Bill of the Month

This crowdsourced investigation by Kaiser Health News and NPR dissects and explains your medical bills every month in order to shed light on U.S. health care prices and to help patients learn how to be more active in managing costs. Do you have a medical bill that you’d like us to see and scrutinize? Submit it here and tell us the story behind it.

Bill of the Month

A Covid Test Costing More Than a Tesla?

It happened in Texas.

Bill of the Month

Jaw Surgery Takes a $27,119 Bite out of One Man’s Budget

A Seattle patient discovers the hard way that you can still hit a lifetime limit for certain types of care. And health plans can vary a lot from one job to the next, even if the insurer is the same.

Bill of the Month

Olympic Dream Dashed After Bike Crash

And nightmare medical bill over $200K.

Bill of the Month

$722.50 to Push Medicine Through an IV

A college student never got an answer for what caused her intense pain, but she did get a bill that totaled $18,736.

Bill of the Month

Enough to Wreck Their Rest

$10,322 for a sleep study.

Bill of the Month

After Accident, a $700,000 Bill for Spine Surgery

Generous personal injury coverage on your car policy may not be enough to cover medical bills.

Bill Of The Month

Her Doctor’s Office Moved One Floor Up

Her bill was 10 times higher.

Bill of the Month

College Tuition Sparked a Mental Health Crisis

Then the hefty hospital bill arrived.

Bill of the Month

Baby Blues

First-time parents blindsided by "the birthday rule" and a $207,455 NICU bill.

Watch: Same Providers, Similar Surgeries, But Different Bills

KHN Editor-in-Chief Elisabeth Rosenthal joins “CBS This Morning” to discuss the latest Bill of the Month installment, in which a man discovered the hard way that health plans can vary from one job to the next, even if the insurer is the same.

Bye-Bye to Health Insurance ‘Birthday Rule’? Kansas Lawmaker Floats Fix

By Cara Anthony

U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids (D-Kansas) introduced a bill to do away with a health insurance rule that dictates which parent’s plan becomes a new baby’s primary insurer. This could save some parents from unexpected, sometimes massive medical bills. Davids took up the issue after a KHN/NPR Bill of the Month story on one family’s unexpected $207,455 NICU bill.

KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: Here Comes Reconciliation

Democrats in Congress reached a tentative agreement to press ahead on a partisan bill that would dramatically expand health benefits for people on Medicare, those who buy their own insurance and individuals who have been shut out of coverage in states that didn’t expand Medicaid. Meanwhile, controversy continues to rage over whether vaccinated Americans will need a booster to protect against covid-19 variants, and who will pay for a new drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease. Rachel Cohrs of Stat and Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also, Rovner interviews KHN’s Rae Ellen Bichell, who reported and wrote the latest KHN-NPR “Bill of the Month” episode about a mother and daughter who fought an enormous emergency room bill.

How ERs Fail Patients With Addiction: One Patient’s Tragic Death

By Aneri Pattani

Two intractable failings of the U.S. health care system — addiction treatment and medical costs — come to a head in the ER, where patients desperate for addiction treatment arrive, only to find the facility may not be equipped to deal with substance use or, if they are, treatment is prohibitively expensive.