How these price pages are built

Where the numbers come from and what they can and cannot tell you.

Sources

US health insurers are required by the federal Transparency in Coverage rule to publish the rates they have negotiated with in-network providers. These pages use recent files from Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield of California, Aetna, UnitedHealthcare and Cigna. Kaiser Permanente is not included: most of its care is prepaid inside its own system, and its files do not carry usable per-service rates. Medicare figures come from the 2026 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for each area.

What the numbers show

Each figure is an in-network rate for the whole service at doctors' offices and imaging centers within 20 miles of the city's downtown. Each billing entity counts once, and we report the median and the middle half of what insurers pay them. An insurer is shown only when at least 10 billing entities in the area report a rate.

Insurers' files contain placeholders, partial charges and other values that are not real prices for a service. We remove those before summarizing. Anthem Blue Cross lists the same menu of rates across nearly all of its contracts, so its figures describe that menu rather than the rate a specific provider is paid.

Limits

A negotiated rate is not a bill. What you pay depends on your plan's deductible, coinsurance and copays, and on any other services billed the same day.
Each insurer has many plans and contracts. Your plan uses one of them, and its rate can sit anywhere in the range shown.
The source files contain errors we cannot always catch. Confirm the price with the provider and your insurer before you book.

Questions or corrections: support@arlohealth.ai.