Customer Reviews

Quicken Medical Expense Manager

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I was an early adopter of version 1; version 2 has just been released. While this software does what it purports to do, the issue is with Quicken's installation and support practices. QMEM requires the use of .NET framework v 1.1...NOT version 2. If you install it over .NET 2, its buggy and their techs online suggest you uninstall .NET 2. Catch - uninstalling .NET 2 will, on many Windows XP systems, make .NET 1.1 unstable.

Further, it is not possible to talk with Quicken MEM support. You can post a problem, leave you phone number, and they will contact you at their (not your) convienence.

What am I left with? 1) Back to doing my medical expenses by hand and 2) facing a Windows XPsp2 reinstall.

I found the 2.1 version (the latest version) slow and inflexibile. It actually produced the wrong answers for my health insurance policies and the results could not be adjusted manually. Also found the "Help" section far from helpful although on-line assistance was responsive (although unable to make it right). I think Intuit just got this program into the market too quickly without proper testing.

I was excited to hear about this product since I have a son with autism. My first reaction is that I wish this would have been a web-based product, since I frequently use multiple computers (Quicken would also be a great web-based product).

I have tried both the first version and the version 2.1 upgrade, and unfortunately Intuit made this a fat and slow product (I have high-end Pentium 4 PCs with 2GB RAM).

If Intuit had made this a simple, lightweight, fast program, they would have had a hit. I wish I had time to develop a web-based competitor, as this is an interesting product idea.

I will be checking to see if Intuit has a money-back satisfaction guarantee...

I've been a devout Quicken user for years, and I had high hopes for this program.

Today, after two months of use, the program refuses to open my data file. There's no help at all to be found as to what the problem might be -- the file is there, it seems to have data in it -- but it's effectively gone. Fortunately, this happened just days before the 60 day guarantee ran out, and I was able to get a no-questions-asked refund from Intuit.

Had I not been stuck wuth the product, would I have started afresh? Probably not.

The interface is a little quirky, but you can used to it. It also seems very sluggish; there's a slight delay involved with doing just about anything in the interface, which quickly becomes very annoying. The value of the product is minimal relative to the problems with entering data (and now the uncertainty for me that my data might disappear at any time).

Take your money and buy a good book on using Excel, and roll your own medical tracking spreadsheet.

I discovered Version 1 in October. The program was very helpful in organizing and tracking the processing of individual claims through three insurance companies. With the information it provided I was able to recover a significant amount in overcharges. The response time seems to be rather slow, particularly moving through the main claim list. I recently upgraded to version 2.1. The conversion went smoothly. The new version has expanded capabilities which make tracking multiple insurances easier. Response to email from tech support is quick and helpful. I think some fine tuning still need to be done to work out some kinks. It is a good start to solve the challenge of tracking medical expenses and insurannce payments.

I loath dealing with medical bills -- trying to reconcile medical bills that may or may not have insurance payments credited, figuring out deductibles, etc. I usually ignore the bills 'til the pile gets too big just because I hate doing it. And I freely admit that doing any sort of math makes my head want to explode.

So I thought this program was the answer. It really could have been, if Intuit would listen to feedback and would give it attention. But as willing as they are to provide email assistance, they never fix the problems, just give workarounds.

In many ways, it works OK. You wait for your insurance EOBs (claims processing reports) to arrive, and then fill in the blanks, then pay your medical bills based on what the EOB information was. Once you figure out how to enter your deductible limits, that is. And therein is one of the problems.

There are limits to what it will allow you to enter. For example, my insurance provider calculates individual deductibles toward individual limits. When 3 people in the family meet their individual limits, the family deductible is considered met. That's fine. But this software has no way to tweak this type of limit (it just calculates the amount paid toward deductibles by ALL family members), thereby making the reports on family deductibles somewhat unhelpful and useless. That's just one issue -- and I'm no programmer, but can that be so hard to adjust? And heaven forbid you have a payment that is not part of the deductible -- they sent me a workaround for this problem that still has my head spinning.

I agree with the other reviewers that it's slow -- it sometimes just loads one 2 inch square area for a few seconds before the page appears when it's loading. And I have a new fast computer.

After several years on the market, I think it's unconscionable that they haven't streamlined this product. I can't be the only one who has left them feedback of this sort, but they haven't updated this software for a LONG time. Based on the ratings for other Intuit Quicken products, it may not be a problem with just this product.

I have version 2.1.0.24 which worked ok, little sluggish. My computer crashed and I reloaded program on a new win 7 computer. loaded fine but the program won't recognize my backup file which has years of info in it. I finally contacted quicken by email and they sent me a download for a newer version which has to be used only once in a 24 hr period. Well that didnt work so then they said they would send me a cd which I never have recvd. I am still trying to get this resolved 3 weeks later. I would gladly purchase the new version but don't know if I could access my files even then. Bottom line is the program is ok, it worked real well for end of year tax totals and helps keep track of medical problems and when they happened. I also use it to track house and auto insurance, magazine subscriptions too, but support is terrible. A real person (heaven forbid!!) would be so nice to talk to.

Used it for 2.5 years now and love it. I got it to help me manage a large number of medical bills to manage a complex medical case. It helped me a lot in managing my flexible spending accounts and dealing with legal issues related to my case. It would have been a major burden to track all of this by hand or excel.

I don't know where these other folks commenting on slow performance issues are coming from. I haven't had any and I have used it on two different laptops, the last one was about 6 years old. Some reports takes a few seconds to run at most. My biggest complaint is it is definitely a garbage in garbage out, i.e. you have to enter all the stuff for every bill which is time consuming, but again by running a few reports you instantly get all your flexible spending account info and other information. I would definitely buy this again.

I love all quicken products, except this. It is basically useless. It takes an incredible amount of time to simply input a medical bill, it doesn't even have the simple ability to to tell you how much your total expenses are and what is left in your HSA/FSA, seems like they could write a little code to for some simple addition and subtrction.

Quicken Medical Expense Manager was bundled with one of my annual updates of Quicken a few years ago. It has generally worked OK through versions 1 and 2 for me in Windows XP SP3, but has apparently been abandoned by Intuit/Quicken and is not supported at all. If so, I recommend that you avoid it. How would you like to consolidate 4 or 5 years of medical and vet records for your family into a program such as this which stops working properly, and have zero recourse?