No more throwing away money to Health Insurance land

My company is switching our health insurance to a Health Savings Account (HSA). I am totally excited about this switch here is why.

Last year I paid a little more than $100 per paycheck for my health insurance. My company kicked in about $20 also. This means that I paid over $2400 and the company paid $480 for me to have medical insurance. I used maybe $500 dollars of that for 1 doctor's appointment and 2 blood tests. Plus I had to pay a $20 co-pay. So basically I gave up $1900 just to have piece of mind in case I got in an accident or got pregnant. I was pretty ticked off when I realized this. (especially since the whole reason I signed up for the insurance was in case I got pregnant) I started thinking about switching off the company insurance, or canceling it altogether and just saving the same amount in the bank. Then I found out that we were going to switch to an HSA. I was so excited.

Here are the basics of how it will work. My $100 payment, my company's $20 payment, and an extra $75 that the company will kick every month will go into a special savings account. The money in this account can be used to pay for any medical expense from over the counter cold medicine to hospital stays. I can pay for those things with a debit card. There is still a deductible amount that I have to reach, but after that everything is paid for by the insurance company. Here is the super sweet part. The HSA will start to earn interest after the balance reaches $500. And I don't have to use the full amount ever! The balance rolls over every year. So potentially I could have an HSA with a balance of over $3700 by this time next year. If I ever leave the company I can take the balance and roll it over to another HSA. So if I start saving in the HSA now while I am healthy I will have a large amount stored up in case I ever have heath issues. Oh and here is something else that is great. On this plan anything that is considered preventative, like a yearly physical, is free. That's right I don't even have to pay a co-pay.

Yes there is still the chance that I could get in a huge accident and have to pay more out of pocket before I get to my deductible, but I will take that chance. I want to have control of my money. I want to know that I'm investing in my future instead of throwing money away.