I switched my health insurance plan to a high deductible health plan(HDHP) that is eligible to be paired with a health savings account(HSA). My deductible only went from $5000 to $5200 a year but the policy is about $120 a year cheaper in addition to being HSA eligible. Not all health insurance with a high deductible is HSA eligible. If a health insurance plan is HSA eligible it will most likely feature that fact in the plan’s description.
I purchased my insurance through eHealthInsurance which makes it easy to compare plans. I set the search to filter out any plans that weren’t HSA eligible and then ordered the plans by price from low to high. This made it easy to find the lowest priced HSA eligible health plan. I’ve found eHealthinsurance to be very easy to use and am happy with their service and I’m not just saying that because they pay me commissions. I haven’t had any problems and needed to use their customer service yet so I can’t really comment on that.
I haven’t opened up an HSA yet. I was planning on setting up my HSA and using it to pay my health insurance premiums but I then discovered that in most instances you can’t use your HSA to pay for your health insurance. I should have done more research before I switched health insurance plans. I’ve decided to put off opening an HSA for now for a couple of reasons. The first is that I don’t need the tax deduction. My income will most likely be below taxable levels this year even without this deduction. I don’t want to tie my money up in an HSA if I’m not getting the benefit of a tax deductions as well. The other reason is that I haven’t been impressed with the HSAs available. Most of them have setup and/or monthly fees with limited investment options. These usually can be waived if you have a sufficient balance in your account but again I don’t want to put too much in an HSA if I’m not getting the benefit of the tax deduction. The HSA looks to be a great way to save money but I don’t think it will work for me right now.
If any of you have an HSA that you are happy with please let me know about it.