[GNC] Handling Medical Bills

Fri Jul 25 13:32:00 EDT 2025

I have essentially the same task list for my aged mom.

I do not investigate anything until someone asks me for money. Then, if it's not a material amount, I just pay it. Material or not, it's just an expense.

American medical care financing is a miserable mess.

Rick

-----Original Message-----
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Today's Topics:

   1.  Handling medical bills (Ed Greenberg)
   2. Re:  Handling medical bills (Dale Alspach)
   3. Re:  Handling medical bills (G R Hewitt)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2025 13:03:37 -0400
From: Ed Greenberg <edg at greenberg.org>
To: "gnucash-user at gnucash.org List" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
Subject: [GNC] Handling medical bills
Message-ID:
	<CANYJ2e1gZwKqHrbLMk28jVdeM-jXMD2Pa_Vr85tquUUjx-gbzg at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

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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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2025 13:48:31 -0500
From: Dale Alspach <alspachde at gmail.com>
To: Ed Greenberg <edg at greenberg.org>
Cc: "gnucash-user at gnucash.org List" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
Subject: Re: [GNC] Handling medical bills
Message-ID:
	<CABn8Vz3s=ghE6r4HwOW_uikNy+hShLmBDJPbvUyR4CRMz3JwxA at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

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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------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2025 20:30:10 +0100
From: G R Hewitt <hewittgr at gmail.com>
To: GnuCash User List <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
Subject: Re: [GNC] Handling medical bills
Message-ID:
	<CACwxjvDNo0j3PZECy4Kcy6jaELwSsY8eXkSQkGBCgL+Vhn8XUg at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

The first thing I would do is to settle on a naming convention for the data coming in such as date will be Date, invoice number or reference would be Reference, if there are any references to the Medic and third party that should match, they would be X-Ref; that sort of thing, along with charges, treatments etc - anything that will be useful in keeping track easily - such as entered into Gnucash and date.
Then I would build this in a spreadsheet of choice, using different sheets in the same workbook.
When you have all your 'ducks in a row' only then would I enter the bills into Gnucash.
My reasoning is that Gnucash is first and foremost an accounting program, not a database (yes, I know it uses one (unless you use xlm) per se, and with all the inputting and faffing about it seems you have to do errors will likely happen.
It is far easier to manipulate a spreadsheet than Gnucash.

That's my sixpence worth.

G

On Thu, 24 Jul 2025 at 18:05, 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
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
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