[GNC] Handling medical bills

[Dale Alspach]

When I receive a notice for a medical bill for which I have not received
the Medicare EOB/Summary-Notice or the insurance EOB, I go to medicare.gov
and login. Then I go to the Claims page. This contains a list of claims
that Medicare has made a decision about but may not have been included in
the Medicare mailing. This will not tell you how much of the "You May Owe"
amount will be paid by insurance. Sometimes I can login to the insurance
company site and get that information. Then I can create an accounts
payable entry and, if everything is consistent, actually pay the bill.
Dale

On Thu, Jul 24, 2025 at 12:05 PM Ed Greenberg <edg at greenberg.org> wrote:

> I'm drowning in my aged parents medical bills. Their bills get sent to
> Medicare for payment, then to a third party insurance company, then to me
> for a co-payment.
>
> Mostly I'm trying to make sure that I don't pay anything that isn't
> represented by a finalized explanation of benefits (EOB), and that I don't
> pay anything twice.
>
> Here's what I'm doing, and I wonder if anyone is doing similar and can
> weigh in with a better process.
>
> Once a month, Medicare produces an EOB, and on some irregular schedule, the
> third party insurance produces an EOB.
>
> Sometimes the provider bills me before the EOBs show up and sometimes
> after.  The only way to know what is a duplicate is by the provider name
> coupled with the date of service.
>
> When by process EOBs, I create incoming accounts payable records. This
> gives me an easy record of what has come in before. When I receive bills
> from providers I try to match them up with what exists in gnucash. If I
> can't, and I can't find an EOB on the various websites, I create an
> incoming accounts payable record.
>
> If I have all the ducks in a row as indicated by the accounts payable
> record, the "bill," then I can pay the bill.
>
> This is a pretty new process for me, and if anybody has any suggestions on
> how to enhance it, I would be interested in hearing of it.
>
> Ed Greenberg
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