FAIR Health Consumer Access

Now It’s Easier to See Full Range of Healthcare Costs on FAIR Health Consumer

It’s always been easy to look up typical healthcare costs on our free, award-winning website fairhealthconsumer.org. But now it’s easier than ever to look up the full range of costs.

FAIR Health’s medical, dental and hospital cost lookup tools have been newly enhanced with sliders. By moving the easy-to-use sliders, you can view typical costs from the 20th to the 90th percentile for a healthcare procedure in your local area. That way, you can get a better idea of the range of healthcare prices you may find.

Both charge amounts and allowed amounts are shown on FAIR Health Consumer. A charge amount is the amount billed by a provider. An allowed amount is the total fee contracted between an insurance plan and a provider for an in-network service. That includes both the part to be paid by the plan member and the part to be paid by the plan.

What is a percentile—for example, the 50th percentile? The 50th percentile means that, for a certain procedure in a certain area, 50 percent of charges or allowed amounts in the FAIR Health database are lower than or equal to this estimate. Fifty percent are higher than or equal to this estimate.

By using the slider to pick different percentiles, you can easily explore a range of potential costs for your procedure and related costs. Picking a different percentile automatically adjusts the total cost. This gives you a more realistic view of healthcare pricing. Average costs are also displayed.

Information about the range of percentiles has always been available on FAIR Health Consumer. But the sliders make that range of data available on the main results page. FAIR Health has the nation’s largest repository of commercial healthcare claims data. Now those data are presented in a new way to better serve you.

The new enhancements can be seen on FAIR Health Consumer.