Machine-readable files are the core output of the federal Transparency in Coverage rule. Instead of a PDF or web page, plans publish structured JSON that follows a public schema, so any developer can download and process it.
Each plan publishes several kinds of MRF: in-network rate files, allowed-amount files, and a table-of-contents file that links them to the plans they cover. Files are refreshed monthly.
Because the format is designed for software, a single file can be gigabytes compressed. Turning them into answers a person can use, like the price of a knee MRI at a specific clinic, takes parsing, deduplication and joining with provider and code reference data.