Your Money: Tax breaks on red light masks and hot dogs

July 21, 2025

	By Ron Lieber

Hi everyone —

I’ve spent the last several weeks working with my colleague Ben Mueller on an article about a company called Truemed. The 3-year-old start-up helps people use their flexible spending and health savings accounts to buy things that they otherwise couldn’t without a note from a medical professional.

For instance, it probably never occurred to you that you could buy organic meat or a $9,000 sauna with these tax-favored accounts. But you can, according to Truemed, just as long as the medical professionals the company partners with say that you need the meat to lose weight or the sauna to treat some other medical condition.

The I.R.S. has issued an alert about this sort of thing, but it doesn’t seem to have gone any further. You know who could put a stop to it, though, if they thought it was a problem? The administrators who run flexible spending accounts for companies.

So here’s an ask: If any of you have had notes from Truemed (or any other company, or any medical professional) rejected by your employer’s flexible spending account administrator, will you please let us know?

You can reach us at yourmoney_newsletter@nytimes.com.

Have a good week.

Various products on display, including a vibrating massage ball, earphones, protein powder and a bidet attachment.

Jens Mortensen for The New York Times

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