The data should expose the system, not the people.

Our core belief

The richest country in the world should not have a healthcare system built on confusion, inconsistency, and profit.

Sick of Paying collects submitted healthcare costs so people can see what others are being charged. One bill can feel like a private frustration. Many bills together become evidence of something much bigger.

What the data is for

We use submitted healthcare cost information to show patterns in medical billing. That may include:

• What people are being charged for healthcare
• How charges vary by location, category, or type of care
• How much people report paying out of pocket
• Whether insurance was involved
• Where costs appear confusing, inconsistent, or extreme
• How individual bills point to wider systemic problems

We may use this information to create public summaries, charts, comparisons, examples, commentary, reports, social media posts, and other materials connected to the Sick of Paying project.

What the data is not for

Sick of Paying does not use submitted bills to provide personal billing advice, medical advice, insurance advice, legal advice, or financial advice.

We are not here to tell you what your care should have cost. We are here to show what people are being charged, how absurd the differences can be, and how broken the system looks when the bills stop being isolated.

We aim to collect the minimum useful data

We do not want more personal information than we need. The most useful information is usually the charge, the category, the general location, whether insurance was involved, and enough context to make the bill understandable.

We ask contributors not to submit names, account numbers, claim numbers, medical record numbers, Social Security numbers, full addresses, phone numbers, photos of bills with identifying information, or anything that could directly identify them or someone else.

Anonymity matters

Healthcare costs can be personal. People may be sharing information connected to illness, treatment, debt, stress, embarrassment, or anger. We take that seriously.

Our intent is to show the system, not expose individuals. Public examples should focus on the bill, the charge, and the pattern, not the identity of the person who submitted it.

We may moderate or remove submissions

We may remove, edit, hide, or exclude submissions from public display if they appear to include identifying information, harmful content, spam, obvious abuse, false information, irrelevant material, or anything that could put someone’s privacy at risk.

We may also simplify or group submissions when displaying them publicly so that the overall pattern is clear and individual privacy is better protected.

We will not pretend the data is perfect

Sick of Paying is based on crowdsourced submissions. That means the data may be incomplete, inconsistent, self-reported, or missing context.

We will try to be honest about those limits. A submitted bill is not the same thing as a full audit of the healthcare system. But enough submitted bills can still reveal patterns, contradictions, and charges that deserve public scrutiny.

We will avoid fake precision

Healthcare billing is messy. A single number may not tell the full story. The amount billed, the amount allowed by insurance, the amount paid by the patient, and the amount eventually collected can all be different.

Where possible, Sick of Paying will try to show the difference between billed amounts, patient-paid amounts, insurance involvement, and other important context.

We do not sell personal information

Sick of Paying does not sell personal information. We do not want to turn people’s healthcare frustration into another product being sold back to them.

If Sick of Paying shares information publicly, the goal is to share non-identifying, aggregated, summarized, or carefully selected data that helps show what the healthcare system is doing.

We may share public findings

We may use submitted data to create public-facing findings, including examples, rankings, charts, stories, reports, articles, press materials, or campaign content.

The purpose of sharing findings is to make healthcare billing harder to ignore. The point is not to shame patients. The point is to show the bullshit in the system.

We are independent

Sick of Paying is not a hospital, insurer, healthcare provider, billing company, or government agency.

If we ever accept funding, sponsorship, partnerships, or support that could affect how people understand the project, we should be transparent about that relationship.

We will update our practices as the project grows

Sick of Paying may change over time. The way we collect, display, analyze, or publish data may also change as the project grows.

When that happens, we will update this page so contributors and visitors can understand how the data is being used.

How this connects to our Privacy Policy

This page explains our ethical approach to contributed healthcare cost data. Our Privacy Policy explains more about what information we collect, how we use it, and the choices available to you.

You can read it here: Privacy Policy.

Contact

Questions about how Sick of Paying uses data? Contact us at:

hello@sickofpaying.org