Claim denied? You can still appeal, and we help you do it.
One payment. No subscription. No cut of your claim. Opens on screen the moment you pay. 14-day refund, no questions, one email to hello@getaxionlabs.com.
Start free: the date on your notice gives you both federal deadlines, 180 days and 4 months, as dates.
Free, and it runs entirely in your browser. The date, the plan type and the state you pick are never sent to us and never stored.
Only one denied claim in every 17,061 reaches the stage whose decision binds the plan. Nothing you type here leaves your browser.
Or let the $29 Appeal Kit date each step and write the claim-file and external-review requests.
Insurers denied 83,907,852 in-network claims in a single year. Only 4,918 reached independent external review, and 22.2% (1,092 of 4,918; interval 22.2-23.8% for counts CMS withheld; 32.6% without SelectHealth) of those won.
What surprised me was how fast everyone just moved on, the doctor suggested trying something else, no one really explained if this was something you can fight, and that was basically it
Before anything else, two dates. You have 180 days from the date on your denial notice to file the internal appeal, and then 4 months from the final internal denial to ask for an independent external review. If waiting would seriously jeopardize your health you can ask for both to be expedited, decided in about 72 hours. Both timeframes are federal, not your insurer's choice, 29 CFR 2560.503-1 (PDF) and 45 CFR 147.136 (PDF), in plain English at HealthCare.gov, and your own denial letter states the ones that govern your plan. The PDFs are the same sections on govinfo.gov, which serves them without a challenge page, so an automated reader can check these two dates as easily as you can.
Before you start
What you will need
Your denial notice; the date printed on it, which starts both deadlines; your insurance card; and the reason the notice gives, word for word.
How long it takes
About 7 minutes for the free tool above, counted field by field with the RateMyPDF field timings (Steenhuis, Willey and Colarusso, ICAIL 2023). Because two answers come off your notice, they take the time; the other two you know by heart. "I do not know which" is an answer to who pays on denialfacts, never a dead end.
The fields, and the kind of answer each one is: Date on your denial notice (gathered); Who pays your claims (slot-in); Which state (slot-in); The reason your letter gives (gathered).
Sources re-checked November 5, 2026: 5 of 5 unchanged.
A single issuer, SelectHealth in Utah, reported 3,028 external claims appeals against 1,431 internal. No issuer in the plan-year 2026 release reported external above internal. The file does not say why, and our 4,918 keeps every issuer.
Pre-service appeals are a new CMS series, not added to this figure. CMS prints 2,488 filed, 891 overturned, 35.8%, against 1,250,441 denials of 12,079,025 requests. Because CMS withheld small counts, 2,488 and 891 are floors.
Overturned reviews went from 32.8% in the plan-year 2026 release to 22.2% in plan-year 2027, or from 32.6% to 32.6% without SelectHealth.
How to read these figures. CMS defines these fields as claims appeals in every year (dictionary PY2027, ‘Appeals of Claims’, reported 2015-2025); from PY2027 CMS reports pre-service appeals separately, printed beside. The claims here are labelled measured or inferred: the definition is measured, what each issuer put in the cell is inferred. PY2027 adds a Resubmitted claims column, and CMS does not say if claims received includes it, so it stays unexplained. Denial reasons from PY2027 print as shares only, with no trend.
You are not alone, measured rather than said: 83,907,852 in-network claims were denied in a single plan year, and only 4,918 of them, one in 17,061, ever reached the independent review stage. Of the ones that did, 22.2% (1,092 of 4,918; interval 22.2-23.8% for counts CMS withheld; 32.6% without SelectHealth) were overturned.
- Find the reason code on your denial letter. The notice has to state the specific reason and the plan provision behind it. Copy the code and the wording onto a piece of paper tonight, that sentence is what your appeal has to answer.
- Ask your insurer for the clinical criteria they judged you against. Under 29 CFR 2560.503-1 they have to hand you the claim file and the policy they applied, free, on request, and you cannot argue with a checklist you have never read.
- Put both deadlines on your calendar before you go to bed. 180 days from the date on the letter for the internal appeal, 4 months from the final internal denial for external review. The free calculator on this page turns your date into the two calendar dates in about ten seconds. Nationally only 1 in 17,061 denials ever reaches the second stage, and that is a deadline problem far more often than an argument problem.
None of those three steps costs anything. Anyone charging you to do them is selling you something you can do yourself in twenty minutes.
The federal timeframes: 180 days from the date on the denial notice to file the internal appeal, then 4 months from the final internal denial to request independent external review. Put your date in and get the actual calendar dates, with the days remaining.
Runs entirely in your browser, the date you type is never sent to us and never stored. Open the full calculator →
Or let the $29 Appeal Kit date each step and write the claim-file and external-review requests.
