Health Care Savings Accounts are a Racket
Published at 22:20 on 28 March 2012
I never realized how completely they were until I started studying the things. I mean, sure, they’re a racket because those of us with relatively more money can more easily defer present consumption in the name of savings than those who spend all their income on essentials. They’re classist, in other words. But it goes beyond that.
My new employer offers them as an option, and I thought they might be useful for the things that insurance does not cover. That is, I thought they might be useful until I started reading the fine print: once they have your money, you will never get it back. You either spend it on health care within an appointed period of time (no rollover allowed), or you lose it. Entirely.
You thought the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition were pure TV fantasy? Think again. Ferengi Rule No. 1: Once you have their money, never give it back. Sound familiar?
To that bit of nastiness we can add how there are multiple health-care savings plans, all complex, and all differing in complex ways. It’s as awful as health insurance plans themselves: those offering the plans deliberately make them complex so as to make it impossible to hold all the details in one’s mind at once and make a proper comparison between different options.