Healthcare pricing shouldn't be a mystery.
My Health Price is a free, independent tool that helps patients, caregivers, employers, and researchers understand what hospitals actually charge — before they receive a bill. We believe price transparency is a patient right, not a privilege.
Our Mission
Americans spend more on healthcare than any other developed nation, yet historically have had less access to pricing information than they would when buying a car, a home, or even a cup of coffee. The result: patients routinely get billed different amounts for identical procedures, and those bills often arrive weeks after care was received — long after any opportunity to compare or negotiate.
My Health Price exists to change that. We aggregate and normalize the machine-readable price files that hospitals are legally required to publish, and present them in plain language so that any patient — not just data scientists or insurance actuaries — can understand what a procedure costs before committing to care.
We have no financial relationship with any hospital, insurer, or pharmaceutical company. We don't sell advertising to healthcare providers. We don't sell your data. The tool is free to use with no account required.
Where the Data Comes From
Since January 1, 2021, the CMS Hospital Price Transparency Rule has required every hospital in the United States to publicly publish their prices in a standardized machine-readable format. This includes:
- All standard charges — the gross chargemaster rate, the discounted cash price, and all payer-specific negotiated rates
- Per-procedure detail — prices must be linked to procedure codes (CPT, HCPCS, DRG) wherever possible
- Payer and plan names — which insurance companies and plans each negotiated rate applies to
My Health Price downloads these Machine-Readable Files (MRFs) directly from each hospital's website, parses and normalizes them into a consistent format, and links each charge to a standard CPT procedure code. We cover over 1,000 hospitals across the United States with more being added continuously.
Understanding the Prices
There are three types of prices you'll see on My Health Price:
Cash / Self-Pay Price
The discounted rate the hospital offers patients paying directly without insurance. Often 40–70% lower than the chargemaster (list) price. This is the most actionable number for uninsured patients or those with high deductibles.
Negotiated Rate
The contracted price a specific insurance company agreed to pay for this procedure at this hospital. Different insurers negotiate different rates. This is what your insurer's EOB will show as the "allowed amount."
Chargemaster Rate
The hospital's internal "list price" — typically much higher than what anyone actually pays. Rarely shown on our site; included in hospital MRFs but not clinically meaningful for most patients.
Important:none of these prices equal your out-of-pocket cost. Your actual bill depends on your deductible status, your plan's coinsurance structure, whether the provider is in-network, facility fees, separate physician bills, and the exact services rendered. Use our cost estimator on the home page or on individual procedure pages to combine price data with your plan details.
How to Use This Site Effectively
Here are the most practical ways to put this data to work for you:
Before a scheduled procedure — compare hospitals
If your procedure isn't an emergency, search for it by name or ask your doctor for the CPT code. Compare cash prices across hospitals in your area. A 3–5× price difference for identical procedures in the same city is common. Even within your insurance network, facility tiers can mean significantly different cost-sharing.
Decide whether to use insurance or pay cash
If you have a high-deductible plan and haven't met it yet, paying cash at a standalone imaging center or ambulatory surgery center may cost less than your negotiated rate at a hospital. Use our cost estimator to compare. Note that cash payments typically don't count toward your deductible.
Negotiate your bill after the fact
Received a large bill? Look up what the hospital charges other insurers for the same procedure. If your billed amount is higher than typical negotiated rates, use that data as the basis for negotiating. Hospitals have significant flexibility — especially non-profits, which are required to offer financial assistance programs.
Verify what your insurer should be paying
Search for your specific insurer in the negotiated rates for a procedure at your hospital. If the rate on your EOB doesn't match what's published in the hospital's price file, that could indicate a billing discrepancy worth investigating. Cross-reference with the CPT codes on your itemized bill.
Plan your healthcare budget for the year
If you know you'll need several procedures this year, use our data to estimate total costs. If you're likely to hit your out-of-pocket maximum anyway, it may make sense to front-load expensive procedures early in the plan year and pay less for subsequent care.
CMS Hospital Quality Ratings
In addition to price data, many hospital pages on My Health Price display a CMS Overall Hospital Quality Star Rating— a 1–5 star score published quarterly by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. This rating is based on up to 46 quality measures across five domains: mortality, safety of care, readmission rates, patient experience (HCAHPS surveys), and timely & effective care.
We display these ratings to give context alongside price — a hospital that is both affordable and highly rated for quality is meaningfully different from one that is affordable but lower-rated. That said, star ratings have limitations: they favor certain hospital types, may not reflect recent improvements, and do not capture everything that matters to a specific patient.
Price and quality are not correlated. Studies consistently show that higher-priced hospitals are not reliably higher quality. Many top-rated hospitals are also among the most affordable in their markets.
Data Limitations & Disclaimer
Prices are estimates, not quotes. The figures on My Health Price come directly from hospital-published files, but your actual bill will depend on your insurance plan, deductible status, network status, the exact services rendered, and many other factors.
Data may be incomplete or outdated. Hospitals update their MRFs on varying schedules, and some publish incomplete or non-standard files. Our parsing is thorough but cannot fully compensate for poor source data. Each price record shows when it was last imported.
Physician fees are not included.Hospital price files cover facility charges only. Surgeon, anesthesiologist, and specialist fees are billed separately by each physician's practice and are not in hospital MRFs.
This is not medical or financial advice.Always verify costs directly with your hospital's billing department and your insurance company before making any healthcare decision.
Who We Are
My Health Price is built and maintained by an independent team with no affiliations to any hospital system, insurance company, pharmaceutical company, or other healthcare entity. We have no financial relationship with any institution whose data appears on this site, and we do not receive payment for placement or rankings.
Our database is funded independently and the tool is provided free of charge as a public resource. We believe healthcare pricing transparency is a public good — and that access to this information shouldn't require a background in data science or a team of lawyers.
Further Reading
Frequently Asked Questions
33 answered questions about hospital billing, insurance, and pricing
Patient Guides
In-depth articles on navigating hospital bills and insurance
Cash Pay vs. Insurance
When paying out of pocket is actually cheaper
How to Negotiate a Medical Bill
Step-by-step guide to reducing what you owe
Understanding Your EOB
How to read an Explanation of Benefits
Procedure Price Hub
Price ranges for 20 common procedures across the US
Questions or corrections?
Found a price that looks wrong, or want to request a hospital we haven't covered? We want to hear from you.