Findings
Data-backed notes from hospitals' own published price files. Every number traces to a public source or a named assumption. Atom feed
Hospitals & Insurance Both Publish Price Info; We Checked Whether They Match
Hospitals publish prices under one federal rule; insurers publish the same contracts under another. We joined the two for one state and one insurer: 175,080 candidate comparisons, 98.6% failing the checks a fair comparison has to pass — and at the one hospital where validation fully worked, 312 comparisons matched the hospital's published dollar to the cent.
Two public files put the median hip implant construct cost at $6,705 across 319 hospitals
Hospitals post implant charges under HCPCS C1776, and they file an implantable-devices cost-to-charge ratio in their Medicare cost report. Multiplying the two across 319 hospitals in ten states gives a median construct cost of $6,704.97, with a 10th-to-90th-percentile range of $4,374 to $12,357.
Two prices for the same MRI inside one Wyoming health system
Banner Health posts an MRI of the brain (CPT 70553) at $1,934.59 cash in its 25-bed Torrington hospital and $1,200.78 in its Casper flagship, on gross charges within $43 of each other. The rural hospital's costs genuinely run higher, but not enough to explain the charges. What the price files and cost reports show.
Why a Medicare patient can owe more at the small rural hospital
At a Critical Access Hospital, Medicare figures your 20% coinsurance on the hospital's charges, not on what Medicare pays. At Banner's 25-bed Torrington hospital, that turns a $2,816 posted charge for a brain MRI into a $563.20 patient share: more than Medicare's entire payment for the same scan at its Casper flagship. The rule, cited, and the math from the hospital's own price file.
The same CT abdomen-and-pelvis scan is priced 62× apart across 73 Colorado hospitals
One CT code (CPT 74177) carries posted cash prices from $451.57 to $27,983.23 across 73 Colorado hospitals: a 62-fold spread in the hospitals' own price files. What the data shows, and what to do about it.