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Business|Hot Dogs for Insomnia? A Kennedy Aide’s Start-Up Can Get You a Tax Break.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/business/truemed-fsa-hsa-calley-means-maha.html
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The start-up, called Truemed, helps people buy meat and mattresses with money that isn’t subject to federal income tax. But does the tax break apply?
July 18, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET
An insomnia diagnosis yielded a recommendation for a five-pack of beef hot dogs. An acne diagnosis brought a medical note proposing that the condition be treated with classes at a mixed-martial-arts gym. Decades-old arm fractures earned a nurse practitioner’s order to buy a kettlebell from Nike.
And because a medical provider had blessed the purchases, they came with the promise of a major perk: People could buy them using money not subject to federal income taxes.
That is the daring new world of American medical spending that Truemed, a three-year-old wellness company, is trying to build. Its co-founder Calley Means has rocketed to the upper reaches of power in the health care system as the right hand to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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Operating in a little-known corner of the nearly $5 trillion health care system, Truemed helps supply people with letters attesting to their medical need for products like red-light masks, Peloton bikes and $9,000 saunas. With those letters, the company tells people, they can use health savings or flexible spending accounts to buy the items. The accounts allow people to set aside a limited portion of their income, without paying federal income tax, for qualified medical expenses.
Buying this way can save some people thousands of dollars.
But tactics like Truemed’s challenge core principles of the Internal Revenue Service guidelines around medical expenses, former regulators said in interviews. In justifying certain purchases, the company has facilitated letters that misapplied medical studies to patients. And Truemed enlists online medical providers who, The New York Times found, sometimes sign letters within seconds of users’ requesting them — even when the letters contain incorrect or extraneous information.
