Sounds like you’re talking about Medicare rates. A lot of hospitals and payors use them as the basis for their price lists, but unless you’re an actual Medicare

Sounds like you’re talking about Medicare rates. A lot of hospitals and payors use them as the basis for their price lists, but unless you’re an actual Medicare patient it’s probably not what you’re actually paying. This data is collected from hospital “chargemasters” - which lay out the maximum amount a hospital will charge for a given procedure. However, hospitals have negotiated rates with payors that are almost always less than the chargemaster rate and are kept private. As a broad generalization, you can think of Medicare prices as the minimum a hospital will normally charge, and the chargemaster rate as a legally-enforced maximum.