Motivating Personal Contributions to Health Savings Accounts

Each individual enrolled in a health savings account (HSA) faces myriad conflicting forces when deciding whether to defer the immediate benefit of take-home pay for the potential future benefit of making HSA contributions. Personal contributions allow enrollees to accumulate funds to cover out-of-pocket medical expenses. If an enrollee does not make HSA contributions, he or she might not be able to receive needed medical attention and take full advantage of the various financial and tax planning benefits of HSAs. In this study, the first of its kind, hypothetical experimental surveys were conducted using a nationally representative sample of 505 respondents to determine factors that motivate personal contributions to HSAs. One statistically significant treatment required respondents to view digital recordings of three current HSA enrollees speaking about their personal motivations to make contributions. A second treatment demonstrated no significant influence of an employer match on the hypothetical level of HSA funding selected.