AI makes hospital bills bigger. Who pays for it?

In US hospitals, AI now helps write the bills. It finds diagnoses a patient has and puts them on the bill, so the hospital gets paid more.

• For hospitals, that pays off: executives say their AI earns back 3.5 times what it costs on average.
• For insurers, it costs money: Blue Cross says it paid an extra $942m in two years.

The real question is whether the extra diagnoses are true. Hospitals say patients are simply older and sicker. In Munich, a startup called calliora is building a possible answer: AI that checks a diagnosis is documented before the bill goes out. We think billing AI will soon be judged by what it can prove, not by how much more it bills. (Bessemer Venture Partners)