An iron infusion is about 30 to 60 minutes in a chair with a line in your arm. The bill has almost nothing to do with that. It is two line items stacked together: a J-coded drug that can range from $22 to $2,108 per dose at Medicare’s own price, and an administration code that one hospital lists at $713 cash and a clinic down the road might charge $150 for.
That is why the same procedure shows up at $400 in one search result and $4,300 in another. Both are real. This guide separates the drug from the chair so you can see which half of your quote is negotiable, and shows what three real hospitals actually post as their cash price alongside what Medicare pays for the identical service.
What Does an Iron Infusion Cost Without Insurance?
Figures below were pulled September 4, 2026 from the July 1 to September 30, 2026 CMS Part B payment limit file, the July 2026 OPPS Addendum B, the 2024-claims CMS Physician and Other Practitioners file released May 21, 2026, and three hospitals’ machine-readable price files (University of Vermont Medical Center, dated April 28, 2026; St. Luke’s Regional Medical Center in Boise, dated March 25, 2026; Ochsner Clinic Foundation in New Orleans, dated April 1, 2026).
| Setting / formulation | Low | Typical | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Independent clinic, all formulations (Revived, Houston, published rate) | $350 | varies by dose | $1,500 |
| Medicare benchmark, doctor’s office (drug + $60.45 for CPT 96365) | $106 (iron sucrose 200 mg) | $909 (Injectafer 750 mg) | $2,168 (Monoferric 1,000 mg) |
| Hospital outpatient, posted cash, cheaper irons (iron sucrose or ferric gluconate) | $871 | $1,005 | $1,071 |
| Hospital outpatient, posted cash, Injectafer 750 mg | $4,238 (St. Luke’s) | $4,263 | $4,289 (UVM) |
| Hospital outpatient, posted cash, Monoferric 1,000 mg | $8,052 (UVM) | $8,052 | $8,052 |
| Same 750 mg Injectafer session, posted cash, across three hospitals | $788 (Ochsner) | $4,238 (St. Luke’s) | $4,289 (UVM) |
| Full Injectafer course, 1,500 mg over two visits, hospital cash | $8,475 | $8,527 | $8,578 |
A few notes on the rows. UVM and St. Luke’s agree with each other more closely than any two blog posts do: $713 versus $734 for the infusion itself, and $3,575.93 versus $3,503.58 for the same 750 mg Injectafer vial. Ochsner is the outlier in the other direction, and the reason is its self-pay policy rather than its chargemaster, which the next section covers.
The Monoferric row is the high-water mark, and it is not an error. UVM lists a single 1,000 mg ferric derisomaltose vial at $7,338.90 cash. It is a one-and-done dose, so the total course is one visit rather than two or five, but the sticker on that single visit is the highest number in this guide.
How much does an iron infusion cost at Medicare rates? For a 750 mg Injectafer dose in a physician’s office, $849 for the drug plus $60.45 for the administration, or $909.45. In a hospital outpatient department Medicare pays $217.31 for the same administration code, bringing it to $1,066.31. Both are a fraction of the $4,238 to $4,289 cash price at the hospitals above.
What Drives the Price
The iron itself is 80% to 95% of the bill
Under the July 2026 Part B payment limit file, the per-dose drug cost at Medicare’s benchmark runs like this: sodium ferric gluconate (Ferrlecit) $21.97 for 125 mg, iron sucrose (Venofer) $45.40 for 200 mg, iron dextran (INFeD) $379.86 for 1,000 mg, ferumoxytol (Feraheme) $188.70 for 510 mg, ferric carboxymaltose (Injectafer) $849.00 for 750 mg, and ferric derisomaltose (Monoferric) $2,107.70 for 1,000 mg. That is a 96-fold spread across products that all deliver iron.
These are quarterly figures. They reset October 1, 2026, so a quote you get in the fall will be priced off a different file.
Some hospitals mark the drug up 4x over Medicare, and some do not
Medicare’s July 2026 payment limit for a 750 mg Injectafer dose is $849.00. UVM and St. Luke’s charge $3,575.93 and $3,503.58 in cash for that same vial, roughly four times the federal benchmark. Ochsner charges $720.61 in cash for its 750 mg preparation, below the benchmark. The markup sits on the pharmacy line, not the nursing line, which is why a “how much is the infusion” question rarely gets you the number that matters.
The setting sets the chair fee
CPT 96365 covers the first hour of a therapeutic IV infusion. Medicare’s 2026 hospital outpatient rate is $217.31 (APC 5693). Medicare’s national office-based allowed amount, from 2024 claims across 23,128 providers and 1.39 million services, is $60.45. The two hospitals post $713 and $734 in cash for the same code. Same hour, same pump.
