Federal law makes every US hospital publish what it charges cash-paying patients. Most people never see that number — and it is frequently a fraction of what lands on the bill. Look yours up in about ten seconds, free.
Check my bill against the published price →No account. No card. Nothing you type leaves your browser.
Chest X-ray, two views (CPT 71046), across the 403 Texas hospitals that publish a price for it. Median: $457. Every figure on this page comes from hospitals' own federally required transparency files — browse them yourself.
You are not arguing that a bill feels high. You are showing a hospital what it published for the same coded service — a document it is legally required to maintain.
Billing offices dismiss vague complaints. A CPT code, an amount, and the facility's own price for that code is a claim someone has to actually answer.
Anyone can verify it, including the person reading your letter. That is what makes it awkward to ignore.
Enter the CPT or HCPCS code from your itemised bill. If you do not have an itemised bill yet, that is step one — the letter below requests it.
If your bill sits inside the normal range for your state, the tool says so and points you at the itemisation instead. Sending a price complaint on a fairly priced bill wastes the one piece of leverage you have. Most tools like this only know how to say "dispute it".
Fill in your details; the letter updates as you type. Nothing you enter leaves your browser.
Most bills do not fold to a first letter. The kit is the rest of the sequence — written around your hospital, your code, and your numbers, the same way the free letter is.
Fill in your bill and preview all four documents before you pay. One-time; not a subscription. Digital product delivered immediately, so all fees are non-refundable — see Terms. Already bought it? Recover your kit.
You are entitled to a Good Faith Estimate before scheduled care. If your final charges land at least $400 above that estimate, the federal patient-provider dispute resolution process may apply — generally within 120 days of the bill date. That is a real adjudicated process, separate from citing a published price.
Details and the current filing route: cms.gov/medical-bill-rights
The No Surprises Act (45 CFR Part 149) covers emergency care, non-emergency care delivered by out-of-network clinicians at in-network facilities, and air ambulance services. Those protections generally limit what you can be balance-billed, and do not depend on any estimate.
Some hospitals still do not publish a usable file. That is itself a compliance failure under 45 CFR Part 180, and it is worth saying so in your letter — CMS enforces the rule and has issued civil monetary penalties.
Citing a published price is negotiating evidence, not a statutory right to pay that amount. 45 CFR Part 180 governs what hospitals must publish. It does not compel them to bill you that figure. What it does is put their own number on the table, in public, next to yours — and billing offices frequently adjust rather than defend the gap in writing.
The formal routes above are the ones with teeth. Use both: the published price to open the conversation, the federal process if the conversation goes nowhere.
It costs nothing and it is the step that has to happen first anyway.
Look up my hospital's price →