The attractiveness and establishment of HSAs continues to grow, as HSAs approach their 10th birthday. For many, it has long since been forgotten how they came to be, save for those “consumer driven health care geeks like yours truly. While many realize that HSAs or Health Savings Accounts, replaced MSAs (Medical Savings Accounts) starting in January of 2004, how they came to be is rather interesting, if not disjointed. Actually, HSAs were created by the very law that gave us the largest expansion of Medicare since its origin in 1965 – the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 (later referred to as the MMA), signed by then President George W. Bush on December 8, 2003.
A recent Omaha World Herald article featured an article titled: Let the Comparison Shopping Begin. It’s about time! Back in 1996, the large scale health care reform law of its day – The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) – included an extremely important provision referred to as the “Medical Savings Account (MSA) pilot project”. What we didn’t realize at the time, was this provision represented the birth of so called “consumer driven healthcare” or CDH. The idea was quite simple. Instead of relying on comprehensive health insurance coverage as the single source of funding of ALL health care; offer instead a two (2) pronged approach.
The IRS has made their annual determinations relative to HSA contribution limits and allowable plan related out of pocket maximums for next year.
For 2014, the contribution maximums are increasing to:
2014: Individual – $3,330; Family – $6,550.
There is NO CHANGE to the MINIMUM DEDUCTIBLE on HSA qualified plans; but the maximum out of pocket limit increases to:
2014: Individual – $6,350; Family – $12,700.
