What is an HSA?

The Health Savings Account, or HSA, is a personally-owned savings vehicle intended to help individuals easily save money for the medical expenses of themselves and their families. HSAs offer three distinct tax advantages over traditional savings vehicle: all contributions to HSAs are tax-free, all earnings on HSA funds are tax-free, and all distributions made toward HSA-qualified medical expenses remain tax-free.

HSAs must be used in conjunction with HSA-qualified high deductible health plans, which offer significantly lower premiums than traditional insurance plans. These HSA-qualified insurance plans allow employers and employees to use their premium savings in order to fund an HSA as savings for future expenses.

HSAs offer unrivaled flexibility as a benefit plan—employers may contribute to their employee's HSAs as a regular per-paycheck benefit, or as part of a specialized incentive program. Furthermore, HSAs are a cornerstone of the consumer-directed healthcare movement, which gives consumers more choice and control in their healthcare spending.

At Fontis, we firmly believe that HSAs and consumer-directed plans are the future of healthcare, and we created our HSA Support Platform in order to simplify HSAs for consumers, employers, and agents—and help encourage the adoption of HSAs nationwide.

To learn more about how HSAs work, please visit www.HSAeducator.com. We‘ve partnered with HSAeducator to provide free HSA education resources for consumers, employers, and agents and we think you‘ll find their site to be a comprehensive introduction to Health Savings Accounts.