Band-Aids: HSA Eligibility

No prescription required.

Under IRC 213(d)(1), "medical care includes amounts paid for the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, or for the purpose of affecting any structure or function of the body." This includes medical equipment, supplies and devices.

What are Band-Aids?

The term, Band-Aids, is both a trademark for bandages, as well as a phrase that has entered our shared nomenclature as both a catch-all term for treatment for minor cuts and scrapes and as a verb describing a temporary fix to a problem. These adhesive bandages come in countless sizes, designs and variants, and while they are nearly ubiquitous in today's society, they are an innovation that has roots in the early 20th century.

Today's Band-Aids were invented in 1920 by a Johnson & Johnson employee named Earle Dickson, who worked as a cotton buyer for the company. Dickson was a newlywed living in New Brunswick, New Jersey, with his wife Josephine. As a housewife, Josephine was prone to minor cuts and burns from cooking and other household chores, and in an effort to treat them, the couple would cut out gauze and adhesive tape to make improvised bandages.

This was obviously very time-consuming, so Earle came up with a better solution by placing small pieces of cotton gauze in the middle of an adhesive strip. Earle told his boss about his intuitive invention and soon they began to be sold under the Band-Aid trademark, and Earle would be rewarded with a vice president position at Johnson & Johnson that he held until his retirement. Whether for at-home use, at a hospital or first-aid kit, these ubiquitous adhesive bandages have made immediate medical care possible for anyone (Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc.).