I'm still annoyed about this. Even though I only submit about $150-$200 a year for OTC stuff, I can't believe they want me to have a prescription. I would have reduced my contribution this year but for the fact that two of my daughters are having their wisdom teeth pulled and one of them needs major oral surgery to go along with the braces that she's starting this month. I like having the HSA, but I don't like that my use of it is being hindered by this. I find it ironic that this is part of the "Affordable Health Care Act." Geez, it's my money, I should be able to use it for this kind of stuff without having to have an Rx.

Anyone who is going to med school in hopes of becoming a primary doctor probably has problems with simple math. How will doctors make money in an environment where they are going to be forced to care for people for little or no money -- after incurring vast student loans to become doctors (unless they have a rich family to finance their education)?

And just look at the cost here -- $4 bottle of medicine requires a prescription. How much time and paperwork will that take from the doctor? Surely more than $4 worth. Are they supposed to donate their time -- more than they're already expected to donate by caring for Medicare/Medicaid patients?

WHY the hell should OTC meds be a reimbursable expense?? OTC means that you can get them without a prescription! Why incur unnecessary paperwork for something you already buy? This makes no sense whatsoever. Does the already over-inflated sense of entitlement really have to extend to OTC meds? Jeezuz. You need a painkiller that you don't have to have a script for, now you want to be reimbursed for it?? That makes no damn sense whatsoever! Get over yourselves already and just buy the damn things! Advil doesn't cost all that much ferpetessakes! WTF?

o.O

Thank you Obama-voting asshats. This is like those profs who required a drs note to be excused for missing class when the college health service said please don't come in for colds, only this is on steroids.

Flynne, I-until jan-had no paperwork at all for my reimbursements. I used my credit card, and was automatically sent a deposit from my account for anything I'd bought that was eligible. Why in the hell should I have to pay taxes on money spent on medicine whether or NOT I needed a script? Especially when so many people are getting ALL their healthcare on my dime? It's the damn principle, thanks.

Flynne, I hate to be hypercritical but that is the dumbest comment I have ever heard. To "get reimbursed" for OTC medications from a Flexible spending Account, you have to first have put the money, your money, in the account in the first place. Entitlement doesn't come into it at all. You are saving your own money to use later.

To elaborate on this a bit, for Flynne: The FSAs are accounts where you are allowed to put in money directly from your gross pay, pre-tax. Then, you can use money in the account to pay for drugs and medical services and it isn't taxed. The catch is, you have to know in advance how much you are going to spend in a given year, because any money you haven't spent at the end of the year is forfeited. So you don't just dump money in willy-nilly. It's an alternative to paying for the services with post-tax money and then deducting them from your taxes, only it also works for people whose deductions don't cross the threshold for itemizing.

So if you're on, say, an aspirin regimen for heart problems, you can use an FSA to pay for the aspirin. Only now you have to get a prescription for the aspirin every year. Silly, isn't it?

So ends the attempt to let people make their own health care decisions. WHen the company I work for started doing HSA, I was overjoyed, it made so much sense, and was much cheaper for them. Of course the gov't will kill it.

I have never done the FSA for the simple fact that it goes away at the end of the year. If they actually let you keep the money year to year and actually build up a true savings account over years -- most of the insurance would be used only for truly critical things -- not I'm going to visit the doctor for a stubbed toe.

For the 60 cents tax I have to pay for a $6 bottle of Advil I buy, I need to be reimbursed? Sorry, but that still sounds like entitlement to me. And yeah, what Jim P said. If you don't spend ALL of what you put into an FSA, you lose it. Where the hell's the sense in that?

Look, I go into a store, I buy some Advil, $6.60, done. It's not worth all the damn paperwork to get it back. In the long run, how much are you saving if at the end of the year you lose some of what you put into it? How can you project how much money you're going to spend on health care in the coming year? You gotta crystal ball or something? I just can't grasp the concept of putting some money in an account I can only use for healthcare expenses and then losing some of it if I don't use it all. That just puts more money in someone else's pocket.

