Ed Royce: “This measure will make it easier for employers to offer health care to their employees. It is also going to help…”

“This measure will make it easier for employers to offer health care to their employees. It is also going to help Americans save for their medical expenses, to gain greater access to quality health care. I particularly support the provision in this bill that would prevent a portion of the unused balances and flexible spending arrangements from being forfeited at the end of the year. Right now there is a use-it-or-lose-it provision that applies to workers. I have been working for several years to allow individuals to accumulate unused balances from their flexible spending arrangements to save for health care expenses. In this Congress I introduced H.R. 176 to allow individuals to accumulate $2,000 annually from these FSAs, as we call them. Right now we have over 30 million workers in the United States that have these FSAs available to them. Employees and employers can set aside pretax money which can be used to pay for out-of-pocket health care expenses and copayments and deductibles. Under the current system, unfortunately, employees forfeit money not used at the end of the year. Currently, this encourages wasteful health care spending because employees, knowing that they will forfeit unused account balances, engage in end-of-the-year spending sprees on services they may not need like extra eyeglasses, shades or unnecessary exams.”