I'm not conflating anything here.

Nobody should be asked to make bets on their medical needs. They should just be allowed to tax deduct everything when the need arises.

You ARE almost-guaranteed to lose the FSA game, basically. You'll either bet too much or too little, and the collective house wins either way.

In my opinion, it's even more sickening that the system is designed to scalp a few extra bucks off of peoples' medical situations in this way. The gambling on sports, I could care less about.

Nobody should be asked to make bets on their medical needs.

Your entire argument sounds very much like how certain religions are against insurance because they view it as gambling.

It's led to the rise of an even riskier practice of shared health benefit pools, which market themselves as not being insurance even though they're pretty much the same thing as "mutual insurance," except that when you need them most, suddenly they're not insurance at all.

It also sounds very young. When you get over a certain age, you WILL use up that FSA. Every. Single. Year.

And if you're young enough not to, there are plenty of over-the-counter everyday goods that qualify for FSA, like Tylenol.