About Cobijo Health
Cobijo Health is a California nonprofit (501(c)(3) in formation) building a free, multilingual tool that helps low-income, uninsured, and immigrant patients get the financial help they're legally entitled to for their medical bills.
Why we exist
Every California hospital is required by law — the Hospital Fair Pricing Act — to offer free or discounted care to patients who can't afford their bills. Nonprofit hospitals must do the same under federal law (IRS §501(r)). But the help is effectively hidden: each hospital's rules sit in a separate, dense legal PDF, rarely translated and never in one place. People who qualify get sent to collections instead. Cobijo's job is to be the front door to help you're already owed.
How it works
You tell us your hospital, income, and household size. In seconds, Cobijo tells you whether you may qualify for free or discounted care at that specific hospital — with the income limit — screens you for Medi-Cal and Covered California, explains your rights if a bill is in collections, and writes you a ready-to-send request letter. It's free, it works in many languages, and it saves nothing you enter.
How we use AI (and where humans stay in charge)
The reason this can exist is AI. We use large language models to read hundreds of hospitals' financial-assistance policy PDFs and pull each one's exact eligibility rules into a single, clean, open dataset. AI does the reading and drafting; people verify flagged edge cases. Your eligibility for public benefits is computed with open-source public-benefit rules (PolicyEngine), not guessed. AI helps — it never makes the final decision for you, and only the hospital can approve your assistance.
Where our information comes from
- California's official hospital financial-assistance policy registry (HCAI)
- California's Hospital Fair Pricing Act (Health & Safety Code §127400 et seq.)
- Federal charity-care requirements for nonprofit hospitals (IRS §501(r))
- Medi-Cal and Covered California eligibility rules (via PolicyEngine)
Everything Cobijo builds — the dataset and the tools — is open-source and open-data, so anyone can check our work or build on it.
Who's behind it
Cobijo Health was founded by Ian Duncan, who builds the product end to end. We're recruiting an independent founding board — a nonprofit/health attorney, a CPA/treasurer, a healthcare-access expert, a fundraiser, and a community member with lived experience — and filing for 501(c)(3) status. If you'd like to help, we'd love to hear from you.
Get involved
Cobijo Health is early, open, and built in the open. There are three ways to help — all real, none requiring money.
Join our founding board
We're recruiting five independent directors as we file for 501(c)(3) status: a nonprofit or health attorney, a CPA or treasurer, a healthcare-access expert, a fundraiser, and a community member with lived experience of medical debt. A few hours a quarter, real impact. Email us.
Volunteer or partner
We especially need native speakers to review our translations — we serve 10 languages, currently machine-assisted. We'd also love to hear from clinics, legal-aid groups, and community organizations who reach the patients we're built for. Email us.
Support the open work
Everything — the tools and the dataset — is free and open-source. Star or contribute to the project on GitHub — it's a genuine public good, and every bit of visibility helps patients find it.
Cobijo Health gives you information, not legal, medical, financial, or tax advice. Results are estimates based on what you enter and public hospital policies — they are not a decision or a guarantee. Only the hospital can decide if you qualify. Cobijo is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of any hospital.