We spent 5 months turning technically "transparent" but practically useless hospital pricing data into something patients can actually use.
The problem: Hospitals publish prices in massive CSV and JSON files (billions of rows, inconsistent formats, missing codes). Legally transparent, realistically worthless.
What we found: Same colonoscopy costs $2,675 at one hospital, $7,431 at another in Florida. Same insurance. 3x difference.
What we built: Simple tool to compare 100+ procedures across Florida hospitals, filtered by insurance.
Still very early (Florida only, lots of rough edges), but would love HN's feedback: - What am I missing? - How would you improve this? - Is this solving a real problem?
Technical details about the data wrangling happy to share in comments if anyone's interested in that nightmare.
Thanks for any feedback!