Released: February 14, 2006

Skepticism on health savings accounts

Source: By Jessica Adler, North Jersey Herald News

Here are three little words some say could be the next big thing in insurance coverage: health savings accounts.

Maybe you’ve heard of them. Perhaps your company offered them on the menu of benefit options for 2006. Or you might remember the term from President Bush’s recent State of the Union address: Expanding health savings accounts, he said, is one way to “make health care more affordable, and give families greater access to good coverage.”

While critics of HSAs call them a passing fad, only beneficial for a select few, others say that over the next five years, they could catch on with the same momentum as HMOs and PPOs did in the 1990s.

There are few things as boring or complicated as sorting through the details of health insurance plans. But health savings accounts are worth getting to know, since more and more companies are offering them to employees. If you haven’t faced the option of signing up for an HSA yet, you may soon. What are they? Could one be good for you? Could they help the country’s ailing health-care system?

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