Know the price before you go: Introducing Curea

Purchases come with a price tag. Hospital care does not.

You schedule a procedure, get the care, and find out what it costs when the bill arrives. For people without insurance, paying cash, or working through a deductible, that uncertainty can affect whether they get care at all and where they go for it.

Take a knee MRI. Curea found published prices for CPT 73721 at 3,006 hospitals. Across the middle 80% of those prices, the range runs from $575 to $8,300. That is roughly a 14-fold difference for the same CPT-coded procedure.

The nearest hospital is not always the most affordable. But comparing alternatives requires more time and technical know-how.

Today, we’re introducing Curea, a free hospital price comparison app that lets you see published prices before you schedule care.

The data was public. It was not usable.

Since 2021, US hospitals have been required to publish standard charges, including discounted cash prices, in comprehensive machine-readable files. They must also provide consumer-friendly pricing for services that can be scheduled in advance. The goal was straightforward: let people compare costs before they receive care. CMS explains the requirements here.

The files are public, finding them, interpreting them, and matching the same procedure across hospitals is still a difficult and tedious task.

Curea does that work for you.

It turns hospital-published pricing data into a searchable catalog with:

• More than 600 procedures
• About 1.2 million price points
• Prices from thousands of hospitals
• Coverage across every US state, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico

Search by procedure name or CPT code. See hospitals near you, compare their published prices, and save the options you want to revisit.

More people are paying a larger share of the bill

Price clarity matters most when patients carry a meaningful part of the cost. More people are in that position now.

After enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits expired at the end of 2025, Marketplace enrollment declined. KFF found that February enrollment fell from 21.8 million people in 2025 to 19.2 million in 2026. Its polling also found that 9% of people enrolled in Marketplace plans in 2025 became uninsured for the 2026 plan year. Read the KFF analysis.

People who kept coverage are paying more out of pocket, too. The average Marketplace deductible rose 37% in 2026, from $2,759 to $3,786, as more people chose lower-premium plans with higher deductibles. KFF details that shift here.

The change is showing up at the point of care. Epic Research found that the share of emergency department encounters recorded as self-pay rose from 5.5% in early 2022 to 7.6% in the second quarter of 2026. See the Epic Research study.

For millions of people, the price of care is no longer a figure negotiated somewhere in the background. It is a decision they have to make with their own money.

A better starting point

Curea cannot promise that a published price will be your final bill. What you pay can depend on your coverage, the services you receive, and charges from other clinicians involved in your care.

But published prices are still useful. They give you a number to ask about, alternatives to compare, and a chance to make a more informed decision before care is delivered.

Before scheduling, confirm the price with the hospital. If you have insurance, ask your insurer what applies to your visit.

You should not have to wait for a bill to learn whether a procedure costs $575 or $8,300.

Look first. Then book.

Curea is free on iOS and Android.