Check A Medical Bill Line By Line Before You Pay
A medical bill is a claim, not a verdict, and the errors are usually mundane: a duplicated line, a cancelled test still billed, a charge at list price where a negotiated rate applies. This doesn't know what things should cost — it compares each billed line against what you expected, flags lines that appear more than once, and estimates your share after deductible and coinsurance so the number you're asked for is at least checked. Local only; nothing leaves the tab.
- Sheet
- Variance per line, duplicates flagged, patient share estimated
- local
- What it replaces
- Paying a long bill you cannot read
- $0.00
- Input
- Billed lines, expected amounts, and plan terms
- no card
- Output
- A line-by-line variance and a likely share
- recomputed
What you pay otherwise
| Route | What you get | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Medical billing advocate | Someone doing the same comparison | % of savings |
| Paying it unexamined | Overcharges that are never queried | the variance |
| Ignoring it | Collections for a bill that was partly wrong | credit damage |
| This page | Every line checked before you pay | $0 |
The workflow
Get the itemised bill, not the summary
A summary total cannot be audited. Ask the billing office for the itemised version with a code and a date on every line — the request itself sometimes prompts a correction before you've queried anything.
Enter what you expected beside what you were billed
From your explanation of benefits, a quote, or a previous bill for the same service. Where you have no figure, enter the billed amount so the line shows zero variance rather than being skipped — and mark it as unverified in your own notes.
Look for the duplicates first
The same service billed twice on the same date is the most common and easiest error to resolve. The sheet flags repeated identical lines; check each one against the itemised dates before you query anything else.
Compare the patient share, not the total
The headline figure includes what your insurer pays. Your deductible and coinsurance determine what you actually owe, and a bill that asks for the full total when you have remaining deductible is wrong in a way the total hides.
Worked example
Sample: 6 lines billed 2,340, deductible 500, coinsurance 20% Billed total 2,340.00 Expected total 1,995.00 Variance 345.00 across 4 lines Duplicates 1 line billed twice (Blood test panel) Your share 500.00 deductible + 299.00 coinsurance = 799.00 Uploaded nothing — computed in the tab
Numbers above are sample data produced by the tool's own pre-loaded example, run in the browser — not averages or measured benchmarks.
What breaks this
Auditing the summary instead of the itemised bill makes the exercise impossible — request the itemised version first. Entering an expected amount you invented produces a variance that means nothing. Comparing the billed total rather than your patient share hides the error that matters most.
Try it now
Six lines totalling 2,340 with a 345 variance and one duplicate are loaded. Set the deductible to 0 and watch your share fall to the coinsurance alone.
Open the audit →Go deeper: the printable sheet
The audit is free forever. The $4 one-time tier adds:
- Printable sheet — the line variances on one page to send with a query — estimate: ~20 min saved reformatting before you write.
- Saved bills shelf — keep up to 8 bills in this browser — estimate: ~15 min saved comparing against a previous one.
- Query letter export — the flagged lines written up as a dispute — estimate: ~30 min saved drafting it.