Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Health care is so awesome


I have paid about  $7,000 in medical expenses this year.

Some are for Claren -- care and upkeep of a service dog are legitimate expenses -- and some are for glasses and other items I have bought without involving insurance.

Take those out, and it is about $5,000.

My insurance provider, Geha, has a $5,000 out-of-pocket annual maximum, but I am still getting bills. Surely, you say, it must be some error.

So I called to see what the error is.

It's two actually.

  1. The out-of-pocket maximum does not include the out-of-pockets costs from the pharmacy.
  2. The out-of-pocket maximum also does not apply to my wheelchair purchase, which I got in October 2012 but was not billed for till April of this year. Geha did not even process the wheelchair until April, so I could not have paid.


But really, no problem. The health-care system rocks.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Matt:
If you bought the chair in 2012, even if it wasn't billed till 2013, shouldn't it come out of your 2012 out of pocket? Did you end up spending $5000 even without the chair in 2012? I am up to here with insurance companies this week, homeowners and auto to be specific.
J

Matt said...

I want it to come out of 2013, when the money came out of my pocket, because I did not hit the max in 2012. Insurance is a scam. They charge and arm and a leg, then work like hell not to pay or to pay as little as possible.

Anonymous said...

Make sure you save all of your receipts for things that are medically related. Don't tell the accountants, but I tend to interpret that very broadly. If you add that to your out-of-pocket you might be able to itemize and qualified for a medical deduction and get some good money back at tax time.
sdt


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