About BillStand

Why this exists

Two facts sit next to each other in the American healthcare system. First, most people who receive a medical bill they cannot afford simply pay it, or stop opening the mail. Second, the tools that would change that outcome — the right to a fully itemized bill, the right to demand validation of a debt, the legal obligation nonprofit hospitals have to run a financial assistance program — already exist, in federal law, and are free to use.

The gap between those two facts is almost entirely a writing problem. Billing departments respond to a specific, correctly addressed, correctly grounded written request. They rarely respond to a phone call, and they never respond to silence. BillStand's whole job is to close that gap: to take what you know about your situation and turn it into the letter you would have written if you knew the law and had a spare afternoon.

Who is behind it

BillStand is built and operated by a small independent team. It is self-funded: no venture capital, no outside investors, no advertisers, no hospital, insurer, collection agency or law firm has any stake in it or any influence over what we publish. There is nobody we have to protect in our writing.

We say plainly what we are not. We are not lawyers, and there is no attorney on staff. We do not practise law, we do not represent you, and nothing we publish or generate is legal advice about your specific situation. What we do have is a careful, cited reading of the federal rules that govern medical billing, and a product built to apply them correctly to one letter at a time. Where a question genuinely needs a lawyer — you have been sued, wages are being garnished, the statute of limitations is decisive — we say so and point you to legal aid rather than pretending we can help.

How we make money

One flat fee, paid once, priced by the size of the bill you are disputing: $19 for bills under $1,000, $29 for bills from $1,000 to $10,000, and $79 for bills above $10,000. You see the exact price before you pay, and you can preview your letter before you buy anything.

What we will never charge is a percentage of your savings. That model is common in this industry and we think it is quietly corrosive: it gives the company an incentive to inflate what it claims to have saved you, and it means the people with the biggest bills — the ones in the worst trouble — pay the most. A flat fee means our incentive is simply to write you a good letter.

We do not sell advertising. We do not take referral fees. We do not sell, rent or share your information with anyone, ever. Everything in our guides, our hospital directory and our bill-code lookup is free and stays free, whether or not you buy anything.

What we refuse to do

• We do not promise results. No "average savings" figure, no "we cut bills by 60%". We have no way to verify such a number about your bill, and neither does anyone else who advertises one. What a letter can do is force a documented, written response — the rest depends on your circumstances and your provider's policies.
• We do not publish invented testimonials. Our examples page is labelled, on the page, as composite illustrations of common situations. Not one word of it is attributed to a real customer, because fabricated reviews are both illegal under the FTC's rules and a betrayal of the only thing that makes a service like this worth using.
• We do not keep your medical information. If you do not buy, your answers are deleted automatically within about 90 minutes. If you do buy, we hold your letter for 7 days so you can retrieve it if your connection drops, then delete it permanently. There are no accounts and no database of your medical details. Payment runs through Stripe; we never see your card number. The full detail is on our privacy page.
• We do not publish a number we cannot source. Where the honest answer is "this varies and the tables online contradict each other" — as with state statutes of limitations — we say that instead of inventing a clean answer.

Getting it wrong, and fixing it

Law changes, datasets are republished, and we make mistakes like everyone else. Every guide carries the date it was last reviewed. Our hospital directory and bill-code pages state which federal dataset they came from and when it was published, so you can check us against the source.

If you find something on this site that is wrong, out of date, or misleading, write to support@billstand.com and tell us. We will correct it and note the correction. That is a real offer, not a formality — an error in this subject matter can cost somebody money they do not have.

Contact

A person reads support@billstand.com. Write about a purchase, a problem with a letter, a factual correction, or a press question. If you paid and never received your letter, the fastest route is the find my letter page.

BillStand serves patients across all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories. Our letters cite federal protections that apply nationwide.