Service
Plan comparison
Every carrier in your county, side by side
About Plan comparison
We pull every on-exchange plan available at your address and rank them by what you will actually spend in a year, not by what the premium says.
A plan comparison that sorts by monthly premium is not a comparison. It is a price list, and price lists hide the two numbers that actually decide what a year of coverage costs you: the deductible you will realistically hit, and the maximum out-of-pocket you are exposed to if the year goes badly.
We model total annual cost instead. For every on-exchange plan available at your address, we take the twelve months of premium after your credit, add the expected cost-sharing for your actual pattern of care, and check the result against the worst case. Then we rank on that. The plan at the top is frequently not the plan with the lowest premium.
What we check that a price list does not
Networks are county-specific and they change every January. A carrier you recognise nationally can operate a narrow network on your street, and a hospital being in-network does not mean the anaesthesiologist practising inside it is. We verify each named provider against each specific plan for the coming plan year, not the current one.
Formularies get the same treatment. The same medication can sit on a $10 generic tier on one plan and a $340 specialty tier on the plan next to it, and a drug that is off-formulary entirely is your problem alone. If step therapy or prior authorisation applies, you want to know in November, not in February when the pharmacy refuses the refill.
Where silver loading changes the answer
Because the premium tax credit is pinned to the benchmark Silver plan and insurers load the cost of cost-sharing reductions onto Silver premiums specifically, Gold plans routinely land cheaper than Silver after the credit while covering considerably more. We flag every instance of that in your county rather than letting the list ordering hide it.
The reverse also matters. Under 250% of the federal poverty level, cost-sharing reductions quietly upgrade a Silver plan into something richer than Platinum at the Silver price, and they attach to Silver only. In that band we will push you toward Silver even when Bronze looks cheaper on the list, because it is.
How it runs
Pull every plan at your address
County-level, on-exchange, all carriers, with the current filed rates rather than the prior year figures.
Apply your actual credit
Computed from your household and income, then subtracted from every plan so the comparison is like for like.
Model the year, not the month
Twelve months of premium plus expected cost-sharing for your pattern of care, checked against the worst case.
Verify providers and drugs
Each doctor and each prescription checked by name against each shortlisted plan for the coming plan year.
Questions about this specifically
Do you show plans you cannot sell?
Yes. If an off-exchange plan or a Medicaid managed care plan is genuinely the better answer we will tell you, even though we are not paid for it. The comparison is worth nothing if it only contains the things we earn on.
How current are the plan details?
Rates and plan designs come from filed data for the plan year you are shopping. Provider networks are checked live, because directories update continuously and a network verified in October can change by January.
What if my doctor is not in any plan?
It happens, particularly with specialised care. We will tell you which plans cover them out of network, what that realistically costs including balance billing, and whether a PPO premium is worth paying for that specific relationship.
More general questions are answered on the questions page, and the vocabulary is on theglossary.