TruCost Health is a healthcare analytics company built by clinicians in training who kept running into the same problem: pricing data that is technically public and practically unusable.
American healthcare has a pricing problem, not a data problem. Since 2022, federal mandates have made hospital and payer pricing data technically public. But "public" and "accessible" are not the same thing. A 1TB JSON file is not accessible to a social worker trying to place a patient before 5pm. A dense MRF schema is not accessible to a physician trying to counsel a patient on whether to fill a $900 prescription.
TruCost was formerly known as ClearRate. We rebranded to reflect what we actually do: surface the true cost of care, at the point where it matters. We are a healthcare analytics company, but we measure our success not in queries processed, but in patients who did not skip a dose, and in social workers who found a covered facility before a patient was discharged into debt.
"Built to make healthcare prices usable before care decisions are made."
We are not paid to recommend any plan, program, or provider. Our guidance is independent and conflict free.
Every product decision is filtered through one question: does this help clinicians and patients make better decisions?
The populations with the greatest need for pricing transparency are those with the least ability to pay for it. TruCost Drugs is free.
We source only from federally mandated public filings and cite every data point. Healthcare decisions demand accuracy.
During clinical rotations, our founding team encountered the same scenario repeatedly: a patient ready for discharge with no affordable post acute option identified, or a patient refusing a medication because they assumed it was out of reach, when a $0 Patient Assistance Program existed they had never heard of. We built TruCost because we were tired of watching the information gap cause harm.
We launched as ClearRate with a focus on rate benchmarking for providers. As we built, we realized the pricing problem was bigger: it extended to drug costs, to patient navigation, to the moment of care itself. TruCost Health is the full expression of that mission: pricing intelligence at every point in the system.
The Hospital Price Transparency Rule and the Transparency in Coverage Rule require hospitals and payers to publish machine readable pricing files. The data exists. Almost nobody can use it.
Our founding team, then deep in clinical rotations, begins building a rate benchmarking tool for independent practices under the name ClearRate.
The mission expands beyond rate benchmarking to drug pricing and discharge navigation. The company becomes TruCost Health to reflect the full scope of the work.
CMS enforcement of the updated MRF schema breaks legacy tooling across the industry. TruCost's pipeline is built for the new schema from day one.
TruCost launches its initial proof of concept on Florida Blue negotiated rates for oncofertility CPT codes, supporting clinics serving cancer patients under Florida SB 1942.
TruCost was built by MD and MD/MBA candidates training at the intersection of medicine, healthcare economics, and data engineering, the exact expertise this problem requires.
"Built to make healthcare prices usable before care decisions are made."
We are actively building partnerships with health systems, FQHCs, independent practices, and health plans. If you share our belief that pricing transparency should be clinical infrastructure, not a luxury feature, we would love to talk.