BILLEDPlay the game

A month of care. A life beyond the bills.

BILLED is a free browser game about medical debt in America. Play through 30 days as one of five fictional people, balancing care, work, family, and bills whose prices are not always known in advance.

Start playing

Five lives

How the simulation works

The characters, prices, bills, and outcomes are fictional. Research informs the situations, while selected insurance rules and financial tradeoffs are simplified into a playable model. The game does not predict a real person's medical outcome, insurance payment, or eligibility for assistance.

Each run combines scheduled story events with variable events. Choices affect money, health, work, and relationships. A replay begins with the same setup and random seed; different decisions can change later events.

Illustrative price comparisons and potential savings are not guaranteed alternatives. Provider availability, coverage, eligibility, and real outcomes vary. There are no claims that simulated benchmarks represent actual players.

BILLED takes inspiration from SPENT, the game about poverty created for Urban Ministries of Durham. In BILLED, asking friends for help and adding prices to the game's board happen inside the simulation. Neither action sends a real message or publishes a real price.

Beyond the game

BILLED links to Costnip, an external price-sharing service. Visiting it or sharing a real price is optional and separate from playing. This game is educational, not medical, legal, or financial advice.

Research and sources

These are the sources referenced by the game's factual context. Their dates and scope vary; a citation supports the associated claim, not every fictional event or price. This list is generated from the same source definitions used in the game.

Browse all cited sources (94)

Privacy and usage measurement

Your game progress and sound preference are stored in this browser. Starting a new month replaces the previous save; clearing this site's browser storage removes it. Your save journal is not uploaded.

On the public site, Vercel Web Analytics measures visits. Page query strings and fragments are removed from measured page URLs. Local development and preview hosts do not send measurements. Gameplay event reporting is currently disabled.

We do not ask for your real medical information or upload your game choices as a full journal. The game respects Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control signals. You can also turn usage measurement off on this device. Blocking analytics does not prevent play.

Vercel processes technical request information to provide its analytics service. Read Vercel's analytics privacy documentation. Real sharing opens the service you select, which has its own privacy practices.