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Findings
MRF tracker
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What should a medical procedure actually cost?

Real hospital prices next to what Medicare pays. Built entirely from public data.

How do we know these numbers?

What this is. Every price here comes from public data: the price files hospitals are now required to post, Medicare's published rates, and hospitals' own Medicare cost reports. We use them to estimate what a procedure should cost and to show how far a hospital's price sits above that. These are estimates for context, not a quote, and not your actual bill.

What we don't do. We never invent a number: if a hospital doesn't post a price, we show nothing rather than guess. The prices are the hospital's facility fee (the room, equipment, and staff), and the doctor's separate reading fee is billed apart and isn't included in the facility comparison; the bill checker can benchmark it separately. Cost-report data runs a year or two behind.

Your privacy. Anything you type (a bill you're checking, your location) stays in your browser. It's never sent anywhere, and never rides along in a shared link.

Not medical, legal, or financial advice.

Full methodology & sources

Coverage

We cover 66 shoppable codes (64 of the 70 CMS-specified shoppable services, with six documented exclusions: one deleted CPT and five inpatient bundles), plus eight add-on codes (74 priced codes in all). Fifteen are imaging codes (MRI, CT, ultrasound, X-ray, mammography) that get a full cost build-up; the rest (lab, office visits, procedures, surgery) are shown as posted price vs. Medicare only.

How the estimates are built

For the imaging codes we line up three independent numbers and look for agreement: a bottom-up cost build (labor + equipment + overhead from named assumptions), a cost-to-charge cross-check from each hospital's Medicare cost report, and what Medicare actually pays. The cost-to-charge ratio is department-wide, not procedure-specific: a blunt instrument, used only as a cross-check. Most hospitals here are breadth-only, 2,100 of the 2,110 (26 in Wyoming, 84 in Colorado, 7 in Washington, DC, 185 in Florida, 392 in Texas, 89 in Nebraska, 132 in Kansas, 121 in Oklahoma, 7 in Delaware, 27 in Connecticut, 90 in Kentucky, 86 in Arizona, 103 in Missouri, 97 in Tennessee, 100 in North Carolina, 85 in Alabama, 130 in Georgia, 56 in South Carolina, 77 in Arkansas, 112 in Louisiana, 94 in Mississippi): they show the posted price, the cost-report cross-check where available, and the Medicare reference, but no bottom-up build, because their scan volumes aren't publicly reported. The per-component cost inputs now carry named public sources where they exist: staff time from BLS wage data, contrast from government drug pricing (CMS ASP) applied to FDA-label doses, and equipment cost and useful life from industry price guides and a peer-reviewed equipment-life table, with mammography scan volumes drawn from FDA accreditation statistics. What remains a labeled assumption (suite and facility overhead, the mobile-MRI day rate, ultrasound and X-ray service contracts, and most per-site scan volumes) is still marked as such, and the confidence of every input is recorded in the open data files.

Medicare references

We compare against Medicare's technical rate (the facility's fee), so it matches the hospital's posted facility charge; the radiologist's separate reading fee is excluded throughout. The exact rate depends on the service: OPPS for most outpatient services, the physician fee schedule (PFS) or lab schedule (CLFS) for the few Medicare doesn't pay under OPPS. OPPS wage adjustment uses each hospital's FY2026 Table 2 column 7 transition value where populated and column 6 otherwise, including reclassification and out-migration adjustments, with a state-qualified fallback for hospitals excluded from the prospective-payment table. A few codes have no comparable Medicare facility rate and are shown without one.

Rural hospitals

Critical Access Hospitals are paid by Medicare on a cost basis (~101% of cost), not standard rates, so for them the Medicare figure shown is a benchmark, not the literal payment. Every Wyoming hospital sits on Medicare's Frontier Wage Floor, which makes its locality-adjusted reference equal the national rate.

Washington, DC hospitals use the DC side of the Washington-area wage table: an imputed-floor index of 1.2605, not the Maryland-side 1.0703 row of the same interstate CBSA. For MRI brain 70553, that makes the DC benchmark $412.14 versus the $356.43 national figure. This is a policy floor, not plain metro adjustment.

Florida's Medicare benchmarks use one wage index statewide (1.0369 for FY2026): the Key West area's high wages inflate Medicare's "rural Florida" wage floor, which then lifts every Florida metro to the same value, so Miami, Tampa, Orlando, and rural Florida all carry an identical, slightly-above-national benchmark. Children's hospitals carry an extra caveat: Medicare is an adult program, so its benchmarks are a general yardstick there, not rates those hospitals typically bill.

Texas's geographic wage floor is 0.9721, below the national average. Most hospitals use it, while 25 carry provider-specific out-migration adjustments in Medicare's post-reclassified table (0.9748 to 1.0017). Texas also introduces Rural Emergency Hospitals, a new Medicare facility class paid the standard outpatient rate plus 5%, so the benchmark shown for an REH runs about 5% below what Medicare actually pays it.

