This post is about:
Quicken Medical Expense Manager V2 2007
I'm new to the medical manager and I DID search first :)
How do you deal with AFLAC? (or other similar plans). If you entered that you received insurance for an item it deducts it from what you owe. I want to be able to TRACK AFLAC receipts against a procedure office visit without having the amount applied to what I owe.
Thanks
Rick
This post is about: Quicken Medical Expense Manager V2 2007
You'll need to explan HOW AFLAC works, focusing on how it's different from other insurances, before anyone can address your message.
{but I've got a sneaking suspicion that QMEM is the wrong tool for what you're trying to do. Quicken would do what you want better, since it appears that the AFLAC reimbursement isn't directly tied to the specific medical expense).
THINK IT THRU! Have you explained your issue so that someone who knows nothing about you, or YOUR Quicken setup, can understand what your issue is? Are you using standard Quicken terminology, particularly with respect to FILES, ACCOUNTS and CATEGORIES?
AAFLAC insurance pays you for certain procedures such as Dr. visits, so much a day in the hospital etc.
Actually the payments ARE tied to a specific medical expense but they are paid to the insured not to the hospital, Dr. etc. However it is your money to do with what you wish. You CAN pay a medical bill or buy groceries. There are several similar plans out there.
This issue is: we want to track AFLAC receipts but don't want them to decrement the balance due or the out of pocket etc. as they don't do that.
For example, we get paid for 8 Dr. visits per year.We want to be able to see that we receive that without affecting any balance. I just got out of a 3 day hospital stay. AFLAC will pay me $100 a day - me not the hospital. It is specifically FOR things like groceries when you have been out of work - it is Insurance, a benefit tied to specific event but should not decrement anything that has to do with that event - yet it needs to be tracked
True I can pull a report from quicken but it really seems that a Medical Expense Manager SHOULD be able to handle all kinds of insurance. If it does not it should be considered for a future release - as I said there are many plans LIKE AFLAC.
If it CAN be done though we would like to know how.
> This issue is: we want to track AFLAC receipts but don't want them to
decrement the balance due or the out of pocket etc. as they don't do
that.
You haven't specified whether or not you have tried selecting the "Me" option in the "Paid To" drop down on the Insurance Payments screen. If you have, then you'll have to explain in more detail how that doesn't meet your needs.
And please don't use 'etc' in your posts. If you find yourself doing that, take it as a sign that you need to provide more detail. Also, quote the text you see on the screen at every opportunity.
Thanks Tony - my wife handles the medical stuff. She says she has tried that but will do so again and check to see if that solves the issue. Remember we are both new at it
As for "etc" - I use that to omit redundancy. In this case we need to enter the money received and not have it decrement out of pocket,deductables or anything else that might not be coming to mind or that I may not even be aware. ETC can be a crutch but it can also avoid long convoluted descriptions that add nothing to the central point
> In this case we need to enter the money received and not have it decrement out of pocket,deductables
I read this to say: 'We don't want the reimbursements to alter the "Amount Applied to Deductible" or the "Amount Applied to OOP" on the Deductible/OOP Max report'.
Having the reimbursements paid to you won't do either one. All it will do is not affect the "Balance" calculation. This goes directly back to what dbAnalyst was guessing that you are attempting to use QMEM for something that Quicken is better suited for. If you want to track the flow of money, Quicken is it.
One additional point that I'd like to make is that I believe that you are treating the money in a way that is contradictory to how the IRS treats it. Regardless of how you use the money you receive from AFLAC, the payment represents a decrease in the value of the medical expenses for which you are responsible. If you are able and willing to deduct medical expenses from you taxes, you really should talk to an accountant about how these reimbursements affect that deduction. [And by 'you' in the sentence above, I mean everyone reading this post that has the described coverage, not just the poster to whom I am responding.]
One final point that occurred to me over the course of writing this that I don't understand: How is it that you have deductible values and Out-Of-Pocket Maximum values for your insurance that are not affected by payments made to you by the insurance company? I can understand how you can occasionally have this circumstance, because my co-pays and routine health maintenance services are exempt from my deductibles, but I don't understand how none of the payments would affect these values. I would sincerely appreciate if you could educate me on this point... particularly if you would like version 3 or 4 to support this capability.
Tony
I believe your understanding may be incorrect: AFLAC is supplemental insurance to be deposited in my checking account and to be used for anything I wish. While the benefit is on one hand "attached" to a particular procedeure it is not paid as part of what is owed
Quicken is great, (I just came back from MS Money.) I can pull reports or even keep an AFLAC account but we are trying to use the medical expense manager to track the AFLAC receipts which it should do.
I don't expect it will track all AFLAC receipts for all the plans we have but sine I get $25 for each Dr visit I should be able to see how many and against what visits I have received to date. Same with a recent surgery - I should be able to match that up without decrementing my responsibility
My wife will test your suggestion and I will post back here with the results as there are several similar plans and AFLAC itself is quite popular.
If it does NOT handle it, it may be something incorperated in a future version. Either way we are well satisfied with the program
OOPS Didn't answer your question - sorry about that
I have PHCS insurance with all the co-pays, deductables and out of pocket limits. That's our plan and the Medical Expense manager does a great job of all the tracking
Then we have AFLAC as supplemental insurance (not secondary insurance) to pay for lifes expenses when we have medical issues.They don't care about whether I have other insurance or not as they are doing their own thing. They don't pay anyone but me. $25 for up to 4 Dr office visits., $100 for an MRI, $100 for a colonoscopy and so on. The check arrives say the $100 for a recent MRI. It is tied to that MRI but does not decrement the bill or what I may owe. THere is no contact between PHCS and AFLAC other than I must provide a copy of the bill or EOB so they know I actually had an MRI
The Quicken suggestion is a good one. We backed into this. I take care of the checkbooks in Quicken and my wife took over the Medical Expense manager. We hadn't tracked the AFLAC deposits before but she decided she wanted to do so in the medical Expense manager. If this software didn't exist and she had wanted to track this I would have done it in Quicken - even now I can run reports to get the data.
> I have PHCS insurance with all the co-pays, deductables and out of pocket limits.
Well, as long as the payments from AFLAC are properly associated with the AFLAC insurer list entry, then any payments they make should not affect the Deductible and OOP Max values associated with PHCS.
AFLAC payments tracked in QMEM would still affect the "My Responsibility" value.
> Then we have AFLAC as supplemental insurance (not secondary insurance)
There's no way I know of in QMEM to distinguish between supplemental vs. secondary insurance.
> to pay for lifes expenses when we have medical issues.
I think I see the distinction you have been trying to explain. And I really don't know what to say right now, except that if these payments are incapable of affecting the tax implications of medical expenses [for any subscriber, not just your tax situation], then they will not fit 'cleanly' into version 2 of QMEM. Entering them in QMEM will alter numbers that it shouldn't, and you [well, your wife] will have to decide if you can ignore the false numbers, or construct reports that will allow you to easily "mentally correct" those numbers.
