Mapping Where You're More Likely to Get Price-Gouged By a Hospital

When it comes to reducing one's hospital bills, a key factor is location, location, location. A patient who undergoes joint-replacement surgery in Ada, Oklahoma, might receive a $5,300 hospital invoice for services rendered. But somebody who gets the same operation in Monterey Park, California, could be staring down the barrel of a much huger bill – $223,000, to be exact.

These were the average lowest and highest prices in 2011 for one particular joint-swapping procedure in the United States, according to federal data. They show in stark light how hospitals charge vastly different amounts for almost identical services, a peculiarity of the American healthcare system that Steven Brill wrote about this year in a Time cover story. (It lives behind a paywall.) Brill spent months investigating how hospitals calculate the bills they stick to patients; here's Time describing one of his findings: