Health insurance savings plans combine a kind of catastrophic health insurance plan with a sort of IRA.

First, health insurance. It's a high deductible plan, the minimum deductible per individual is $1,000. A $5,000 maximum for that individual. Families are twice that - $2,000 minimum deductible up to a $10,000 maximum deductible for the family.

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The HSA Insider

The idea is to drive the cost of insurance down and keep the "out-of-pocket" high. The out-of-pocket portion is where the savings plan comes in.

You can set up your HSA account with a brokerage house, bank or insurance company. And you can put away pretax dollars in these accounts to the use them for medical expenses on down the road.

You can put away a maximum of $2,600 if you're single and $5,150 for your family plan.

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	HSA 101 HSAs are good for people who don’t use much medical insurance and want to save money for retirement.

These are pretax dollars - these are deductible to you. Once you put the dollars in your HSA plan , the growth is deferred from taxation and can be accessed for medical bills tax free.

Ordinary withdrawals are taxable plus a 10 percent penalty prior to age 65- Medicare eligibility.

These HSA plans are a pretty good idea as long as you don't have very great medical expenses.

You see, the health insurance is truly a catastrophic plan, not very good for small medical emergencies. I don't think it's going to work well for families with lots of little kids who have weekly ear infections.

But if you're a single nester, not using much medical insurance it might be a way to sock away a bunch of dollars to use your retirement medical expenses include a long-term care medical insurance premiums.

	HSA summary
1. Catastrophic health insurance a. Single: $1000 deductible minimum, $5,000 deductible maximum b. Family: $2,000 deductible minimum, $10,000 deductible maximum 2. Pretax savings plans a. Brokerage, banks or insurance companies b. Single: $2,600 deductible c. Family: $5,150 deductible d. $600 catch-up provision for the 55-year-old donator 3. Withdrawals are tax-free for medical expenses. Taxable for all other expenses 4. 10 percent penalty for withdrawal prior to age 65. 5. Penalty is waived for the 65-year-old set.