Avoiding HCSP Administrative Fee

[roomtempmayo]

My wife is part of a state pension plan that includes a Health Care Savings Plan.  It's not an HSA or FSA; it's a savings plan for health care in retirement since she can't have an HSA.  I don't think these plans are very common.

The pension plan requires that she contribute a minimum of 1% to the HCSP annually. 

The investment options are good (i.e. standard Vanguard at normal expense ratios), but there's an additional management fee of 0.65%.  Since that's fee is going to take a serious chunk, we've defaulted to only contributing the minimum 1%.  We've also so far had other tax advantaged room where we could put money.

We're starting to run out of other tax advantaged room, and we might want to use the HCSP plan in the future.  And even at 1% contributions, we now have enough sitting in the account that the admin fee is real. 

I'm looking for suggestions on ways we might avoid the admin fee, short of getting her union to start agitating/litigating to lower it (also a possibility).

Does anyone know if HCSP accounts can be rolled into a third party where we could get lower fees?

[reeshau]

Fees are bad.  But don't throw out the tax advantage baby with the fee bathwater.

I ran a quick comparison of an HCSP contribution today (a quick read says tax treatment is similar to an HSA) vs a taxable contribution at a nominal 22% rate.  The breakeven point for this is in year 42.  Now that won't be year 42 for the whole account; it would be each contribution's 43rd year.  You may well be spending it by then, anyway.