Friday, January 23, 2009

Ugh, Medical bills


Medical bills seem to always trash our budgets. We recently had our youngest allergy tested. I just got the EOB(explanation of benefits) statement. I noticed our insurance raised our copay and our deductibles!

Our copays have gone from $15.00 to $20.0 and our deductible went from $200 individual to $300! So we will be getting a bill shortly for $310.00. We have had two visits and I paid only $15.00 each time for the copay, so $10.00 will be for the shortage on the copay.

This means we will not be paying much on the credit card till we pay this off. You won't see our debt go down much till we get our tax refund. My older kids get shots every week. So we will be getting hit with huge bills for their copays as well as their deductibles.

When we become debt free. We intend to have a nice $2000.00 cushion set aside each year for just medical bills. Our children are thankfully quite healthy. One year our 3rd son had some major surgery. He was born without a soft spot so this surgery was quite extensive on a 6 month old. They had to "create" a soft spot. The surgery and care ran around $180,000.00. However, we paid around $12,000 of it. I know that sounds like great insurance and it is, but no matter how you cut it 12,000 out of anyone in one year is tough!

I just wish they spread these over the year instead of just slamming us with them right after the holidays and into the New Year. It makes for a depressing beginning!

3 comments:

  1. I hate when they raise things like that! And you are right, it hurts at the beginning of the year. We just got the flex plan spending account and it really has been working out great.

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  2. We did the flex plan last year, however, our plan was weird. It would not pay more out than we had paid into it...In other words, in early January we have only made payments into amounting to say $150 or so, but our bills would be around $250...so they would only pay up to $150...it was nutty. It made me worry that we would have a hard time using it up since it wouldn't pay the stuff out early even though that was when we had the bills. Then they gave us an extra payment by mistake on some pills in mid June. Then wanted their money back because they had paid it out...so we had to send the overpayment back to them for their tax purposes, just for them to turn around and give it right back to us the next month for more prescriptions.
    It was a paper nightmare to deal with and totally not worth it to us in the end. Glad to hear yours is working out better!

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  3. I think that is amazing that you plan to put $2k into a fund for med expenses...

    you will get through it quickly - then you will be back on track for your debt repayment... stick to your goals and you will be great. We are always going to get the little things that are going to get us here & there.

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