How we research our guides

Each state has its own rules for charity care, medical debt and collections. This page explains where our information comes from and how the tools work.

Sources

Each state page is built from official sources only: the state's statutes and regulations on official websites, the state attorney general, insurance department or health department, state hospital-association policy pages where the state publishes them, and legal aid organizations in the LawHelp.org network. National facts (the nonprofit hospital rules under section 501(r), the No Surprises Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, Regulation F, HIPAA, Medicare, Medicaid and the federal poverty guidelines) come from the U.S. Code, the Code of Federal Regulations, the Federal Register, the IRS, CMS, the CFPB and HHS. Each page lists its sources and the date it was checked.

How we check

• Every state file is researched and then checked by a second, independent reviewer against the official text, with special care for income levels, what each time limit runs from, dollar amounts, dates and links.
• A state page is published only after that check. Until then, the state appears on our map and in our tables as "not covered yet," with its complaint agency when we have one, LawHelp.org and the national No Surprises Help Desk.
• Where something could not be confirmed, we leave it out instead of guessing. We copy numbers exactly as the source states them and never round them.

The poverty-level calculator

The calculator divides your yearly household income by the federal poverty guideline for your household size, using the table for the 48 states and D.C., Alaska or Hawaii, and shows the result next to the income levels written in your state's law. It does not say whether you qualify: the hospital decides using its own policy, and other rules can matter.

The "Is this debt too old?" checker

The checker adds the numbers in our data to the dates you enter: the date a debt can first be reported plus 180 days and 7 years, the time limits to sue under your state's law counted from the date you say the clock starts, the state's waiting period before a lawsuit, and for a nonprofit hospital 120 and 240 days from the first bill. It tells you when each date falls and which rules the dates come from. When a number is not in our data, it shows the rule in words only. When the clock starts and what restarts it can differ, and a court decides.

The letters and the checklist

The letters put what you type into full sentences: a request for an itemized bill, a cover letter for a financial assistance application and a billing dispute letter for a hospital or a collector. They are made on your device in English, because they go to US providers and collectors; on Spanish pages a Spanish explanation is shown beside the text. When you download, copy or print one, we save only your name, phone or email, state and the document type, never medical details, as our privacy policy explains.

What we never do

We never say that a person qualifies or that a bill will be reduced, never advise anyone to stop paying a bill and never judge anyone for owing one. A legal aid office, a hospital financial counselor or a lawyer can look at your whole situation.

Report an error

Email us at hello@robinclaim.com with a link to the official source and we will check it.