What an appendectomy actually costs
Almost always unplanned, so nobody is given a price beforehand and nobody consents to one.
Billed
$81,331
Hospital and doctor charges added together.
Medicare accepted
$14,892
What Medicare treated as payable.
The gap
5.5x
How many times the accepted amount the billed figure was.
What different people pay
| MedicareFacility plus the doctor's fee, whole admission | $14,892 |
The gap is the argument
A list price is close to fiction. Almost nobody pays it: Medicare does not, no insurer with a contract does, and the hospital itself will take far less from someone paying cash. It is an opening number.
If your bill for appendix removal is near the list price, the figures above are what you raise. Ask for the cash price by name, it is published and they are required to honour it. Then ask why you are being charged more than a contracted payer for identical work.
What these numbers are not: a quote. Prices vary by hospital, by region and by what else happens during the visit. These are Medicare rates; commercial insurers pay differently, usually more.
Emergency care is the one thing you cannot shop for, which is exactly why these bills run high and why so many of them are wrong. Almost every ER bill has room in it.
You got an ER billWhere this came from
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 2024 data, retrieved 2026-08-07. Medicare fee-for-service only.