Start here
The numbers nobody shows you
| Stage | How many | Overturned |
|---|---|---|
| Claims denied (in-network) | 83,907,852 | , |
| Internal appeals filed | 241,596 | 26.8% |
| External reviews filed | 4,918 | 22.2% |
Source: CMS Transparency in Coverage Public Use File (PY2027 release, PY2025 claims), data.healthcare.gov — US Government public domain.
Highest denial rates
Among insurers processing more than 200,000 in-network claims:
| Insurer | State | Denied |
|---|---|---|
| Capital Health Plan | Florida | 96.2% |
| Blue Care Network of Michigan | Michigan | 30.9% |
| Select Health of South Carolina | South Carolina | 29.9% |
| AmeriHealth Caritas VIP Next, Inc. | Delaware | 29.3% |
| Premera Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alaska | Alaska | 26.3% |
| Hawaii Medical Service Association | Hawaii | 26.3% |
| AmeriHealth Caritas North Carolina, Inc. | North Carolina | 26.2% |
| UnitedHealthcare of Oklahoma, Inc. | Oklahoma | 25.4% |
| AvMed, Inc. | Florida | 24.7% |
| UnitedHealthcare of Arizona, Inc. | Arizona | 24.5% |
Which insurance companies deny the most claims: all 152 records → · The worst health insurance companies, four ways → · Where external review goes unused →
The same CMS file, per brand: Blue Cross Blue Shield denial rate, United Healthcare denial rate.
Questions people ask before they appeal
How often do US health insurers deny claims?
15.7% of in-network claims, 83,907,852 of 533,960,787 in a single plan year, across 152 issuer-state records in 29 states, per the CMS Transparency in Coverage Public Use File. Rates vary widely by insurer; a denial rate describes the insurer, not the merits of any one claim.
What percentage of denied health insurance claims are appealed?
Very few. Of 83,907,852 denials, 241,596 internal appeals were filed (0.288%) and only 4,918 reached independent external review, one in every 17,061 denials, 4,918 of 83,907,852.
Do health insurance appeals actually work?
For the people who file, often. 26.8% of internal appeals are overturned nationally, and 22.2% (1,092 of 4,918; interval 22.2-23.8% for counts CMS withheld; 32.6% without SelectHealth) of independent external reviews are overturned. The external review decision is binding on the plan by law.
How much does it cost to appeal a denied health insurance claim?
The internal appeal is free. External review is free under the HHS-administered federal process; where an insurer uses a contracted independent review organization or a state process, any fee is capped at $25 per review.
How long do I have to appeal a health insurance denial?
Generally 180 days from the denial notice to file the internal appeal, then generally four months from the final internal denial to request external review. Your own denial letter states the deadlines that govern your plan.
Which health insurance denials qualify for independent external review?
Denials involving medical judgment, denials on the basis that a treatment is experimental or investigational, and rescission of coverage. Purely administrative or eligibility denials may not qualify for external review but are still fully appealable internally.
We built this because the federal file measures something the adverts never do: of 83,907,852 denials in a single year, 241,596 were appealed. Not because people agree with the letter, because by the time you have worked out what it means, the clock has eaten a month. So the first thing on this site is the clock, the second is the free help, and the thing we sell is last and clearly marked. If you are stuck at midnight with the letter in front of you, write to us and we will point you at the right free route, even if that route is not ours.
Axion Labs · hello@getaxionlabs.com- We cannot overturn your denial. Only your plan, or an independent reviewer, can do that.
- We cannot make your plan cover a service it genuinely excludes.
- We cannot guarantee external review applies to your denial. It covers medical judgment, experimental or investigational determinations, and rescission, a purely administrative denial may not qualify, and we say so on those pages rather than selling you past it.
- We have no customer testimonials and publish none. Our evidence is the federal dataset and the regulation cites, both of which you can check.
Everything you need for your appeal: your two deadlines, the argument that fits your denial reason, the letters, a brief for your doctor on what the reviewer checks, and the external review request. One payment. No subscription. No cut of your claim. Opens on screen the moment you pay. 14-day refund, no questions, one email to hello@getaxionlabs.com.
Counts: CMS Transparency in Coverage Public Use File (PY2027 release, PY2025 claims), data.healthcare.gov — US Government public domain. Rights and timeframes: 29 CFR 2560.503-1 (180 days, and your free right to the claim file) and 45 CFR 147.136 (4 months, and what qualifies), explained at HealthCare.gov. Expedited review is decided in about 72 hours under both sections.
Reading either regulation from a script rather than a browser: eCFR answers automated fetches with a challenge page, so the same two sections are mirrored as government PDFs at govinfo.gov (29 CFR 2560.503-1) and govinfo.gov (45 CFR 147.136).