About
About MedAdvocate
MedAdvocate is a tool for finding errors and overcharges on medical bills so patients can save money by requesting refunds, negotiating, and disputing their bills. It was built on a simple observation: medical bills are hard to understand by design, errors in them are common, and most people pay without ever checking. This page explains who is behind the project and why it exists.
Who is behind MedAdvocate
MedAdvocate is built by Dave Anspaugh, its founder and sole builder. Every part of it, from the bill analysis in the app to the guides on this site, is the work of one person who believes patients deserve a fair shot at understanding what they are charged. MedAdvocate is operated by MedAdvocate, LLC.
"I've worked on the technology side of healthcare for a while, and I have come face to face with the red tape: the HIPAA regulations, the complex coding guidelines, and the fact that nobody in the system is paid to protect the patient. Hospital systems, insurers, and payers are all built to capture as much money from every interaction as they can. Almost half of all hospitals do not even comply with the federal Hospital Price Transparency Rule.
The healthcare system is an organism with a million moving parts. Things get lost, mistranslated, and flat out wrong. I built MedAdvocate to help the average American fight back. The app is an easy way to catch those mistakes and push back on your medical bill.
The cost of everything from groceries to gas to medicine keeps climbing, and a medical bill should not be the thing that bankrupts you. Studies have found that a large share of medical bills contain errors or overcharges. If the mistakes are that common, finding them and disputing them should be simple. That is the whole idea."
Why MedAdvocate exists
Medical billing is one of the few areas where people routinely pay a bill they cannot read, from a provider they cannot easily question, for an amount that is rarely the real price. Reviews of hospital bills commonly turn up errors, from duplicate charges to services never received to charges coded at the wrong level.
MedAdvocate exists to put the tools to catch those errors in the hands of the person who gets the bill. The app does one thing well: you photograph an itemized bill, it checks each line against the mistakes that hide on medical statements, and it flags what is worth questioning. It does not promise a specific result. It gives you a clear, reviewable read of your own bill and helps you act on it.
What this site offers
MedAdvocate is two things, a set of free resources and a paid service, and you are welcome to use only the free part.
- Free guides and tools. This site hosts a growing library of guides on how to read a hospital bill, dispute a charge, handle collections, understand the No Surprises Act, and more. Each one includes a free interactive tool, such as a dispute letter generator, an out of pocket estimator, or a bill decoder. Nothing you enter into the tools on this site leaves your device.
- The app. For a flat 29 dollars, the MedAdvocate app analyzes your itemized bill, writes a dispute letter based on what it finds, and mails it by certified mail on your behalf. A PDF copy of the letter is emailed to you as well. There is no percentage of savings and no subscription. It is available on iOS and Android.
Whether you do it yourself with the free guides or hand the writing and mailing to the app, the goal is the same: pay what you actually owe, not what a mistake says you owe.