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Posted by Dick Adams on October 14, 2007, 10:11 pm
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> I recently attended an Emeriti Council meeting at my
> university at which numerous emeritus faculty members (most
> of them still totally savvy intellectually, some of them MDs
> themselves) recounted horror story after horror story of
> confusing, confused, grossly incorrect, invalid,
> uninterpretable, or totally unjustified billings for medical
> care; correspondingly incorrect or incompetent processing of
> and decisions about these bills by private and government
> insurance payors and benefits plans; and almost total
> inability to get useful assistance in dealing with these
> organizations -- in short, all the other usual consequences
> of dealing with the U.S. health care system.
>
> A senior human resources/staff benefits professional from
> our university participating in the meeting noted that the
> error rate for medical billings is commonly estimated to be
> in the range of 30% of all transactions involved.
>
> I just signed a $495 check for services provided over the
> past few months by a professional accountant whose primary
> role is as a specialist and consulting in sorting out these
> problems. When we first approached her for help, she said
> in essence "Just bring in the whole proverbial 'shoebox'
> full of confusing and uninterpretable documents resulting
> from your wife's recent two-year-long medical adventure [it
> was really more like a banker's box than a shoebox in our
> case]; don't bother trying to sort anything out; I'll do
> that, tell you what bills you still have to pay, file the
> claims for those you don't, and do the paperwork to recover
> the payments you shouldn't have made." She did so, and has
> been more than worth her services.
>
> I'm planning on deducting her fee as a *medical* expense --
> right?
Unless your out of pocket medical expenses were high enough
to exceed 7.5% of your AGI, a medical deduction would be
meaningless as well as inappropriate. If your miscellaneous
itemized deductions exceed 2% of your AGI, put it there.
It is NOT a medical expense, but you can argue it is a
medical-related expense. See if your health care spending
account will cover it.
Dick
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