The Most Overpriced Medical Procedures in America
Top 20 procedures by markup ratio — what hospitals charge vs. what Medicare pays.
Hospital billing is one of the most opaque systems in America. When you receive a medical bill, the "charge" — what the hospital lists as the price — often bears little resemblance to what your insurance or Medicare actually pays. We analyzed 4,430 medical procedures using 2023 Medicare data to find the biggest gaps.
The Top 20 Most Marked-Up Procedures
These procedures have the highest ratio of hospital charges to Medicare-allowed amounts, filtered to procedures with at least 10,000 services:
What This Means
Hospital "charges" are essentially list prices that nobody actually pays. Medicare negotiates much lower rates, and private insurers negotiate their own (usually somewhere in between). The uninsured, however, may be billed the full charge — which is why price transparency matters.
The biggest markups tend to be on high-volume, low-cost procedures like blood draws and basic lab tests. The hospital may charge thousands for a service that Medicare values at under $20.