Saturday, 5 January 2008

Sick Little Boy

DS2 had a bit of a cough on Friday, lost his appetite and went to bed early witha slight temperature and diarrhoea. We gave him some Paracetamol to ease his temperature, but it was up again during the night and he was still a bit feverish and grumpy this morning so we visited out family GP for a check-up. It appears to be viral rather than bacterial, so we are just continuing with the Panadol every 4 hours and adjusting his diet until he recovers in a day or two. [He was already a lot better this afternoon].

The GP consultation cost $55.00, but since Medicare has been advised to automatically pay the medicare refund of $32.80 by EFT into my bank account, the consult will end up costing $22.20 out of pocket.

There was also a $5.90 expense to buy some infant Panadol drops from the Pharmacy, but as this counts towards my total "out of pocket" medical expenses for the financial year, the 20% net medical expenses tax offset (available for the out of pocket amount above the threshold of $1,500) will give me a small part of this expense back via my tax refund.

The visit to the doctor reminded me that I still had some unclaimed expenses from three appointments with DS1's pediatric asthma specialist last August, October and December. So I visited the medicare office and obtained a cash refund of $300.85 based on the $395.00 expense. The remaining $94.15 (and the $22.20 from today's GP visit) will also count towards the threshold for the net medical expenses tax offset this financial year.

Copyright Enough Wealth 2007

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