Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k
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Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k
#2While it's an interesting story, I doubt they needed Claude to work a hospital bill down to that amount. Hospital billing folks are acutely aware that the initial bill is outrageous and indefensible from their end. I've heard a ton of cases where folks basically "pay what they can" for the bill and that's good enough for both parties. I doubt the reasoning Claude provided was ultimately what got the hospital to knock the bill down, probably more around the legal action and PR threats. Ironically, the hospital will probably count this as charity even though OP didn't want to be considered charity, as they had to write off part of the bill.
Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k
#3The real treat would be using AI to stop regulatory capture so you don't end up in a country where it's okay to be presented with a 195K bill that can be magically lowered if you insist hard enough.
Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k
#4What a deeply dystopian future y'all are building for us :( -- (Including the fact that this link leads to nothing but a logo, for me).
Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k
#5Interesting. Upshot - bill sent to Claude, Claude generated questions, human in the loop to negotiate and summarize. Ultimately they suggested a number to the hospital, the hospital chiseled them a few grand, and they settled.
Not mentioned, and I'm interested, is how accurate Claude's reading of the various medicare rules are. I presume these letters went to someone who had only slightly more knowledge of medicare billing rules than the author -- hospitals are arcane and cryptic places, most especially the billing departments.
Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k
#6While it's an interesting story, I doubt they needed Claude to work a hospital bill down to that amount. Hospital billing folks are acutely aware that the initial bill is outrageous and indefensible from their end. I've heard a ton of cases where folks basically "pay what they can" for the bill and that's good enough for both parties. I doubt the reasoning Claude provided was ultimately what got the hospital to knock…
> Hospital billing folks are acutely aware that the initial bill is outrageous and indefensible from their end. I've
I'm sure they also have a long arsenal of various legal tricks they bundle into offerings like they did in the linked thread with respect to attempting to relabel it a charitable donation, etc.
Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k
#7Just tell the hospital you don't have much money but will pay what you can with cash. I got a $2k bill down to $200 like that.
The system is totally absurd.
Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k
#8It seems like the AIs role was in applying lengthy and complex medicare billing rules - it did not do negotiating and it doesn't seem like the accuracy of its understanding of medicare practices was actually checked. The author reasonably accused the hospital of gouging and the hospital came back with a much lower offer.
I'd be interested to hear from a charge coding expert about Claude's analysis here and if it was accurate or not. There's also some free mixing of "medicare" v.s. "insurance" which often have very different billing rates. The author says they don't want to pay more than insurance would pay - but insurance pays a lot more than medicare in most cases.
It's pretty clear that even access to a potentially buggy and unreliable expert is very helpful. Whatever else AI does I hope it chips away at how institutions use lengthy standards and expertise barriers to make it difficult for people to contest unfair charges.
Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k
#9It's really terrifying that someone less savvy might have spent their life savings paying this bill unnecessarily
As OP says: "I had access to tools that helped me land on that number, but the moral issue is clear"
Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k
#10Somewhere down the line I have a feeling that there is a human in the loop somewhere in between who's expert at reviewing these kind of bills. How the expert or their knowledge was added to the flow is the engineering art in here