I have a HSA which came with a Visa HSA debit card. A practitioner I went to could not get the card to clear her billing company (USB). They told her that the card is not coded for her type of practice, and that is why it was rejected. Since you can use this card in a Target that did not seem likely. Do these cards have certain codes or was her company lying to her.
I don’t know the answer to your question, but you can pay with another card and reimburse yourself from your HSA later, just so you know.
What sort of practitioner was it?
I had that happen once. The provider was an orthotist, but she is an employee of a shoe store that sells specialized orthopedic shoes (and regular shoes). But they were coded as a regular shoe store, so I had to pay out of pocket and get reimbursed.
They probably have all sorts of codes. For example, although you can use it at the Target pharmacy, there are all sorts of things you can’t use it for. We used to be able to buy many over the counter items, including things like band-aids with our HSA card. Now we can’t even use it to buy over the counter medications that are prescribed by our doctors.
There are in layman’s terms, a bajillion codes involved for products and merchants. The HSA cards are goverened by rules set forth by the IRS, so that should clue you in to the complexity.
I’ve run into the same problem with vitamins - regular OTC vitamins are no longer covered, but bariatric or otherwise prescribed vitamins are covered. For the particular brand that my husband uses, we can buy them from his surgeon’s office and they’re covered, but if I want to buy them without a fat markup direct from the manufacturer, I have to buy them out of pocket, then submit a reimbursement request.
If you’re having trouble sleeping, you can search for IIAS Merchant Codes for the details, but suffice it to say, there’s a whole rigamarole of certification and headaches that a small vendor or doctor’s office may not want to be bothered with. For large vendors or companies with pharmacies (such as Target from the OP’s example) they will want to be IIAS certified as there’s a large potential volume of sales that would otherwise go to the drugstore across the street.
Thanks, I have read up on IIAS codes. First, it seems that if there is a prescription for OTC meds, if you pay for them at the pharmacy counter they can do an over-ride and use the HSA card then. IIAS seems to deal with merchandise and physical things. It does not seem to cover health care practitioners.
I didn’t know what you were talking about, so I had to google:
HSA = health savings account