Dear Hospital, an itemized bill, please.

why hospital bills are worth fighting

Medical billing is a system where errors are common and the correction process is a maze.

• The first bill is often a summary. The itemized version, the one you can actually check, arrives only on request.
• Audits keep finding errors in a large share of hospital bills: duplicate charges, services that never happened, quantity typos.
• The hospital and the insurer point at each other, and every call starts with your date of birth and twenty minutes of hold.
• Financial assistance and self-pay discounts exist at most hospitals, and almost nobody is told.

how ren works the bill down

ren does the unglamorous part: it reads, asks, and keeps asking.

• Requests the itemized bill, the version with checkable lines.
• Flags what deserves a question: duplicates, mystery codes, quantities that do not match the visit you describe.
• Calls the billing office, waits on hold, and works through the questions line by line.
• Asks about financial assistance, self-pay rates, and payment plans while it is there.
• Loops in your insurer when a claim was processed wrong, and keeps both sides’ stories in one place.
• Keeps at it across weeks, with the case numbers and the names of everyone it talked to.

ren asks before it accepts any settlement, plan, or amount on your behalf. It brings you the options; you pick.

what ren needs from you

The bill, roughly what happened at the visit, your insurance details if any, and your go ahead.

questions, answered

Why should I ask for an itemized hospital bill?

Because summaries hide the errors. An itemized bill turns ‘amount due’ into checkable lines, and checkable lines get corrected. Hospitals provide one on request; requesting it is the step most people never take.

Do hospital bills really contain errors?

Often enough that checking is always worth it. Duplicates, services that did not happen, and coding mistakes show up regularly in audits. Finding one changes the whole conversation.

Can a hospital bill actually be negotiated?

Frequently, yes. Financial assistance policies, self-pay discounts, and plain willingness to settle exist at most hospitals. The discounts go to the people who ask, and ren asks.

Will the bill go to collections while it is disputed?

An active, documented dispute is your best protection: it keeps the bill in ‘being worked out’ territory and gives everyone a reason to wait. ren keeps the record current, so the file always shows someone is on it.

How do I get ren?

ren is in private beta on iOS. Leave your email on this page and invitations go out in the order requests arrive.

ren is a personal concierge that does the hard things, and this letter is one of them. See also the insurance appeal, the warranty claim, and the parking ticket. For what ren is and what governs it, read about ren and the constitution.