<prompt> Human: In 2014 I had a brief moment of being uninsured and as luck would have it, my appendix decided to stop working. The surgery after negotiations was discounted to 44k and Ive been making monthly payments ever since. I currently owe 6,700 as of this moment.This year, my company started offering an HSA plan so I jumped on it and it occurred to me that I could make these monthly payments from the HSA with pre-tax income. Which would be great but I started thinking about how that could be optimized and it led me to my initial question, can I reimburse myself for the payments that Ive already made? This would drastically change my strategy as the account HSA has a 0 balance today and I will only be able to contribute the 3450 max annually. So it will take some time to save the 44k to begin with but thats ok. I plan on max funding the account and letting it grow as long as possible regardless of what direction I go here.The alternative is just using the HSA to make the remaining monthly payments and move on with my life. How would you approach this?  <response>: noExpenses incurred before you establish your HSA are not qualified medical expenses. ... You should not use funds in your HSA to pay them unless you would like to pay taxes on the distributed funds and a 20 penalty 