Tax-favored health accounts, including flexible spending accounts (FSAs) and health savings accounts (HSAs), are an increasingly popular way for employees to pay for some of their out-of-pocket health expenses using pre-tax dollars. Do such accounts improve the incentives for workers to purchase health care more carefully? Do employers providing FSAs offer health insurance plans with higher cost sharing? If so, do the accounts simply shift costs from the employer to the employee, or are employees better off?

William Jack, a professor of economics at Georgetown University, will address these and related questions as he presents his new study on FSAs, coauthored with Arik Levinson, also a professor of economics at Georgetown, and Sjamsu Rahardja of the World Bank. Following Jack's presentation, a panel of discussants will comment on the study and discuss the implications of their findings for both FSAs and HSAs.