Amy it is worse than that. Our doctor has already told us for us to use the fsa for our kids allergy meds he us going to require we bring them in and have allergy test done. He wants to try persription stuff and they will have to come in once a month to be checked on. This is what I would have to do before he will give me a persription for lactaid or allergy stuff. You know.. The stuff I have been using for years and already know works..

I told his nurse on the call back to forget it, I would be pYing out of pocket for OTC meds and looking for a new doctor.

Flynne, I use my FSA every year and make a minimum contribution of $2k. I know this will cover all the co-pays for doctor appointments, Rxs and Rx eyeglasses (those damn blended bifocals aren't cheap!)and contacts for my daughters and myself for the year. I know I can use that much without losing any at the end of the year. This year I bumped it to $3k so I could pay for my daughters' oral surgeries and braces up front without feeling an awful pinch in my budget. The paperwork is minimal and I have a check from my FSA within 2 days. The FSAs aren't just for OTC medications although I did enjoy that benefit and Target is kind enough to break out on the receipt which items were eligible for reimbursement under an FSA.

Well, that's cool, Sara. I just didn't think that an FSA really made that much of a difference. I mean, I pay the standard insurance premiums for me and my girls through my work, it's about $108/month, and then for annual physicals, it's a $15 office visit co-pay, the optician is $10/visit, the dentist is $5 for a cleaning. I've got an Rx plan, so prescriptions are based on the cost of the drug, I guess, but I've never spent more than $10 on any one. This year, daughter #2 got braces, and my total cost was $300. I guess I've got a good health insurance plan, because our total health care costs are pretty minimal, thank the gods. I just don't see the need for an FSA for us. We rarely go to the doctor for anything. It's been just annual physicals, dental checkups, once a year to the optician. Oh and once this year, the younger had swollen glands, but it was still only $15 for the o.v., and $4 for the medication she had to take for 10 days. Can you use your FSA money to pay the monthly premiums?

Well, that's cool, Sara. I just didn't think that an FSA really made that much of a difference. I mean, I pay the standard insurance premiums for me and my girls through my work, it's about $108/month, and then for annual physicals, it's a $15 office visit co-pay, the optician is $10/visit, the dentist is $5 for a cleaning. I've got an Rx plan, so prescriptions are based on the cost of the drug, I guess, but I've never spent more than $10 on any one. This year, daughter #2 got braces, and my total cost was $300. I guess I've got a good health insurance plan, because our total health care costs are pretty minimal, thank the gods. I just don't see the need for an FSA for us. We rarely go to the doctor for anything. It's been just annual physicals, dental checkups, once a year to the optician. Oh and once this year, the younger had swollen glands, but it was still only $15 for the o.v., and $4 for the medication she had to take for 10 days. Can you use your FSA money to pay the monthly premiums?

Sorry for the double post! My browser was acting up.

If I haven't said it already, I'll say it now: the people who designed Obamacare need to have large OTC bottles shoved up their nether regions!

To answer your question at the end, Amy, my doctor does not refill scripts over the phone or by fax, you have to book an appointment. So he gets, like $37 out of it.

I'm OK with you guys not subsidizing my Sponge Bob band aids, and if you are on asprin for your heart I sure hope you go to the doc at least once a year anyway. It's a good thing to have a periodic review, the dosage on both of my chronic meds changed in the last few years.

yep.. smurfy is right.. and let me ask you.. Who is a lesser threat to care for, the low risk patient who just need 5 minutes for a perscription so she can use her fsa for allergy meds or a heart patient who needs a lot of time and who's treatment you might be liable for- should you attempt to actually treat the patient? If you were a doctor who would you want on your patient list?

Obamacare.. Decreasing access to care for those who actually need it..

The real potential travesty here is when they require the prescription just to purchase the OTC drugs, not just to get a discount. Responsible medical care users don't go to the doctor on a weekend for a common cold cause it costs more, sometimes I'm 2 or three days out getting an appointment. Timely access, not cost is my concern.

Yeah I can see that. Who wants to wait a week for cold meds. You would be done by then.. Well I would anyways..

