"When I worked for an employer who offered health plans, the premiums were deducted from my pay "pre-taxed" under the Cafeteria aka section 125 rule."
Yes, but it is more normal now to code the dollars paid towards health insurance premiums using code DD in box 12 (Section 125 stuff appears in box 14 on the W-2).
"I was told by my market place insurance agent I could put my premium money into my HSA and than pay the premiums from there"
Absolutely true.
"It seems to me, if an employee can take the benefit of pretax dollars being used for premiums, a pink-collar worker should have the same benefit, but my insurance carrier says otherwise."
But a "pink-collar" worker (I haven't hear that phrase before) CAN use pre-tax dollars to pay for health insurance premiums.
You see, when you contribute to an HSA, you receive an above-the-line tax deduction for any HSA contributions made directly to your HSA (I assume that your current employer is not handling the HSA contributions for you, but they could). This makes the HSA dollars "pre-tax".
So, by contributing to an HSA, then using the HSA dollars to pay the health insurance premiums, then you have used pre-tax dollars to do so.
Make sense?
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