MBI and drugstore.com Partner

MBI, the leading employee benefits software company that offers the first and most widely used benefits debit cards, and drugstore.com, inc., a leading online provider of health, beauty, vision, and pharmacy products, announced a collaboration to facilitate the purchase of items eligible for flexible spending account (FSA) reimbursement, and to track and manage those expenses. Consumers can now use the MBI Benefits Card(TM), a nationally accepted debit card that is linked directly to employees FSAs, to make FSA-eligible purchases of over-the-counter and other health-related products from the drugstore.com(TM) Web store. In addition, the collaboration enables consumers to track and manage these expenditures more efficiently. The drugstore.com(TM) FSA Store tags FSA-eligible items, and the FSA-eligible purchases made using the MBI Benefits Card are deducted directly from a customers FSA balance. MBIs payment processing system works with the FSA Store to track purchases and provide an Internal Revenue Service (IRS)-approved electronic receipt to the customers FSA administrator, thus eliminating the typically tedious, paper-based reimbursement process for claims administrators and consumers. One of the greatest benefits of an FSA is to use it for health-related over-the-counter purchases. Keeping track of the associated paperwork, however, can sometimes be overwhelming, said Jeff Kimmell, Vice President, Healthcare Services and Chief Pharmacy Officer of drugstore.com, inc. The drugstore.com FSA Store and the MBI Benefits Card enable consumers to make very easy and convenient purchases of FSA-eligible items, and to manage those expenses. Having to shoulder an increasing amount of out-of-pocket healthcare expenses, consumers are now paying for them with funds from multiple benefits accounts, including FSAs and HSAs. However, this also puts the administrative burden on consumers, said Robert L. Natt, CEO of MBI. The combination of the FSA Store at www.drugstore.com and the MBI Benefits Card helps to reduce that burden, by making it easy to identify, purchase and track eligible over-the-counter items. And, because the MBI card can be linked to multiple benefits accounts, it provides a single way to manage all of a consumers benefits funds and expenses. The MBI and drugstore.com offering provides the following benefits: -- Easy Shopping Experience: The FSA Store marks FSA-eligible items with an FSA icon. The drugstore.com(TM) Web store also keeps track of all purchases, to make checkout easier when making repeat purchases. -- More Convenient Checkout: At the checkout point, the FSA Store identifies FSA-eligible and non-eligible items. The customer can pay for eligible items with the MBI Benefits Card and will be prompted to enter another form of payment for the non-eligible items. The customer can choose to either pay for those non-eligible items separately or to pay for the entire purchase using another credit card. -- Better Receipt Management: In addition to electronic processing, MBI cardholders can choose to immediately print receipts for purchases at the point of sale, or can go to www.drugstore.com at any time to print receipts for any purchases they have made. If a paper back-up receipt is requested by an FSA administrator, the cardholder can easily obtain it from the site and send it in.