“Long story short, the hospital made up its own rules, its own prices, and figured it could just grab money from unsophisticated people,” asserts medical bill dispute winner nthmonkey. Their win came thanks to Claude AI’s analysis, as we discussed above, and the chatbot’s help in drafting correspondence. After its great work on the figures, the chatbot helped create letters that held aloft the sword of legal action, bad PR, and appearances before legislative committees.
Ultimately, the dispute about the billing whittled it down to $33,000 (from $195,000, remember), but that didn't occur before the hospital had stooped even lower by trying to get the bereaved parties to appeal to charity to help with their huge bill…
Nthmonkey is satisfied with the outcome of this dispute. But seemed even more satisfied with the performance of their $20 per month Claude subscription (other AIs are available). “I had access to tools that helped me land on that number, but the moral issue is clear. Nobody should pay more out of pocket than Medicare would pay. No one,” they concluded in their Threads thread. “Let’s not let them get away with this anymore.”
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Mark Tyson Social Links Navigation News Editor Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
SomeoneElse23 The medical industrial complex is ridiculous, and quite possibly a scam. Once upon a time I went to a local hospital for my son's broken arm. $10,000 to set it. Once they determined I didn't have insurance, it immediately got halved, which is still ridiculous. Reply
robbro9 Yea, still $33K for 4 hours on someone that still passed away seems rather userous. Not overnight, not long extended hours, 4 hours resulting in death. Reply
Dr3ams For this family, AI was incredibly useful. I'm glad we stayed here in Germany. Me being diabetic and disabled, I'd probably be paying through the nose on monthly medical bills. Reply
Rakanyshu The key issue here isn't that 'AI saved money.' The real story is that AI was used to verify that a medical center is actively scamming people. The article seems to be missing the gravity of this. This is fraud, and the focus should be on two critical questions: Why is no one at that medical center being charged? Shouldn't scamming regular patients carry a much higher sentence than attempting to defraud an insurance company? Reply
excalibur1814 Rakanyshu said: The article seems to be missing the gravity of this. This is fraud, and the focus should be on two critical questions: Why is no one at that medical center being charged? Shouldn't scamming regular patients carry a much higher sentence than attempting to defraud an insurance company? Shhh! You're not supposed to point out fraud by a massive company. How dare you! /s Reply
alrighty_then Great story, someone used AI to avoid being taken by a system of expensive obscurity. Hope we see more of this reducing billing issues and other problems for everyday folks. Reply
hotaru251 i mean this is a widely known thing they do. They are vague on what exactly was done and list it udner 1 single thing…if you ask for a breakdown of what exactly happened you can find out they are effectively robbing you and sadly this is a thing done by msot and should be illegal…but it isnt and when caught there is nothing done to em. Reply
kevinslingshot I have had this same problem. My family faced hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills. So I made an AI Agent specifically for this. We've had great success. slingshotclaims.com Please check it out. And give me feedback. Reply
HighwayMenace I’m calling BS on this entire story. Something is missing. First, if my brother in law dies, there is no chance i am on the hook for his medical bills. Or any of his bills. That would be his estate. And if it cannot cover it, that’s too bad for whoever is owed money. I am not sure where this myth came from that descendants are somehow responsible for the debts of their elders. They absolutely are not. And let’s say this was actually the estate paying the bills, and the family just trying to protect their inheritance, wouldn’t matter. You can’t just bill dead people whatever you want. There is an executor, usually a legal service, and they don’t want to be ripped off either. Second, as others have stated, this is fraud. Financial fraud doesn’t require intent. This is why you hire legal accountants to look at all your books and do your taxes if you do more than work a 9-5, or if you run any kind of business. Third, the amount of time and data that would need to be entered into this “AI program”, which is a misnomer, it’s just adaptive programming, it cannot create anything that hasn’t already been created (speaking strictly on these chatbots generative AI programs, like what is referenced in the article), would be outrageously time consuming, and require exact accuracy, something most people cannot accomplish, as evidenced by the spelling and grammar witnessed in every online forum. I mean look at that huge run-on sentence. This one doesn’t pass the smell test, nice bit of feel-good advertising though. Reply
George³ Another point of view. The medics are killers that in this cause use expensive medical equipment for murder. They must pay to the grieving and injured relatives. Reply
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/grieving-family-uses-ai-chatbot-to-cut-hospital-bill-from-usd195-000-to-usd33-000-family-says-claude-highlighted-duplicative-charges-improper-coding-and-other-violations#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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