How can companies control health care costs and reap potential tax advantages?
MSAs are valuable tools for small employers and are gaining popularity in large organizations. While tax-advantaged medical savings accounts (MSAs) are currently only available to self-employed individuals and companies with fewer than 50 employees as provided for in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, larger companies can still gain some benefits from MSAs. After all, even without federal tax deductibility, MSAs can still be a tool to control health care usage. If employees are spending their own money from their MSAs for health care services, so the thinking goes, they will become better health care consumers, demand better prices, and purchase only necessary health care services. In general, a company offers its employees a high deductible health insurance plan and has the option of depositing the money saved through lower insurance premiums into MSAs for individual employees. Employees then use the money deposited in the MSA to cover deductibles and oth
