You can include:
  • Bandages
  • Birth control pills prescribed by your doctor
  • Capital expenses for equipment or improvements to your home needed for medical care
  • Certain fertility enhancement procedures
  • Certain weight-loss expenses for obesity
  • Diagnostic devices
  • Expenses of an organ donor
  • Eye surgery—to promote the correct function of the eye
  • Guide dogs or other animals aiding the blind, deaf, and disabled
  • Hospital services fees (lab work, therapy, nursing services, surgery, etc.)
  • Lead-based paint removal
  • Legal abortion
  • Legal operation to prevent having children such as a vasectomy
  • Long-term care contracts, qualified
  • Meals and lodging provided by a hospital during medical treatment
  • Medical and hospital insurance premiums
  • Medical services fees (from doctors, dentists, surgeons, specialists, and other medical practitioners)
  • Oxygen equipment and oxygen
  • Part of life-care fee paid to retirement home designated for medical care
  • Prescription medicines (prescribed by a doctor) and insulin
  • Psychiatric and psychological treatment
  • Social Security tax, Medicare tax, FUTA, and state employment tax for worker providing medical care (see Wages for Nursing service, below)
  • Special items (artificial limbs, false teeth, eye-glasses, contact lenses, hearing aids, crutches, wheelchair, etc.)
  • Special education for mentally or physically disabled persons
  • Stop-smoking programs
  • Transportation for needed medical care
  • Treatment at a drug or alcohol center (includes meals and lodging provided by the center)
  • Wages for nursing services
You cannot include:
  • Baby sitting and childcare
  • Bottled water
  • Contributions to Archer MSAs
  • Diaper service
  • Expenses for your general health (even if following your doctor’s advice) such as:
    • Heathclubdues
    • House hold help (even if recommended by a doctor)
    • Social activities, such as dancing or swimming lessons
    • Trip for general health improvement
  • Flexible spending account reimbursements for medical expenses (if contributions were on a pre-tax basis)
  • Funeral, burial, or cremation expenses
  • Health savings account payments for medical expenses
  • Illegal operation or treatment
  • Life insurance or income protection policies or policies providing payment for loss of life, limb, sight, etc.
  • Maternity clothes
  • Medical insurance included in a car insurance policy covering all persons injured in or by your car
  • Medicine you buy without a prescription
  • Nursing care for a healthy baby
  • Prescription drugs you brought in (or ordered shipped) from another country, in most cases
  • Nutritional supplements, vitamins, herbal supplements, “natural medicines,” etc., unless recommended by a medical practitioner as a treatment for a specific medical condition diagnosed by a physician
  • Surgery for purely cosmetic reasons
  • Toothpaste, toiletries, cosmetics, etc.
  • Teeth whitening
  • Weight-loss expenses not for the treatment of obesity or other disease