American Express Dumps Health Savings Accounts (HSA)

American Express is getting off the health-savings-account bandwagon,
American Medical News [1] reports.Health savings accounts, or HSAs,
are health insurance plans that allow people
to set aside pre-tax dollars in special accounts to cover the plans’
high deductibles. They’re beloved of some policy wonks who believe the
plans encourage consumers to shop around for cheaper health care. And
with the number of HSAs projected to skyrocket, many companies have
been trying to figure out how to profit from the sector.

AmericanExpress, one of several financial institutions to develop an HSA product,
introduced “[2] HealthPay Plus,”
a debit card linked to HSAs that customers could use to pay for health
care. Insurance giants WellPoint and Cigna had signed onto the program,
according to American Medical News. But that wasn’t enough to save the
plan, which American Express will discontinue by the end of the year,
citing high costs and low uptake among consumers.

The article suggests that the program’s failure has more to do with American
Express than with HSAs in general. “It’s harder to use American Express
— there are fewer locations that accept it” than Visa and MasterCard,
one expert told American Medical News. But, despite a strong push from
industry and Washington, regular people just don’t seem that interested
in HSAs. As we [3] noted earlier
this year, the plans haven’t grown as quickly as expected, and those
who are signing up usually do so because they have no other choice.