Doctor’s fee or facility fee? This is the hospital's own payment for the stay (the facility fee). Surgeons, anesthesiologists and other doctors bill separately, on top of it.
Who is counted: Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield lists clinicians individually: 88% of the 1,065,071 provider IDs (NPIs) it names are individual doctors, nurse practitioners and therapists; the rest are practices, clinics and hospitals. “Providers” counts those IDs.
Not on this map: Only part of Anthem is here. These prices come from the files Anthem publishes for members of other Blue plans (BlueCard): its broad network in each state, about 88 GB. Anthem's own index lists roughly 480 more files, about 680 GB, covering some 430 narrower and employer-specific networks across its 14 states. Those have not been read, so a plan that uses one of them may pay different prices from the ones shown. Ohio: Anthem publishes its Ohio prices in the files of its Indiana plan (BlueCard plan 131), which also list many providers in other states (Missouri, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Illinois and more). These maps place every price by where the provider practises: Ohio's are listed as "Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Ohio (filed under its Indiana plan)", Indiana's as Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Indiana, and the rest as "Anthem's Indiana plan: providers outside Indiana and Ohio" - beside those states' own Anthem networks, whose prices differ.
State
Providers
Organisations
Zip codes
Lowest
25th pct
Median
75th pct
Highest
vs Medicare
“x Medicare” compares each price with what original Medicare actually paid hospitals in the same state for the same kind of stay in 2024, the newest year it has published: the average per stay, the patient’s share included, at hospitals with more than ten such stays. Medicare’s payment varies by hospital (wages, teaching, low-income patients), so this is a state average, not any one hospital’s rate. Insurers write their contracts as a share of Medicare, so 1.3x means the insurer pays 30% more than Medicare would; Medicare Advantage plans generally pay close to 1.0x.
This is a statewide summary. Prices vary far more between towns and between practices than these medians suggest; zip-code and provider-level detail is not published here; this specific data can be requested here.