Allowable health care expenses

---

Health savings accounts were designed to help people pay for health care expenses. This leads to the logical question: What are the allowable health care expenses?

The concept

As a general guideline, health savings account dollars should be spent on prevention, diagnosis and treatment of medical problems.

If you see a health care provider such as a physician, dentist, optometrist, alternative care provider, pharmacist, chiropractor or psychologist, those expenses are probably allowable expenses.

Click on this link: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p502.pdf to see the IRS document that explains which expenses are HSA-eligible and which are not. There is a section for includible expenses (page 5) and non-includible expenses (page 14).