Get Reimbursed for Multi-Year Medical Expenses With HSA
If you have a health savings account associated with your high deductible health plan, you probably know you can use it to get your medical reimbursement for a year. But HSA has another advantage: there is no time limit for receiving refunds. If you had an HSA open at the time your health care bill was billed, you can get a refund – even years after it happened.
This is important because even though the HSA has an annual contribution limit (in 2019 it is $ 3,500 for individuals and $ 7,000 for families and another $ 1,000 if you are over 55), it means that if you have high medical costs in one year, you may still be reimbursed for any additional costs from future premiums.
Let’s say you decided to deposit $ 1,000 into your HSA last year, but then faced unexpected medical expenses totaling about $ 4,000 out of your own pocket. This year, you could top up your HSA and then be compensated for last year’s expenses. The only requirement is that you opened an HSA before you incurred any expenses. As CreditCards.com writes:
It is very important that you keep accurate records to document your transactions in case you ever get verified. The first step is to keep a copy of every medical bill you personally paid and all payments. “As long as the dates are on the receipts, you will be fine,” says [John W. Seltzer, CEO of J. Seltzer Associates, an employee benefit consulting firm].
Therefore, if you have HSA and medical expenses that were not reimbursed last year or in previous years – either because you did not commit enough funds during the open recruitment, or you simply forgot to use your HSA funds – round up your receipts and send them to your provider now (you can increase your contributions throughout the year, but most likely not if your choices are in the form of a pre-tax pay cut , that is, through your employer’s plan). And keep that in mind as you tweak your HSA contributions for next year.