While there is a loud cry about the expense of health care, it's not unusual to hear similar complaints about how hard it is to manage. After many medical procedures or office visits, patients end up receiving multiple bills from service providers they didn't even know existed. The result is often duplicate payments or extra work to ensure that you don't pay the wrong bill. It becomes even more complicated when insurance companies are involved.

Intuit has addressed the problem by creating Quicken Medical Expense Manager. Originally conceived by an Intuit engineer whose child became ill, resulting in more than $1 million in medical expenses, Medical Expense Manager allows the consumer to wrap his arms around his family's medical care, including insurance, expenses and payments.

Set up your profile by listing all the people in your family, your medical providers and your insurers. While doing this, you can set your individual and family deductibles based on the type of health care plan under which you're covered. Then, whenever a bill comes in, you'll know how much you need to pay, based on your co-pay amount and your various deductibles.

As you log your expenses, Quicken Medical Expense Manager keeps a record for you, so you can always go back when there are questions. You can even include notes and track claims among multiple insurers.

When tax time comes, you can look up your tax-deductible mileage -- provided you entered it -- and other tax-related medical expenses that are precalculated for you.

The more complex your personal medical expense situation, the more useful you'll find Quicken Medical Expense Manager.

Intuit is offering it for $49.99 as a download or on CD at quicken.intuit.com.