It seems your asking a 'modeling' question.
As I understand your explanation, I'd think of it this way:
The provider bills should be individually raised in A/P as liabilities
using the Bill feature.
The Insurance and Medicare EOBs are 'statements' that indicate 3rd-party
partial payments towards those liabilities.
So raise the bills as you get them.
Enter the payments by the 3rd-parties as you get the EOBs. (if some are
in advance of receiving the provider bill, they are initially
'unattached' which you'll have to apply later)
If you are responsible for any self/co-pays, enter those when completed
as regular payments against the respective bill.
You'd need to find a 'source' account to fund the 3rd-party payments.
I'm not exactly sure where you'd put that in your account tree. That
would be an accounting question, which is likely out of scope here, but
someone may have good suggestions. (are benefit payments considered
'income'? or just phantom 'assets'? There might be some jujitsu of
treating the 3rd-party payments as A/R then using some intermediary
account to allow you to apply them to A/P.)
Regards,
Adrien
On 7/24/25 12:03 PM, Ed Greenberg wrote:
I'm drowning in my aged parents medical bills. Their bills get sent to
Medicare for payment, then to a third party insurance company, then to me
for a co-payment.
Mostly I'm trying to make sure that I don't pay anything that isn't
represented by a finalized explanation of benefits (EOB), and that I don't
pay anything twice.
Here's what I'm doing, and I wonder if anyone is doing similar and can
weigh in with a better process.
Once a month, Medicare produces an EOB, and on some irregular schedule, the
third party insurance produces an EOB.
Sometimes the provider bills me before the EOBs show up and sometimes
after. The only way to know what is a duplicate is by the provider name
coupled with the date of service.
When by process EOBs, I create incoming accounts payable records. This
gives me an easy record of what has come in before. When I receive bills
from providers I try to match them up with what exists in gnucash. If I
can't, and I can't find an EOB on the various websites, I create an
incoming accounts payable record.
If I have all the ducks in a row as indicated by the accounts payable
record, the "bill," then I can pay the bill.
This is a pretty new process for me, and if anybody has any suggestions on
how to enhance it, I would be interested in hearing of it.
Ed Greenberg
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