What actually happens after you click “check my eligibility”.

You check your eligibility

Four questions: household size, annual household income before tax, which California hospital sent the bill, and whether it is the hospital's own bill or a separate bill from an emergency room physician.

We compare your income against 400% of the Federal Poverty Level for your household size. That is the line California's Hospital Fair Pricing Act draws. Under it, a hospital is not doing you a favour by discounting the bill — it is meeting a legal obligation.

You get an answer immediately, before you have handed over a single document.

You send us the bill and proof of income

We need the statement itself, and one document showing income — a recent pay stub or last year's tax return. A photo taken on your phone is fine.

You also sign one authorization, by typing your name, so the hospital will talk to us about your bill. If the hospital insists on its own form, we ask you to sign that too.

That is the whole of what we ask from you. Everything after this point is our work, not yours.

We check the hospital's own policy

The 400% line is a floor, not a ceiling. Every hospital publishes its own charity care policy, and many are more generous than the statute requires — some discount up to 600% of the poverty level, some waive bills entirely at income levels where the law only requires a reduction.

So we read the actual policy for the actual hospital that billed you, rather than assuming the legal minimum. This is the single biggest reason applications succeed that people assumed would fail.

We build the application

Each hospital has its own form, its own required attachments, and its own quirks about what counts as proof. A form filled out incorrectly comes back weeks later asking for one more document — which is how people give up.

We complete it properly the first time, attach what that specific hospital asks for, and submit it on your behalf.

We follow up until there is a decision in writing

This is the part that actually decides whether a family keeps their money. Applications go quiet. Departments lose paperwork. Nobody calls back.

Our internal queue flags any case that has been waiting on a hospital for more than fourteen days, so a stalled application gets chased rather than forgotten. We keep going until you have a written decision — approval, partial discount, or denial with a reason.

If the answer is no, that is not the end

A denial can be appealed, and denials are often about a missing document or a misread income figure rather than genuine ineligibility.

We will tell you plainly whether an appeal is worth making, and if it is, we make it.