Healthcare Costs Already Make Even the Wealthiest Americans Enraged. Now AI Is Adding $1 Billion to Hospital Bills.

Most of us live on an entirely different planet than billionaires do. We’re in the middle of a cost of living crisis, and luxuries are getting few and far between. But there’s at least one thing we’ve all got in common with the ultra-rich, and that’s increasing healthcare costs. Just ask Mark Cuban.

The billionaire entrepreneur has spent most of 2026 complaining about spiralling healthcare costs, predatory insurance practices, and intentional opacity. The way Cuban sees it, healthcare is one of the only things Americans have to buy without knowing the price until the invoice arrives. That certainly puts many of us between a rock and a hard place.

But now, it looks like AI is making that position even more difficult.

According to new data from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, it turns out that AI-assisted hospital coding added an estimated $942 million worth of additional costs onto medical bills between 2023 and 2025. The impacts of those bogus costs are far-reaching, too. They push up your premiums, deductibles, and out-of-pocket costs.

So, how did we get to this point? And more importantly, is there anything you can do to avoid AI-powered hospital charges? Let’s take a closer look.

AI is Finding More Ways to Say You’re Sick

Every employer under the sun has spent the last five years encouraging their busy worker bees to integrate AI into every possible workflow, and hospitals are no exception. 

Medical organizations use coding systems to tell insurers details about each patient's stay. This guarantees everyone gets a clear picture of what a patient was admitted for and any conditions or abnormalities that were recorded afterward. But it’s these secondary diagnoses that tend to move a hospital stay into a higher-paying category, and that’s where AI comes in.

AI has gotten quite skilled at scanning lab results, doctors’ notes, and digital medical records in order to flag additional diagnoses that should be added to a claim. In numerous circumstances, this system works well and is perfectly legitimate. That’s why over 60% of hospital systems are now using AI-enabled coding technology.

But according to researchers at Blue Cross, there’s an alarming disconnect between the extra costs AI has been sending insurers and the real-life care that patients are actually receiving.

After analyzing de-identified claims data, it turned out that inpatient cases billed as medically complex increased from 37% at the start of 2023 to around 40% by the end of 2025. Over 55,000 extra cases were pushed into higher-complexity categories, which generated $653 million in additional reimbursements. That represents about $11,800 per patient. The problem is that nobody could find a corresponding increase in care to match those rising costs.

Translation: Thousands of patients are now getting overbilled because of how AI has decided to start tagging lab results. This isn’t just a concern for Average Joes, either.

Unlike many living expenses, having loads of money doesn’t protect you from the underlying issues with healthcare costs. Mark Cuban might be able to pay a medical bill that would bankrupt your entire cul-de-sac or hire an army of attorneys to battle an insurance company. But he’s still operating inside the same billing system that the rest of us are struggling with.

Now, AI is making an already complicated insurance system even harder to understand. And the icing on the cake is that the insurers processing these claims are using AI, too.

All the big insurance companies have started using automated systems to flag questionable charges. That means you could end up stuck in between one bot helping a hospital claim extra billable items and another bot trying to reject or challenge those claims.

What Can You Actually Do About It?

Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do to discourage your local hospital or your insurance company from using AI systems. But there are some steps you can take to challenge questionable claims and prevent AI bots from driving up your insurance premiums.

First and foremost, never assume your medical bill is right just because your insurance company has processed it. Whenever you receive a treatment, ask to receive an itemized bill and explanation of benefits. If any of the actual services or diagnoses listed don’t make sense, take it up with the hospital’s billing department immediately.

Next, you should always compare your hospital bill with your insurer’s explanation of benefits. These two documents are supposed to align perfectly, like a jigsaw puzzle. If they don’t, you need to get on the phone with your insurer and ask what was billed, what was covered, and what’s been applied to your coinsurance or your deductible.

Don’t be afraid to challenge charges, either. 

If you don’t understand why a diagnosis was added or how a condition is connected to your treatment, ask for details of how it was coded and clarify if it was coded correctly. This is where AI seems to be quietly driving up costs in the background, and so that’s where we should all scrutinize.

At the end of the day, this is an issue of transparency that affects U.S. patients from all walks of life. 

AI is becoming a core component that determines how much healthcare costs, and you can see how it’s making workflows easier for hospital staff. But it also means we’ve got to stop taking the accuracy of our medical bills for granted. If AI has started telling your insurance company that you’re sicker than you think you are, it’s worth asking exactly what the machines think they’ve found. If these Blue Cross numbers are anything to go by, there’s a good chance that AI is wrong.

On the date of publication, Nash Riggins did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.