Medical cost comparison · China vs the US
China vs the US: what we can compare honestly, and what we refuse to
Every treatment site on the internet prints a savings percentage. Almost none can show you where both numbers came from. Here is the full comparison table we can defend — including the rows where one side or the other has no verifiable figure, and exactly why.
The main event
Six procedures, both sides, sources shown
China figures in RMB as published; US figures in USD as published. Every filled cell carries its source; every empty cell carries its reason. That is the whole method.
| Procedure | China figure | US figure | Honest verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single dental implant routine, tertiary public hospital |
≈ ¥5,700 all-in on average parts (service fee ≤¥4,500 capped + implant + crown) — NHSA, Jan 2024 | Not published — no national statistics body; the claims database sells lookups instead of averages | China’s side is verifiable; the US side is not. A “save X%” figure here is manufactured. |
| Cataract lens (monofocal) | ≈ ¥800 selected price, best-selling model (from ¥2,500) — national purchase, effective May–Jun 2024 | Not published — device bills run through negotiated insurer rates with no public average | Component-level only: China publishes the regulated lens price. Surgery fees are provincial on one side and opaque on the other. |
| Cataract lens (trifocal) | ≈ ¥8,900 selected price (from ¥23,000) — same purchase | Not published — same structure | Same as above. A premium lens at a verifiable ≈$1,250 is the strongest single comparison point on this page. |
| CT scan plain, per region |
≈ ¥200 in provinces completing the national re-pricing; hospital lists show ¥286–290 — NHSA, May 2025 | Not published — no national average; facility estimates vary by insurer and site | The cleanest item-level gap you can feel: a published, dated, government-explained price against a quote that varies by postcode. |
| LASIK both eyes, standard |
Not published — elective, privately quoted; no official or industry statistics | $4,492 both eyes — American Refractive Surgery Council, as displayed 31 Oct 2026 | The mirror image of the dental row: here the US side is sourced and China’s is not. Compare written quotes instead. |
| Health checkup package | ¥360 – 8,600 across four public-hospital price lists, by package level — 2025 editions | No matching product — annual physicals are insured; add-on tests bill separately with no bundled average | Not comparable as a category, because the products do not correspond. Compare item by item instead. |
| Cosmetic surgery | Not published — private institutions set prices locally; disclosure is rolling out by province | Not published — ASPS’s current report carries volumes only; the fee edition is withdrawn | Both sides empty — the only row where any honest table has two gaps. Quotes are the only real prices. |
About the implant arithmetic. ¥5,700 is our sum of the three published parts (capped fee ¥4,500 + average implant ≈¥900 + average crown ≈¥300). The government publishes the parts, not the total. High-cost regions may lift the service fee by up to 20%.
About currency. We publish each figure in its source currency. Converting at today’s rate makes a sourced number look more exact than it is — and the rate you actually get depends on your card and the day.
The empty cells
Why the gaps exist — on both sides
The US gaps are structural. American medical prices are negotiated privately between thousands of insurers and thousands of facilities; there is no national price schedule to publish, and the bodies that hold claims data monetise lookups rather than print averages. The $3,000–$6,000 implant figures and the cosmetic fee ranges filling English pages are clinics and lead-generation sites quoting each other — no survey, no sample, no date. We checked the source of the most-cited cosmetic fee document: withdrawn from its own publisher’s site.
The China gaps are structural too, in the other direction. Elective, private-pay markets — refractive surgery, cosmetic surgery — sit outside the government price system, and private institutions do not publish tariffs. What China does publish, it publishes well: bulk-purchase results with named prices, capped service fees, provincial schedules, hospital item lists. The public record is deep where regulation reaches and absent where it does not.
Numeracy
The “save 70%” arithmetic trap
Take a real number — China’s ≈¥5,700 implant — and divide it by an invented one, and you get a confident percentage attached to a hollow denominator. The percentage inherits all the fiction of the number beneath it, plus the authority of arithmetic. That is how a marketing figure becomes a headline: the division feels like verification, but dividing an unsourced number by anything multiplies the unsourced part.
There is a second trap inside the real numbers themselves: scope. A US cataract-lens bill and a Chinese one do not decompose the same way — surgeon, facility, anaesthesia and device are bundled and unbundled differently on each side of the Pacific, and insurance rebates what it rebates. A raw division of two totals with different scopes is not a comparison; it is a coincidence with a percent sign.
What to do instead
Build your own comparison in five steps
It takes two written quotes and twenty minutes. It beats every table on the internet, including ours.
Fix the scope in one sentence
“Single implant, routine site, fixture plus abutment plus crown, healing period uneventful.” Whatever your procedure, write the scope first — then both quotes answer the same question.
Get the home-country quote in writing
A good-faith estimate, itemised: professional fee, device or consumable by product class, facility, anaesthesia, follow-ups. In the US, you are entitled to one; ask for it.
Get the China quote on the same lines
Use the quote requests on the category pages — ten lines for implants, four for refractive, eight for cosmetic. Bundled totals go back with a request to unbundle.
Put the published anchors beside them
The anchors above tell you when a quote is out of line with the regulated parts. A consumable line far above the published purchase range is a question to send back, not a dealbreaker.
Add what the table never shows
Travel, accommodation, time off work, the revision clause, and what happens if something needs care after you fly home. A comparison that omits these is not conservative — it is incomplete.
Questions we get
Straight answers
So is it cheaper or not?
For the regulated parts — the capped implant fee, the purchased lenses, the re-priced imaging — the published Chinese figures are far below any US list price you will be quoted, and those figures are sourced. Whether your total is cheaper depends on scope, the quote you get, and the costs around the treatment. That answer is less clickable than “save 70%”, and it is the one that holds up.
Why does the US column have no numbers?
Because there are none we can trace to a publisher, a date and a working link. We looked — at the claims databases, the industry bodies, the current and withdrawn statistics reports. Printing the internet’s favourite ranges would have made this page look complete and made it useless.
Why does the China column sometimes have no numbers?
Same discipline, opposite cause. Elective private markets — refractive and cosmetic surgery — sit outside China’s published price system. Where regulation reaches, the numbers are strong; where it does not, we say so rather than launder marketing ranges through our pages.
Can you check my two quotes for me?
Yes — that is the point of the quote method. Send both to us via the contact page and we will tell you what each leaves out, in plain English, free. We do not book, refer, or take commission from anyone.
Sources & method
Where every filled cell comes from
Six documents. Every figure in the table traces to one of these; every gap is documented in the row itself.
Two quotes? We’ll compare them with you.
Send both — home and China — and we will tell you what each leaves out and where the scopes differ. Free, plain English, no referral fee, no sales call.