About the data

Three prices for the same care

• Billed (charges, list price): the hospital's own price list. Almost nobody pays it, but uninsured patients are sometimes billed it.
• Paid: what Medicare and the patient together actually paid, on average, for a Medicare stay.
• Insurer (negotiated) rates and cash prices: what each private insurance plan has agreed to pay, and the discount for paying cash. Hospitals must publish these under the federal price transparency rule (45 CFR 180).

Sources

• CMS, Medicare Inpatient Hospitals by Provider and Service, 2024. Stays are grouped by MS-DRG, the code Medicare pays by. CMS leaves out any hospital with fewer than 11 stays for a code.
• CMS Hospital General Information (Care Compare): address, type, ownership, overall star rating.
• CMS hospital cost reports (HCRIS): costs, charges, charity care, bad debt, margins.
• Hospitals' machine-readable price files. We show the median across commercial plans and the 10th–90th percentile range, never a single extreme value, because these files contain errors. Rates published only as a percentage or a formula are counted but not shown as dollars.

Limits

Averages hide a lot: a stay with complications costs more. Doctors usually bill separately from the hospital. If your bill looks wrong, ask the hospital for an itemized bill and for its financial assistance policy.