Hospitals in the United States are required by federal law to publish their prices. In theory, this was meant to help patients understand healthcare costs before receiving care.

In practice, most hospitals comply by publishing massive machine readable JSON or CSV files that are difficult to find, open, or understand. These files often contain inconsistent labels, opaque payer names, and thousands of billing codes that make meaningful comparison nearly impossible for families.

CareCostFinder.org was built to address that gap.

CareCostFinder takes the hospital price transparency files hospitals are already required to publish and makes them searchable by hospital and procedure. It does not create estimates, averages, or predictions. It simply exposes the data exactly as hospitals disclose it.

Important disclosure: This site does not provide medical cost estimates, quotes, or guarantees. It does not calculate what you will pay or suggest what a service should cost. All prices shown come directly from hospital published transparency files. The meaning and usefulness of this data depends on insurance coverage, benefits, billing practices, and individual circumstances. Determining how the data applies is the responsibility of the user.

This project exists because most consumers cannot reasonably access or search hospital pricing files on their own, even though the data is technically public.

CareCostFinder is an early proof of concept and currently includes only a limited number of hospitals. Each dataset requires time to locate, validate, process, and index. Additional hospitals will be added over time.

Future plans include expanding coverage, improving procedure search, and exploring standardized physician and Medicare published datasets. This is only a first step toward making legally required healthcare price disclosures usable instead of performative.

Some have suggested that exposing this data may cause confusion or outrage. CareCostFinder does not reinterpret or sensationalize pricing information. It reflects the data exactly as hospitals publish it.

You can explore the project at https://carecostfinder.org.