Methodology

Plan year 2026 prices; 2027 prices will be added as soon as CMS publishes them.

Data sources

• HealthCare.gov states: CMS QHP Landscape file, individual medical, plan year 2026 (download).
• State-run marketplaces: CMS State-based Exchange QHP public use files (Plans, Rates, Service Areas, Networks) for plan year 2026 (CMS page), mapped to counties with CMS geographic rating area pages.
• Insurer names for state-run marketplaces: CMS Unified Rate Review public use file (CMS page), matched by 5-digit HIOS issuer ID; we then group legal entities under consumer brands (e.g. Ambetter (Centene), local Blue Cross Blue Shield companies by name).
• Health sharing: each program's own public price page or rate sheet, checked by hand.

We filtered and summarized these files, so our numbers are not official CMS data. Built 2026-10-19: 51 states + DC entries, 3,140 counties, 6,585 plans.

What the prices mean

• Monthly premium for one 40-year-old non-smoker, before any premium tax credit. Most marketplace buyers get a tax credit and pay less; check your real price on the official marketplace.
• Deductible and out-of-pocket maximum are the in-network individual amounts for the standard plan (not the cost-sharing-reduction Silver variants).
• Bad year = 12 × monthly premium + out-of-pocket maximum: roughly the most you would pay for in-network covered care in a year.
• Typical = median, not average. A few very expensive plans pull averages up (nationally the average is 4–6% above the median), and "half cost less, half cost more" is easy to read.
• Plans are counted once per rating area; there is no weighting by enrollment. Platinum and Catastrophic plans are included; Catastrophic plans are only for people under 30 or with a hardship exemption.
• New York and Vermont use community rating: one price for every adult age.

Outlier filter

We remove data errors and one-off implausible prices without hiding genuinely cheap plans:

1. Data errors (removed): no price for the age-40 scenario, child-only plans, $0 or under-$100 premiums, $5,000+ placeholders, dental-only plans.
2. State fence: within each state and metal level, a price below min(Q1 − 1.5×IQR, 60% of the median) is removed only if it is also the insurer's cheapest plan in that rating area and under 65% (Catastrophic: 50%) of that insurer's next plan up. Real low-cost insurers pass this check.
3. County fence: the same test inside a county where a metal has at least 8 prices.
4. Very high prices are flagged but never removed: the highest price shown is a real plan.

Known gaps

• CA: 64 of 1291 county-plan rows have no Jan-2026 age-40 rate
• GA: counties missing from the CMS rating-area page (plans there cannot be priced): ['haralson']
• GA: 70 of 13945 county-plan rows have no Jan-2026 age-40 rate
• IL: counties missing from the CMS rating-area page (plans there cannot be priced): ['vermilion']
• IL: 10 of 2180 county-plan rows have no Jan-2026 age-40 rate
• MA: 12 of 796 county-plan rows have no Jan-2026 age-40 rate
• NY: counties missing from the CMS rating-area page (plans there cannot be priced): ['delaware']
• NY: 128 of 6396 county-plan rows have no Jan-2026 age-40 rate
• VA: counties missing from the CMS rating-area page (plans there cannot be priced): ['radford', 'salem']
• VA: 26 of 4945 county-plan rows have no Jan-2026 age-40 rate
• WA: 4 of 1227 county-plan rows have no Jan-2026 age-40 rate
• Massachusetts prices by 3-digit ZIP; our county mapping is approximate and counties spanning several rating areas list each area's price.
• Network type is the plan type CMS reports (HMO, PPO, EPO, POS); it does not tell you which doctors are in network. Use the provider directory link.

Updates

When CMS publishes plan year 2027 files (usually around the start of open enrollment), we rerun the same pipeline and add 2027 prices.