Hospital Tried Charging $195K for 4 Hours of Care—AI Chatbot Helped Save $162K

Hospital Bills
Hospital Bills Photo by FMT licensed under CC BY 4.0.

A man who recently lost his brother-in-law has revealed how he managed to cut a staggering $195,000 hospital bill down to $33,000 — thanks to help from an AI chatbot.

Posting under the name nthmonkey on Threads, he explained that the original bill was for just four hours of emergency care after his brother-in-law suffered a fatal heart attack. With no active insurance and a maze of unexplained charges, the hospital demanded nearly $200,000 — until AI stepped in.

“Claude,” an AI chatbot created by Anthropic, became an unexpected hero in the family’s fight. After a tense back-and-forth with hospital administrators, nthmonkey said he finally got a breakdown of the vague charges — like a mysterious “Cardiology” line priced at $70,000. The hospital blamed “computer upgrades” for the confusion.

Once the itemized list was revealed, Claude analyzed the billing codes and discovered something shocking: the hospital had billed both for entire procedures and for each individual part of those procedures — essentially double-charging. That alone accounted for about $100,000 in inflated costs that would never have been approved by Medicare.

Claude also identified errors with inpatient versus emergency billing codes and other violations, such as charging for ventilator services on the same day as admission — a potential regulatory breach.

“The hospital basically made up its own rules and figured it could just grab money from people who wouldn’t know better,” nthmonkey wrote.

Using Claude’s analysis, the man drafted precise, legally sound letters threatening to escalate the issue — to regulators, the media, and even legislators if necessary. The hospital eventually backed down, reducing the bill to $33,000.

Even then, the facility tried to convince the grieving family to apply for charity aid to cover the cost.

In the end, nthmonkey credited his $20-a-month Claude subscription for saving him from financial ruin. “I had access to tools that helped me find the truth,” he wrote. “But the real issue is moral — no one should pay more than Medicare would. Let’s not let them get away with this anymore.”