:: Adventures in Daily Living :: : keeping track of medical insurance

8.06.2008

keeping track of medical insurance

and now Suzanne has something to say about works for me

Can you help us? We are buried in both "Explanation of Benefits" and bills for medical offices. We do not have an efficient way to keep track of what insurance should pay and have paid and need to be harassed into paying.

Somewhere some clever person must have a system for this. Certainly not all households are floundering, and if so, some software company could make a pile. In the meantime, what do you do?

4 much appreciated comments:

Heidi said...: Here's what I started: I have a spiral notebook that has 3 dividers with pockets, which gives a section for me and each of the 2 kids. (Hubby never goes to the doctor, so he doesn't need a section.) I'm supposed to take this notebook along every time I go to the doctor. Each visit gets one page. I write down the date, and that I remembered to pay the copay. I write down what the doctor says, because I always wonder later. Prescriptions and any other papers they give me go in the pocket on the appropriate divider. We always get the Explanation Of Benefits before we get the bill from the doctor's office. So after I figure out whether the insurance company paid what they were supposed to, I write my conclusions on the same page as the notes from the doctor visit. I record any calls I make, to either the insurance company or the doctor's billing office, on that page as well. Like I said, I started this. Since I abhor forms of all kinds, I tend to let the EOBs and the bills sit around until everything is horribly confused, but this system should work, I think.; September 15, 2008 at 10:09 PM
Suzanne said...: Thanks Heidi - it sounds as if this would work.; September 15, 2008 at 10:38 PM
Sandy said...: I have no real plan but I totally understand your frustration. I just match my EOB with the statements from the providers and if the balance due doesnt work out then I am on the phone!!; September 20, 2008 at 1:59 AM
Stefanie said...: I kept a spreadsheet with all the amounts including the amounts on the EOB, them amounts on the statements from our doctors, and the amounts I'd submitted for our spending reimbursement account.

It really helped with the dentist as their biller really wasn't organized and couldn't argue with my spreadsheet that I sent them :)

It also helped with budgeting our health care expenses.; September 20, 2008 at 2:00 AM

me! me! me!

Here I chatter about books, parenting, election 2008, recipes, teaching college writing, and the adventures of getting settled in with our two freshly (Fall 06) adopted school-age children from Russia. This blog is chapter two; chapter one is posted at Jamie & Suzanne go to Russia. I live in the City of Subdued Excitement, Cascadia, Land of the Free.

I am the wife of a man I call My Gift from a Generous God. I am mama to two lovely children, Dandy and Chickadee that became ours in September 2006 in a court-room in Siberia. I am the daughter of two people whom I love and admire. One of them, my dad, is a new (Dec 06) paraplegic.

In my previous life (B.C. - before children), I was a college English teacher, specializing in composition and ESL composition.

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