Just curious about this.


If you have medical insurance, NOT through your work, and pay the premiums out of pocket, can you submit those to be reimbursed in a FSA? Or is it called a HSA, either way- whatever it's called at my work, I use it for prescriptions, orthodontist, OTC medicines.

Obviously I am paying these AFTER tax, as I write a check each month for it. I know you can not be reimbursed for PRE-TAX premiums.

Is there a federal guideline on this that my employer has to follow?

My employer does offer medical insurance, however they own the insurance company, which requires me to use the hospital and doctors that I work with- given that its 45 miles away, I did not purchase it for my kids. They have a pediatrician here locally. Add to that the cost is a huge increase over what I pay for their insurance now, and the coverage is no where near as good.

can anyone direct me to this?

Brandy

It's FSA, flexible savings account. And, you can go to the trouble of looking this up, or you can just submit a claim and see what happens. You're paying the premiums anyway, why not do that?

Should add ... it sounds like you are talking about an FSA. BUT, if you actually have an HSA (health savings account) through work (which I doubt, since you don't have their insurance), then you cannot use that HSA money to pay for health insurance premiums ... or more to the point, you could but it would no longer be tax free. You'd have to pay income tax on that bit of money. At least that was the rule as of 2005, which is when I was last licensed to sell health insurance.

I think your right- it's a FSA.

I'm going to submit last months bill and see what happens

thanks Kevin

Brandy

FYI, Publication 502 from the IRS tells you what is generally allowed. Just put that into Google and the first 2 results will be an HTML and PDF version of said article