Flynne, co-pays and Rx medications aren't the bulk of what I use my FSA for. My kids' co-pays through their father's insurance are $10 for dr. visits and $5 for prescriptions. My co-pays are $15 for my PCP and $20 for specialists and anywhere from $15-$20 for prescriptions. My real expenditures are on eyeglasses. I pay $400 for the blended bifocals after my insurance pays their portion. I could go with the cheaper lined bifocals, but I'm too vain and I'm only 43 so I'm still a little bitter that I'm even in bifocals. I always have 2 pairs of glasses and have the lenses replaced annually. I wish my eyes would stop changing!

My youngest daughter (16) has more crowns in her mouth than I care to admit and they've had to be replaced as her mouth has changed. Now there's oral surgery, braces and new crowns. Even with two PPO dental plans, it adds up.

To answer your question, no, you can't use an FSA to pay insurance premiums.

We use our FSA (offered through my company, which calls it a "cafeteria plan") to roll up prescription co-pays and doctor visit co-pays. We manage to use all of ours up every year. While we've never used it for over-the-counter stuff, it was nice to know that we could if we needed to. No more, I guess. But we peasants really shouldn't be trusted to make our own decisions with our own money!

I have one question. Where the hell are they buying, that insulin DOESN'T require a prescription?

Well, who knew? Some types of insulin can be bought OTC. go figure.

Okay. Don't just complain. Read this, and if you think it's a good idea, like my cardiologist does, copy it and bend the ear of your Congressman about it.

There are thousands of people with their hand out, sucking up your money for administrative things only distantly realated to your health care. When the government gets involved, that will be hundreds of thousands of Federally-entitled people sucking up your money.

NOBODY should be between you and your doctor. NOBODY should be able to force you to give up your patient-doctor relationship because they want someone else to pay for their care.

NOBODY should be allowed to LIE TO YOU about the rationing of care which MUST accompany current Federal plans.

And NOBODY should think that the President is the one causing this. Leading, yes, but Congress has the power to make this happen. You MUST address them to fix this, to have any chance at all.

Real insulin, like R, NPH, Lente, Ultralente, have never required a prescription. The inventors of the refining process wanted it to be available to anyone who needed it and wrote the patent to ensure it. (Some of those are not even made anymore because no one makes money off them.) That's why it doesn't require a prescription for this, too, probably.

The newer 'insulin analogues' that are more recently patented and cost a lot of money, do and have always, required a prescription and cannot be bought OTC. People still call them insulin but they are not really the same thing at all, legally.

We have pretty good medical, but no vision or dental, our pharmacy copays are $10 and $30 or 20%, whichever is higher and we get a better price on mail order prescriptions. If the negotiated price of the drug is less than $10, then we pay that instead of the $10. DH and I have paid around $2400 in prescription copays this year, so far. We each had a $250 deductible we had to meet for testing and procedures, and multiple $10 copays for doctor visits, I also got new glasses I had been needing for a while earlier this year. DH is waiting to get his glasses after the first of the year, since our FSA ran out. We put $3000 in it this year and will put $3000 in next year, even though we have gone about $1000 over that by now this year, counting the OTC drugs and supplies we also use. The year after that we will be limited by this new law to $2500 per year. The difference that will make in our taxes is about $70/year on that $500 difference in contribution.

We have already gotten the prescription versions of a couple of the OTCs we were using. I intend on going through the list of OTCs we use regularly and keep on hand and see if we can get the OTC prescriptions written for at least some of them to be used and refilled as needed (prn.) I believe you only have to send the copy of the prescription with the receipt once, as long as it still has refills and hasn't expired.

The OTC items that are not drugs are still covered without a prescription, that would include bandages, gauze, crutches, blood pressure monitors, etc.

Some types of insulin can be bought OTC.

Depending on what state you are in you can just walk up to a pharmacy counter and say you want insulin.

Some types of insulin can be bought OTC.

Depending on what state you are in you can just walk up to a pharmacy counter and say you want insulin.