alt Hacker News> If your company offers an FSA, it's asking to make a gamble on how much medical needs you'll have in the next 1 year.
Conflating this with gambling is dishonest. I'll grant you that I've always viewed the way FSA is structured is weird, but this is absolutely not gambling unless you're completely unaware.
If you have any regular, annual medical expenses that are out of pocket, or plan to purchase any of the very wide variety of items that are eligible for FSA (e.g. gym equipment, many foods, glasses, contacts, etc. that might not be fully covered), then you can estimate this with exceptional accuracy.
This is not the same as playing roulette.
The non-gambling way of doing this would be to just tax deduct all of that stuff at tax time based on what you ACTUALLY spend.
Being forced to plan it and "lose it if you don't spend it" IS gambling, in my book.