Health insurance providers begin to publish prices for medical care

Insurers and employers have begun to publicly publish the prices they pay for health services ranging from doctor visits to lab tests, greatly expanding a federally mandated effort to expose long-secret rates.

The new data comes in the form of large, machine-readable digital files, usually in formats not easily accessible to consumers, published primarily on insurers’ websites. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services set a July 1 deadline for releasing the data, with some major insurers releasing early morning data on Friday, including Elevance Health Inc. Anthem, Cigna Corp. and humane Inc., according to Turquoise Health Co., a company that compiles the data.