medicase — What Medicare pays for a procedure, by state, plus medical-travel costs

Informational only — not medical, legal or insurance advice. medicase shows historical Medicare averages for the professional (clinician) fee only. They exclude hospital/facility fees, anesthesia and other bills, and they are not a quote or an offer of coverage. Your price depends on your insurer, provider and plan, so ask them directly, and talk to a licensed clinician before making any treatment or travel decision.

1. Find a procedure

2. Compare abroad — procedure + travel + stay

Published price-survey estimates (USD) for common medical-travel destinations, plus official U.S. State Department per diem rates for the stay. Blank means we found no credible source — we never fill in a guess.

Airfare: enter your own quote (Google Flights, airline sites). No free flight-price API is used, so it defaults to $0.

Before you travel: check accreditation via the JCI accredited-organization search; plan follow-up care and who handles complications once you are home; get an itemized written quote (implants, anesthesia, hospital nights); prices and exchange rates change.

Where the numbers come from

US Medicare fees: CMS, Medicare Physician & Other Practitioners – by Geography and Service, queried live from the data.cms.gov API (latest CMS release; currently service year 2024). Averages of billed charge, Medicare allowed and Medicare paid amounts per procedure code.
International procedure estimates: published medical-tourism price surveys and facilitator tables, each cited next to its number with its publication and retrieval date. Blank cells mean no credible source was found.
Stay: U.S. Department of State foreign per diem rates (maximum lodging plus meals & incidentals), an official ceiling rather than a typical tourist cost.
Exchange rates: Frankfurter, which republishes European Central Bank reference rates.

Private-insurer and US cash prices are not shown. CPT® is a registered trademark of the American Medical Association. medicase is not affiliated with CMS, the State Department or any provider.

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A person walks through your comparison with you and checks the sources. It's a second look at the numbers, not medical, legal or insurance advice.

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API

Open, CORS-enabled, cached for 24h.

GET /api/search?q=knee — matching HCPCS/CPT codes
GET /api/price?code=27447 — national + per-state averages
GET /api/compare — procedures, countries, sources
GET /api/compare?procedure=knee&country=MX&nights=10&airfare=400&companion=1 — sourced estimate + stay + travel total