Last summer, a man’s brother-in-law suffered a fatal heart attack. The hospital bill for four hours of emergency care: $195,628.
The man’s sister-in-law was ready to pay it. He asked her to wait. He requested an itemized bill with CPT codes, the universal billing codes hospitals use, and fed the whole thing into Claude, an AI chatbot.
Within minutes, Claude found duplicate charges, services billed as “inpatient” even though the patient was never admitted, supply costs inflated by 500% to 2,300% above Medicare rates and charges for procedures that never happened. He cross-checked with ChatGPT. Both AIs agreed. He wrote a six-page letter citing every violation by name.
The hospital dropped the bill to $33,000. An 83% reduction. Zero medical training. A $20 app.
This is amazing.
I have a friend who was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia about nine years ago. He was intubated quite soon after arrival at the emergency room. The bill for the first hospital day was ~$1,000,000. His wife went through the entire itemized hospital bill by hand and found numerous mistakes that were eventually rectified
We’re grateful beyond words that my friend survived and is doing well to this day.
—-Steve Parker, M.D.
Diabetic Mediterranean Diet 