in january 2023, i had a simple ultrasound done at SimonMed. they sent me 4 bills totaling $5137 for it.
after a year of emails and phone calls, they finally admitted today that i only owed $140.53 and are mailing me a refund check!
here's how i did it 🧵
PSA i can spoof any mit.edu email and it will pass all DKIM/SPF/etc. checks. here's an email i sent to myself pretending to be a famous MIT-affiliated podcaster - thanks gmail for auto-inserting the profile pic :)
MIT may fix this someday but in the meantime
reminder that the bcrypt hash function ignores input above a certain length! so if you do bcrypt(username || password) for some reason, a sufficiently long username will make it accept any password. to fix this you can sha256 the input first.
tl;dr if u have insurance check that the amount ur billed lines up with what insurance says u owe before paying. if u overpaid u can try a demand letter to get a refund. ask the provider for a superbill. also "Never Pay the First Bill" has some tips for negotiating a bill down.