Here at The Gradock Bulletin, we were intrigued by this new website we found online called My HSA Rewards we found online.  We first wrote about it awhile back, and after signing up for the program and playing around with the site a bit, we tracked down one of the folks responsible for putting this program together.  Sanders McConnell, one of the founders, was kind enough to (hey, he was thrilled) to give us a phone interview and provide some insight into the program.  As it turns out he gave us enough insight for our next few postings.    

Gradock:  Mr. McConnell, first of all, we discovered the My HSA Rewards, kind of out of the blue.  Poof, it just appeared on the scene.  How long has the program been around?

McConnell:  First, you’re right – I am thrilled that you found us so quickly.  We brought the site up live in mid-March and announced it publicly at the end of May. Truly, we have been working on this for about 2 years and are working quickly to add more merchants to our offering.

Gradock:  I signed up immediately.  Hey, “If it’s FREE, it’s for me!”  And surfed all over the site.  Can you give us some background on the origin of the program and your interest in Consumer Driven Health?

McConnell: I have a healthcare background selling medical equipment and supplies as well as helping small companies with their benefits programs, but what really has me passionate about what we are doing is my personal experiences in our healthcare system.  You see, I took care of my Dad and my maternal Aunt for about 7 years while they were afflicted with Alzheimer’s.  You wouldn’t believe how expensive it is to take care of folks like that because it absolutely drains your savings. In addition to costing so much, the time it took an enormous amount of time to take my Dad to the VA because they were so slow.  Don’t get me wrong, I love(d) my Dad and did everything I could for him but when it takes an entire day to go get a sore throat checked out at the VA, well that was very costly in terms of my productivity at my job.  During those 7 years, I also adopted 2 awesome children at the same time because they are natural brother and sister.  During the time we took guardianship of them and the time we were in front of the judge, we had to use the local county health clinic for their care.  Again, the government sponsored health care, while they do the best they can with what they have, is slow and costly.  We could not put the kids on our health insurance plan because they were not legally our kids at the time and as you know having kids is expensive anyway we simply did not have the additional funds to pay out of pocket for their care.  Over the years and with all these challenges, this desire to in some way help people pay for their healthcare began to evolve.

Then one day I heard a program to help individuals save for college by just purchasing everyday items.  I thought to myself, “self” why can’t you do that for your health care?  So, I began to mull it over and started to learn more about that industry.  Then Health Savings Accounts came into existence and I immediately saw the opportunity to create a program that could help fund HSAs by giving back cash rewards for buying everyday products and then depositing the cash rewards into a Health Savings Account.

Gradock: That’s quite a story.