Questions regarding a HSA and how use it to my advantage?

Household income 44k about to go up to 50k. Just me and my wife.

I recently lost my insurance because we earn too much (wife is still on state medical due to being disabled).

I’m going to move from PT top FT to help pay for my new medical expenses, hence the paybump.

I’m healthy with no medial conditions. It’s very possible that I won’t need a med or a dr’s app for the next few years outside of physicals.

I’m learning about a HSA and it seems it’s probably a good idea to max it out each year (3.8k), invest it and use it as a retirement account, and also if necessary pull money from it tax free to pay for medical stuff.

The reason I ask if this is rich persons game is that I’ve heard a few people talk about maxing this account out and never using the money for medical, you’d pay cash for that, because once you pull it out, you can’t put anymore back in till the next year. And because it’s a high deductible plan ($2.5k which I feel isn’t really that high) you might as well pay cash for smaller medical expenses because I’m unlikely to hit that amount.

Also, if you’re investing it in something like the S&P 500, it could go down and you don’t want to pull it out during a dip.

What would be a good strategy here? Max out the HSA and pay cash for medical? or use insurance and pay on the deductible? Use the funds from my HSA if I need to? Don’t bother with the HSA at all and use my insurance. Combination of two of these ideas?

I have $6.5k in a rother IRA, $8k in my 401k (no employer match, 6% currently) and $44k in a HYSA.