A new HSA tax that passed the Ways and Means Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives last week.

This tax will double your monthly administrative fees. HSA providers are not doubling HSA owners’ fees, we are being forced to do something we disagree with, if this bill passed by Congress becomes law.

This new law would:

• eliminate your ability to reimburse yourself out of your account when you want by check or at an ATM.

• force you to submit your receipts to a third party in order for you to have access to the funds in your HSA.

The new fees you have to pay for the third party to review your medical receipts constitutes the new HSA tax.

Furthermore, the company that asked that this provision be added to the tax bill is Evolution Benefits of Avon, CT, which has a patent on one aspect of the business process used to review your paper receipts — any claim with a prescription, which make up 60% of medical claims.

The effect of this bill will be to force the 90% of HSA transactions that are now electronic to become paper transactions by way of submitting your receipts to be reviewed by a third party, so you can spend your own money in your HSA.

If you are opposed to this new tax, then call your Congressman.

If you do not call, Congress will think HSA policy holders are in agreement with this new tax.

Call 202.225-3121, which is the switch board at Capitol Hill and give them your zip code and they will transfer you to your U.S. Representative’s office.

This is what you should say:

I am your constituent and I live in _______ (name of your town) and I am opposed to the HSA tax in H.R. 5719, the “Taxpayer Assistance and Simplification Act of 2008.” I want the Congressman or Congresswoman to vote NO.

If they say, there is no new HSA tax in the bill. You say: if you don’t think that doubling the monthly fees I pay every month on my account is not a new tax, then you have been in Washington, D.C. for too long.

Or you can say, you may not call it a tax, but you are making me pay because of this law, and as long as I am paying new fees because Congress says so, it is a tax.

And furthermore, why should I have to send all my receipts to a third party to be able to spend my money in my account? Do you think I need to be supervised in the spending of my money? Would you want a third party to review your medical expenditures and approve what you can spend your own money on?