Healthcare prices shouldn’t be a secret.
Why we built this
Two patients can take the same medication in the same month and pay wildly different amounts - not because one got better care, but because the price of care is deliberately hard to compare. From-prices carry asterisks. Memberships hide the cost of the drug. Insurance covers the visit but not the prescription. Nobody tells you that until the bill arrives.
Telehealth was supposed to simplify this, and in some ways it has - care that once needed a waiting room now happens from a phone. But it also produced a crowd of look-alike platforms competing on marketing rather than clarity, reviewed by comparison sites that earn only when you click their partner links. When the reviewer is paid for steering, the advice steers.
We think affordability starts with legibility. When real prices, real records and real patient experiences sit side by side in the open, providers have to compete on value - and the cheapest safe option stops being a secret. That is the entire idea behind this site.
How we keep it honest
Prices, desk-verified
An advertised price only enters our data after it has been traced through the plans page, the intake flow and the checkout fine print. If we can’t verify it, we don’t show it - empty beats invented.
Records, not reputation
FDA warning letters and LegitScript certification are checked against the public record, and when we flag one, the badge links straight to the primary source so you never have to take our word for it.
One formula for everyone
Every provider is scored on the same six dimensions with fixed, published weights. Sponsorship is labeled, kept out of rankings, and can’t touch a score. Read the methodology →
Patients own the verdict
Moderated patient reviews rate five of our six dimensions - everything experience can judge. The sixth, trust, comes only from the public record, because opinion shouldn’t vote on facts.
How a review gets made
Verify the company
Before anything else we check the public record: LegitScript certification and the FDA warning-letter database, re-checked monthly. When we flag something, the badge on the review links straight to the primary source.
Price it at the checkout
Advertised from-prices are traced through the plans page, the intake flow and the checkout fine print, and recorded as separate cash and insurance figures. If we can’t verify a number, we leave it empty.
Score with the fixed formula
Six dimensions, fixed published weights, identical for every provider. Nothing about the formula is negotiable - not for sponsors, not for anyone. See exactly how it works →
Patients weigh in
Moderated patient reviews rate five of the six dimensions - value, clinical care, experience, access and support. Trust is the one thing patients don’t vote on, because it comes from the record, not opinion.
Re-checked, on a cycle
Prices move, records change, programs pivot. Verification re-runs monthly and scores recompute when the tracked data changes - a review here is a living document, not a snapshot.
Two ways to run a review site
The affiliate-funded model
- Who pays
- Providers, per click and per signup
- What rises to the top
- Whoever pays the most for the referral
- Can money move a score?
- Quietly, yes - and you’ll never see it happen
- When the site earns
- When you click, whether or not it saves you anything
How RatedByPatients works
- Who pays
- Nobody. Patients never pay, and Plus is earned by leaving one review
- What rises to the top
- Whatever the fixed formula scores highest
- Can money move a score?
- No. Sponsorship is labeled, and the count of scores it has changed is zero
- When the site earns
- From disclosed affiliate links and provider tools that cannot move a score or a rank
Our vision: affordable care as the default
Affordability in healthcare is usually framed as a policy problem, and much of it is. But a meaningful part of it is an information problem – people overpay because the true price, the safer option, or the cheaper equivalent was hard to see. Information problems can be fixed by people who publish.
So that is what we do. We publish verified prices next to each other. We publish the regulatory record next to the marketing. We publish what patients actually experienced next to what companies claim. And we charge readers for savings we can prove – never providers for placement we would have to hide.
If we do this right, the cheapest safe option and the obvious option become the same thing.
Straight answers
Who pays you?
Nobody. Plus is free and earned by leaving one review, and no provider can pay for a score, a rank or a place on a list. Some outbound links may earn a commission, disclosed in the footer of every page and never affecting a score or ranking. Providers can pay for tools that never touch what you see - analytics, a verified badge, replying to reviews - and never for visibility, ranking or judgement.
Can a provider buy a better score?
No. The formula is fixed, the weights are published, and sponsorship is walled off from scoring by design. If that ever changed, this site would have nothing left to sell you - honesty is the product.
Where do the prices come from?
From the providers’ own live checkouts, traced by hand - plans page, intake flow, fine print - and re-checked on a monthly cycle. Unverified numbers stay off the site entirely.
I found an error. What happens?
Tell us through the contact form with “Review correction” as the topic. A human checks it against the source, fixes what’s wrong, and the page’s updated date changes so you can see it happened.
Are you doctors?
No, and we don’t pretend to be. We’re a comparison and review site: we verify prices and public records and publish patient experience. Medical decisions belong with you and a licensed clinician - every page says so.