Data & methodology

Where the prices come from

Since 2021, every US hospital is federally required (45 CFR §180) to publish a machine-readable file listing its gross charges, discounted cash prices and insurer-negotiated rates. Those files are public but practically unusable — hundreds of megabytes of JSON or CSV, inconsistent codes, per-payer nesting. We download them, normalise them and publish them as browsable pages. Every page links the exact source file it came from, the date the hospital says it last updated it, and the date we imported it.

What a published price is — and isn't

• Gross charge is the hospital's undiscounted list price. Almost no one pays it, but it anchors every negotiation.
• Discounted cash price is what the hospital says a self-pay patient owes. Ask for it explicitly — it is often far below the gross charge.
• Negotiated rates are what each insurance plan agreed to pay the hospital. Your out-of-pocket cost depends on your deductible and plan design.
• A real bill can add professional fees (the radiologist reading your scan), facility fees, contrast, supplies and lab work. Published prices are the starting point, not the final bill.

Our rules

• Blank is never zero. When a hospital didn't publish a price we say "not published by hospital" — never $0, never a dash.
• Official and visitor-reported prices never blend. What a hospital publishes and what a visitor reports paying are shown separately, always labelled.
• Provenance on every number. Source file, hospital's publication date, our ingest date.

Bulk downloads

Bulk exports of the normalised dataset are planned. Until then, the hospitals' original files are linked from every hospital page.

Report an error

Spotted a price that looks wrong? Email data@healthcosts.net with the page URL — we'll check it against the source file.