The same blood test costs $4 at one hospital and $297 at another. This is the report.

If you walk into one American hospital and pay cash for a complete blood count — billing code 85025, the most ordered lab test in the country — you'll be charged $4. Walk into another and the same test costs $297. Both prices are published. Both are legal. Neither hospital will mention the other when you call to schedule.

This isn't unique to blood tests, and it isn't unique to one part of the country. Across the 6,113 U.S. hospitals required to publish standard charges, the gap between the cheapest and most expensive provider for the same procedure runs into the dozens — sometimes past 100×.

The data below is the actual published cash-pay rate for each procedure, at every hospital that lists one. It's the price a patient without insurance — or with a high-deductible plan — would be billed before any negotiation.

Federal law has required hospitals to publish their standard charges in a machine-readable format since 2021. In practice, those files live deep on hospital websites in formats designed to be parsed by computers, not patients. We parse them — all of them — so you don't have to.

Methodology note. Prices reflect the "discounted cash price" or equivalent self-pay rate as published by each hospital under CMS price transparency rule 45 CFR 180. Lowest and highest values use the 2nd and 98th percentile of reported prices to filter administrative outliers. Prices for the same procedure may include or exclude facility, professional, and equipment fees depending on the hospital's billing structure. Always confirm the final price with the provider before scheduling.