Billmender

Billmender crawls and parses the machine-readable price files that US hospitals are required to publish, extracting data on 29 common services from 482 hospitals. These official files are massive (up to 36GB), poorly formatted, and rarely accessed by the public. The data reveals significant gaps between listed prices and negotiated insurer rates—for example, a moderate ER visit lists at a median $1,285 while insurers typically pay $288.

The tool makes hospital pricing transparent and comparable, turning unwieldy regulatory filings into accessible healthcare cost data.