Tracking Medical Bills

I put together a folder for all my bills, EOBs and tax stuff related to BC. Inside the folder I have envelopes labeled 'EOBs' 'Bills' and 'Filed Incorrectly'. Since the EOBs and bills never come in at the same time I just open the envelope when it comes in and I try to match the dates of service and provider up between received bills and EOBs. If there is no match yet, the document goes in its respective envelope. When a match is made I staple the matched documents together, review the EOB to ensure that none of the charges were denied and what my payment responsibility is and notate it in red ink as well as the date and amount once paid. If all is good, I slide the stapled documents into the back of the folder. If some of the charges are denied or not covered I will contact the insurance company and the provider to figure out what needs to be done to get it covered. The documents will then go into the 'Filed Incorrectly' envelope until new EOB comes in. I do not pay any bills until the EOB comes in and I've verified that everything was covered on it and all contracted amount reductions were applied. I never pay based off what the provider bill states. If it helps you, another envelope labeled 'Verified & To Be Paid' could also be added to hold matched documents that have been verified but your part has not been paid yet.

So in the end, all matched, verified and paid documents are loose in the folder stacked in date order, pending match EOBs are in their envelope, pending match bills are in their envelope, matched but filed incorrectly/denied claims are in their envelope and matched verified waiting to be paid are in their envelope. All is contained in an expandable folder. I hope this makes sense and helps

I follow Lula’s system and Notverybrave’s sage advice. We have BC/BS. They told me not to pay anything until we get the EOB from them even if the doctor’s office tells you they know what your portion, if any, of the bill will be.

It is overwhelming to be sure. We have s $5k deductible and reached it in 3 months after DX. Then it was 100% thankfully because I had to have 33 radiation treatments and that was expensive. By then we were at 100%. Idk how we would have managed that cost had we not been totally covered.

I did work out payments too esp with the lab costs. It took awhile to pay them off but we did it. Oncology bills and mammograms weren’t cheap either.

Do the best you can and don’t let them intimidate or manipulate you into paying more than you can afford. Despite having insurance coverage they still tried to get us to pay the balance upfront. We didn’t.

Diane

If you're comfortable with using a credit card, the ability of many credit card companies to categorize / tag medical expenses is invaluable. I've met my $5,000 catastrophic out-of-pocket co-payment two years in a row so I haven't been as conscientious as I should have been about tracking my expenses knowing I'd pay at least that much anyway. When I finally added everything up, I somehow paid more than $5,400, but didn't have the energy to deal with it in the moment. The fact that my breast cancer surgeon, MO sand RO were all part of the same umbrella organization, but billed independently made tracking expenses very difficult since EOBs would sometimes just say "ABC Oncology" and I sometimes saw both doctors on the same date. It would have been helpful to have had a trustworthy family member deal with this side of things because by the time the bills started rolling in, I was too debilitated to deal with it and just kept paying and paying whatever they said I owed.

I filled a tax extension to relieve some of the stress. I used an Excel spreadsheet and my Google calendar to record mileage and toll fees for each medical appointment since I knew those costs would exceed 10% of my income for tax purposes. Learn from my mistake... hospital, lab tests and provider (doctor) expenses are supposed to be reported separately. I hope some of this helps. Good luck!

Lyn

I'm going to be starting this sort of filing system and most definitely going to start following the principle of not paying my share until after the EOB. I've already been overcharged twice and haven't even started rads yet. It took more than a month to get my refund from the wonderful biopsy procedure. Additionally, the anesthesiologist who "kindly" charged me by the minute during my lumpectomy - had pre-authorized payments on my credit card - only to find out that they had also "miscalculated" my share. Bunch of vultures if you ask me - right up there with the IRS.