Administering a Health Flexible Spending Account (FSA) can be challenging, especially when employees request midyear changes to their elections due ...
What if there was a way to ease the stress participants may face with their account(s)? Now there is, thanks to NueSynergy’s Participant Portal. This innovative platform delivers a myriad of options for participants to stay on top of what matters most to them, including checking account balances, submitting expenses and claims, resolving debit card transactions, and managing alerts.
Another benefit of the Participant Portal is that all deadlines, contributions, and informative charts are easily accessible, making it seamless to track benefits like Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA), Health Savings Accounts (HSA), and Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRA). Pair the Participant Portal with the NueSynergy smart mobile app and you can easily manage and view your account whenever you want, wherever you want.
NueSynergy attained excellent results in operational efficiency while taking home an APEX award at the 2022 Alegeus Client Success Summit in Nashville from April 3-6. The APEX award recognizes client success across growth, innovation, and partnership excellence. It is the company’s fifth accolade in the past eight years and its most recent since 2020. To learn more about NueSynergy and its accomplishments, check out our latest news release.
Congress has passed, and the President has signed, omnibus spending legislation that (among other things) temporarily exempts telehealth and other remote care services from certain restrictions affecting health savings account (HSA) eligibility. By way of background, tax-advantaged contributions generally cannot be made to an HSA unless the account holder is covered by a qualifying high-deductible health plan (HDHP) and does not have disqualifying non-HDHP coverage.
In the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), Congress created exceptions to those rules to facilitate the use of telehealth during the COVID pandemic, but those exceptions applied only to plan years beginning on or before December 31, 2021. The new legislation—the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022—restores these exceptions for the last nine months of 2022.
The new legislation amends two key provisions in the Code 223 rules for HSAs. First, it provides that telehealth and other remote care services will be considered disregarded coverage—and thus will not cause a loss of HSA eligibility—during the months beginning after March 31, 2022, and before January 1, 2023. Second, during that nine-month period, plans may provide coverage for telehealth and other remote care services before the HDHP minimum deductible is satisfied without losing their HDHP status. Both amendments apply to the stated months without regard to the HDHP’s plan year. The relief does not apply for the first three months of 2022 so some plans (e.g., calendar-year plans) must still apply their minimum deductible to telehealth and other remote care services during those months. [EBIA Comment: Plans with 2021 plan years that started on or after April 1, 2021, should be unaffected by the three-month gap that affects other plans, because their CARES Act relief will not expire until those plan years end.]
EBIA Comment: HDHPs are not required to waive their minimum deductible for telehealth and other remote services during the additional relief period, so some plan sponsors may conclude that a midyear change to take advantage of the restored exceptions is too difficult to communicate and administer, and not worth the effort. Other plan sponsors, those who assumed Congress would extend the CARES Act relief without a gap and covered telehealth during the first three months of 2022 without applying the minimum deductible, may have a different problem: determining whether their plans can and should apply the minimum deductible to telehealth and other remote services retroactively to the gap period. Some covered individuals may be able to avoid the adverse HSA-eligibility consequences of their plan’s failure to satisfy the minimum deductible requirement during the first three months of 2022 by using the full contribution rule, which allows a full year’s worth of HSA contributions to be made by someone who is HSA-eligible for only a portion of the year. (This rule is also sometimes referred to as the “last-month rule” or the “no-proration rule.”) But that rule may not be available to all affected plan participants because some may not be HSA-eligible on December 1, 2022, and some may not remain HSA-eligible throughout the 13-month testing period beginning on that date.
The FSA Store is a fantastic outlet for consumers to buy eligible products to fit their FSA account. With over 4,000 products on hand — from thermometers, pregnancy tests, flu & virus kits, blood pressure monitors – it’s a guarantee to find at least one product to enjoy.
To best utilize the virtual store, search any FSA eligible item you need for purchase. From there, add a promo code to any purchased FSA eligible item. All promo codes can be turned into points for future purchases.
The smallest denomination of points that can be redeemed for later use is 350 ($10) and largest is 1,500 ($50). You cannot redeem fewer than 350 points at a time. Balances under 350 points cannot be exchanged for a partial value dollar reward. Points expire six months (180 days) following your last order date. To learn about all FSA Store eligible items, look here.
