a better option.
[1]: https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8889#en_US_2022_publink379...
[2]: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8889.pdf (PDF)
Just tell me how much money I owe you and let me pay. When I find myself at a clinic, I tell them I don't want to use health insurance to pay. They just give me a bill and I give them money.