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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

#881

Post by throwforfeds »

tptacek wrote: post #496
throwforfeds wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but Americans have an incredible amount of student loan debt too. Something like $1.7 trillion. If you can get into one of the best schools in the world that has a huge endowment, then sure, you'll get grants and whatnot. It may even be free, in the case of Harvard. But then there's a long tail of schools that are honestly not that great, charging only slightly less than the top schools per year, with smaller ai…

American student loan debt skews sharply towards the top income quartile.

Yes, but I also know plenty of people that can't afford the loans that they have. I have friends and family that after a decade or more of repayment still owe the same amount they did when they got out of school. Some aren't paying theirs at all. It's going to be a problem, as only a third of borrowers are actually making payments [1], and debt forgiveness isn't going to solve the root of the problem.

Of course we can blame them for taking $60k out for studying something that will never get them a good paying job, but these are 18 year olds. I was lucky in that my parents are immigrants and were like "absolutely not, this is crazy, go to the flagship state school and study science". I paid off my $24k in loans in a couple years. Many didn't take that path.

[1] Bloomberg archive link: https://archive.ph/IBuzw

Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

#882

Post by para_parolu »

mothballed wrote: post #855
kamaal wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of Indian immigrants who suffered for decades/years on H1B, endless anxiety and tensions, eventually make it to GC, then a passport. Then all of a sudden fall ill, lose everything and return back to India. People keep forgetting the US society is a giant stack/pyramid ranking system, the structure keeps getting narrow as you move upwards. You get pushed off the sides, in the ever narrowing funnel, and you need…

[flagged]

I’m honestly surprised to see a comment like this on HN. You’re making a pretty negative assumption about someone you only know from a single comment, and nothing in that comment actually supports the assumption.

Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

#883

Post by SilasX »

a4isms wrote: post #24
atonse wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree that even this buggy expert can empower patients. But you better believe that hospitals all over the place are also using AI to find ways around Medicare/Insurance rules to maximize their profit too. The rules are probably going to get WAY more complex because they will rely less on a few humans, and more on very powerful AIs.

Old poker adage: "The more wild cards and crazy rules, the greater the expert's advantage." Poker has nothing on Commercial Lawfare.

Oh wow, I had independently formulated that as the duality/parallel between corruption and cheat codes: "The more out-of-band information you need in order to be treated normally/fairly, the more corrupt the system is."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9933801

Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

#884

Post by BurningFrog »

broguinn wrote: post #480
BurningFrog wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to understand that a "nonprofit" can be just as greedy as any other organization. It can't pay out profits to shareholders, but it can hire its owners as employees and pay them any number of millions.

Doesn't the AMA serve the medical industry? They don't have to make profits themselves. If a byzantine coding process raises medical treatment costs, they'll do it. Just like how they intentionally cap med school admissions to keep doctors in demand and inflate their salaries.

The AMA is functionally the trade union for doctors. They work to maximize the income of their members. Maintaining a shortage of doctors is one of their primary tools.

If this also helps the medical industry, it's an accidental side effect.

Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

#885

Post by diob »

15155 wrote: post #876
trinix912 wrote: post #832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think countries with even the most coveted universal healthcare just approve everything blindly? Yes. Everything that they are trained and able to do here, is covered by the national insurance, at least where I live. We never even have to explicitly ask them to approve anything, it's all automatic. You don't see the bill. You might have to pay the difference for "nonessential upgrades", like a plastic cast i…

Which country do you live in that pays for gene therapies or other biologics?

I love that you're thinking this is what USA insurance companies are denying, not simple diagnostics / medications that save lives.

Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

#886

Post by 15155 »

diob wrote: post #885
15155 wrote: post #876

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which country do you live in that pays for gene therapies or other biologics?

I love that you're thinking this is what USA insurance companies are denying, not simple diagnostics / medications that save lives.

The point is that there's a value judgment being made somewhere - who should be the arbiter and why?

Diagnostics aren't free, either: many (most?) countries do not have anything remotely resembling the private offerings that Quest Diagnostics and Labcorp provide (breadth of tests, 3+ different methodologies for some tests, etc.)

Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

#887

Post by toomuchtodo »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #83
hooverd wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of "let's use technology to solve a social problem" takes forget to assume that both sides have access to technology.

This is not lost on me [1] [2]. I am a technologist (and hacker at heart), but also behind the scenes in politics (outcomes > status). I've commented, quite frequently here, that you cannot fix political and social issues with tech: wrong OSI layer of the stack. But, this change takes time, months, years, sometimes half a decade or more (election cycles, and then policy implementation lag). In the meantime, tactical…

The end of the rip-off economy: consumers use LLMs against information asymmetry - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45748195 - October 2025

Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

#888

Post by mothballed »

para_parolu wrote: post #882
mothballed wrote: post #855

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I’m honestly surprised to see a comment like this on HN. You’re making a pretty negative assumption about someone you only know from a single comment, and nothing in that comment actually supports the assumption.

Commenter asserted they are US citizen, lost everything (so $0 to their name), and ill.

Take a quick look and note that the person in india in that situation puts them around the bottom 5% of their country, who live on less than $3 a day, commonly in mega-slums (these are the sorts of places you end up when you have absolutely nothing and unable to work) without running water and sewage running through the alley, and economic mobility back into the professional class even worse than USA.

Anyone with a room temperature IQ and a dual US-India citizenship is not moving to India as the place to be completely broke, ill, unable to work, and to go live in a slum that would make Skid Row look an absolute joke. Their story does not make any sense whatsoever. There is money or assets or property squirreled away, if there wasn't they would live on the meager assistance USA provides to citizens (even if stuck outside in a tent for awhile) before living on less than $3 a day in one of the mega slums people end up in when they are in India in that unfortunate situation.

And to be clear, I don't think commenter is lying about what they've been told. I'm not making any sort of dig at them.

Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

#889

Post by seanmcdirmid »

DaSHacka wrote: post #867
throwforfeds wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but older people vote and young people don't. I haven't owned a TV my entire adult life (in my 40s now), so I agree with you, but it's hard to imagine Trump and the current Republican party without Fox News.

> it's hard to imagine Trump and the current Republican party without Fox News. Not Twitter and the Internet? As a non-boomer that's been the majority of the activity I've seen from people around my age.

Ya, I wonder how younger Trumpers are organizing, surely not FoxNews. Twitter/X, those weird social networks popping up...they seem to be really really active in trolling facebook.

Re: Using AI to negotiate a $195k hospital bill down to $33k

#890

Post by jobs_throwaway »

dboreham wrote: post #440
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US health care which is probably one of the worst in the world Not really. If you have money, the US system is one of the best. It just really, really sucks if you don't have money.

I have money and it still sucks. Perhaps you're thinking of billionaire money?

How much money and how does it suck?

At ~$250k TC I get better care than I could in any of the socialized systems. Concierge care, advanced treatments if I want/need them, out of pocket max that is easily affordable, etc

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