Nebraska is the fifth floor-flattened state: the statutory rural floor lifts every Nebraska wage area (Omaha, Lincoln, Grand Island, and the rural balance) to one FY2026 index (1.0273), a bit above the national average. Two Nebraska hospitals, Friend Community Healthcare System and Garden County Health Services, are Rural Emergency Hospitals, so their shown benchmarks run about 5% below Medicare's actual REH payment.

Kansas breaks that streak. Eleven post-reclassification values coexist: clean Kansas-side Kansas City hospitals use 0.8778, rural Kansas starts at 0.8336, and provider adjustments put Hays at the high end, 0.9684. MRI brain 70553 therefore spans $320.84 to $349.67. Oklahoma has a 0.9023 baseline plus four exceptions: Durant, Woodward, and Jackson County at 0.9072, and Northeastern Health System Sequoyah in Fort Smith Arkansas–Oklahoma at 0.9134. Kansas and Oklahoma add nine more Rural Emergency Hospitals, whose shown benchmarks likewise run about 5% below Medicare's actual REH payment.

Delaware is the second non-flattened state. Its seven hospitals use five per-provider values from 1.0526 to 1.1526, all above the national average; MRI brain 70553 spans $367.68 to $389.06. PPS-excluded Nemours uses manual CBSA 48864 and Delaware's state-qualified fallback at 1.0697 ($371.34), while the other six hospitals use their own post-reclassified table values.

Connecticut is the sixth floor-flattened state and has the highest wage index in this dataset. Its six FY2026 wage areas and all 27 hospitals resolve to the rural-floor index 1.2890, so MRI brain 70553 is $418.23 everywhere in the state versus the $356.43 national figure and Washington, DC's previous high of $412.14. PPS-exempt Connecticut Children's uses manual Hartford CBSA 25540 and Connecticut's state-qualified fallback; every other hospital uses its own per-provider table result.

Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi are all non-flattened. Arkansas has 11 payable values from 0.8187 to 0.9134 (MRI brain 70553: $317.66–$337.91), Louisiana has 14 from 0.8105 to 0.9072 ($315.90–$336.58), and Mississippi has 15 from 0.7398 to 0.8529 ($300.78–$324.97), all versus the $356.43 national anchor. State-qualified rows keep the Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi sides of the nine interstate wage-area surfaces distinct, including all three Memphis states. Little River Memorial uses the Arkansas side of Texarkana at 0.8901 while the Texas side remains 0.9721. Choctaw Health Center's legacy 1.4448 federal placeholder is not treated as a real wage: the Medicare reference uses Mississippi's own 0.7398 Table 3 row.

Hospitals sometimes post separate negotiated-rate schedules for specific service lines — a sub-entity such as a cancer center, or a specialty network such as a behavioral-health administrator. Those rates are shown and labeled in each hospital's details, and they never feed a headline insurer rate or comparison.

The bill checker

The Check-a-bill tool compares what you were charged against that hospital's own posted prices and Medicare, entirely in your browser. When a charge runs far above one code's price, it names the most common add-on (e.g. color Doppler on an ultrasound) and can generate an editable dispute letter pre-filled with the sourced numbers and standard patient-rights requests. The letter is assembled and downloaded entirely in your browser; for any code we have no benchmark for, it asks for an explanation rather than citing a price. It says "commonly," never that your specific bill contains it.

Finding what's near you

Set a hospital, town, or ZIP as your location to rank hospitals by distance. The Browse controls organize the result list without changing that location, and Find a hospital anywhere searches every covered hospital regardless of region. Distances are straight-line miles, not drive times. Your location and compare list stay in your browser.

Sources

Hospital machine-readable price files · CMS Medicare cost reports (HCRIS) · CMS OPPS & fee schedules · BLS wage data.

Insurer-specific rates

When you pick your insurer, we show the rates that hospital posted for that insurer's plans in its machine-readable price file. Hospitals spell payers inconsistently, so we group raw names into families using a hand-curated mapping (payers.yaml in our pipeline), and we classify each rate as commercial, Medicare Advantage, or Medicaid managed care; classes are never mixed. Only dollar-denominated rates are shown; percentage-of-charges entries can't be displayed. A negotiated rate is what the insurer agreed to pay the hospital, not your out-of-pocket cost: your share depends on your deductible and plan, and your EOB is authoritative.

Every displayed number traces to a public source or a named assumption.

Free to use with attribution for journalism, research, and personal use. Commercial use: please get in touch.

Sources: hospital MRFs · CMS HCRIS · CMS OPPS · BLS OEWS

Browse: every procedure · every hospital

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