Share Your Medical Bills With Us To Help Authenticate Insurers' Reported Prices

The Center for Health Policy's  Health Economics program at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy is conducting a research study to compare the actual prices seen on medical forms received by patients to the prices reported by insurers under federal price transparency rules. Help us determine if the prices being released to the public are being accurately reported. 

We thank you for your interest in participating in this study, as we couldn’t do this important work without the help of the public!

 Participation Guidelines:

• If you are 18 or older and want to participate, please review and keep a copy of the consent form. 
• Participants should then submit their provider bills and/or Explanation of Benefits (EOBs) dated January 1, 2025 or after to PriceCheck@rice.edu after removing or concealing any identifying information (i.e. Member/Patient name, Member ID, Group number, Group name, Patient address, Date of Birth).
  • Sending both your bill and EOB is preferred, but we will be able to determine your quoted price with only one of these in most cases.
  • You can generally find these documents within your online insurance portal if you don’t already have a copy.
  • An easy way to participate is by printing out documents, use a black pen or marker to cross out identifying information, take a picture(s), then email to us.
  • When removing personal identifiers, please remember to keep the name of the healthcare provider (person or company) and the health insurer visible.
• Our research team will use the information from the submitted forms to create a database of charges for the medical care provided which will include items such as insurer, provider, place of service, billing and/or procedure codes, and prices. 
• We will then compare those values to the prices reported by health insurers under the national price transparency rules to determine if the prices being released to the public are being accurately reported. Our findings will be published publicly.  

Questions? Contact our team at: [email protected]. 

This research study (IRB-FY2025-345 Using patients' medical bills to authenticate prices reported by health insurers) has been reviewed and approved by Rice University Institutional Review Board.