In Year 7, ‘Bill of the Month’ Gives Patients a Voice

In 2024, our nationwide team of gumshoes set out to answer your most pressing questions about medical bills, such as: Can free preventive care really come with add-on bills for items like surgical trays? Or, why does it cost so much to treat a rattlesnake bite? Or, if it’s called an urgent care emergency center, which is it?

Affording medical care continues to be among the top health concerns facing Americans today. In the seventh year of KFF Health News’ “Bill of the Month” series, readers shared their most perplexing, vexing, and downright expensive medical bills and asked us to help figure out what happened. Our reporters analyzed $800,000 in charges, including more than $370,000 owed by 12 patients and their families.

This year, we met several patients who fought back.

Caitlyn Mai of Oklahoma City was preapproved for a hearing implant, yet for months she was still hounded by notices saying she owed $139,000.

To resolve the problem, Mai estimated she spent at least 12 hours on the phone doing tasks that typically fall to someone working in a hospital billing department. “I said, ‘I’ve done your job for you — now can you please take it from here?’”

Jamie Holmes of Lynden, Washington, refused to buckle when a surgery center tried to make her pay for two operations after she underwent only one — even after a collection agency sued her.

She showed up at two court hearings and explained her side. “I just got stonewalled so badly. They treated me like an idiot,” she told “Bill of the Month.” “If they’re going to be petty to me, I’m willing to be petty right back.”

As always, we reached out to medical billing experts for their takeaways and learned that these patients had the right idea.

“You know what? It pays to be stubborn in situations like this,” said Berneta Haynes, a senior attorney for the National Consumer Law Center who reviewed Holmes’ bill for KFF Health News.

From our curious, tireless “Bill of the Month” team, happy holidays — and, when in doubt, don’t pay the bill.

Bill of the Month is a crowdsourced investigation by KFF Health News and The Washington Post’s Well+Being that dissects and explains medical bills. Since 2018, this series has helped many patients and readers get their medical bills reduced, and it has been cited in statehouses, at the U.S. Capitol, and at the White House. Do you have a confusing or outrageous medical bill you want to share? Tell us about it!