The cheap iron is not always the cheap course
Iron sucrose is inexpensive per dose but usually needs about five visits to deliver 1,000 mg, and the chair fee repeats every visit. At St. Luke’s posted prices that works out to roughly $5,023 for the course, against $4,238 for a single 750 mg Injectafer session. The per-session price and the per-course price rank the products differently.
Labs and a visit ride along
Before and after an infusion you will typically be billed for iron studies, and those appear as separate line items. See our ferritin test cost guide and CBC test cost guide for what those should run, plus blood work cost without insurance for the broader panel picture.
Cash Price vs. Insurance
Here is the finding that should shape how you approach the bill, and it cuts both ways depending on which hospital you walk into.
At UVM and St. Luke’s, the posted discounted cash price is identical to the gross charge. UVM lists CPT 96365 at $713 gross and $713 cash. St. Luke’s lists $734 gross and $734 cash. Neither file encodes any self-pay discount at all on this code.
Ochsner Clinic Foundation in New Orleans does the opposite. Its file, dated April 1, 2026, posts a flat self-pay price of 22% of gross on every line: a 750 mg ready-to-mix ferric carboxymaltose bag lists at $3,275.52 gross and $720.61 cash, ferumoxytol 510 mg at $6,445.59 gross and $1,418.03 cash, iron sucrose 200 mg at $661.14 gross and $145.45 cash, and CPT 96365 at $306 gross and $67.32 cash.
Add those two Ochsner lines together and a 750 mg Injectafer session comes to $787.93 in posted cash, against $4,237.58 at St. Luke’s and $4,288.93 at UVM for the same treatment. Ochsner’s self-pay price is below Medicare’s own $909.45 office benchmark.
That five-fold gap between hospitals, on the same drug, in the same year, is the most useful thing in this guide. Ask specifically for the self-pay or discounted cash rate by name before you assume the sticker is the price.
Meanwhile UVM’s own file shows what insurers pay for the administration code: a negotiated range of $38.51 to $641.70, with Medicare Advantage plans landing near $57 and commercial plans between $112 and $606. There, the uninsured cash price sits above every single negotiated rate in the file, including the highest commercial one.
That is the whole argument for negotiating. You are not asking for charity when you ask a hospital to price your infusion near what it accepts from Cigna. You are asking for a number the hospital already publishes and already accepts. Our guide to hospital price transparency walks through how to pull your own hospital’s file and find those rows.
If you do have insurance, the drug is where your coinsurance bites. Medicare Part B coinsurance is 20% of the payment limit, which on Injectafer’s $849 dose is about $170 before any deductible, and on Monoferric’s $2,107.70 dose is about $422.
How to Pay Less
Ask for the discounted cash rate by name. Do not assume the posted charge is the price. Ochsner’s file publishes self-pay at 22% of gross across every line, which turns a $3,275.52 Injectafer bag plus a $306 infusion charge into $787.93 all in. UVM’s and St. Luke’s files publish no self-pay discount at all. You cannot tell which kind of hospital you are dealing with without asking, and the answer here is worth about $3,500.
Ask for the drug and the chair to be quoted separately. A single bundled “iron infusion” quote hides which half is negotiable. The drug line is where the pharmacy markup lives; the administration line is where the hospital facility fee lives. Get both in writing before you schedule.
Ask whether a cheaper iron is clinically appropriate for you. That is a conversation for your clinician, not a decision to make from a price list, but the price difference is large enough to be worth raising. Bring the numbers.
Move the infusion out of the hospital outpatient department. The same CPT 96365 that costs $713 to $734 in cash at a hospital is billed at a national Medicare office rate of $60.45, and independent clinics publish flat session prices. Revived Personalized Wellness in Houston lists $350 to $1,500 per session, updated June 4, 2026, and offers bundle pricing for multi-session protocols. Free-standing infusion suites and hematology offices are the setting to price-shop first.
Apply to the manufacturer’s patient assistance program before you pay. Read the fine print carefully, because the two programs work in opposite directions for uninsured patients. The Injectafer Savings Program’s own terms state plainly that uninsured and cash-paying patients are not eligible; that card is for commercially insured patients only. But American Regent’s separate AR Assist Patient Assistance Program does serve uninsured and underinsured patients who meet income limits, and it supplies Venofer at no cost to those who qualify. Pharmacosmos runs a Monoferric Patient Solutions Patient Assistance Program for uninsured or underinsured patients with household income at or below 300% of the federal poverty level. None of these help if you pay the bill first, so apply before treatment.
Request charity care and an itemized bill if you already got the invoice. Nonprofit hospitals are required to have a written financial assistance policy, and an infusion bill in the thousands is exactly the kind of charge those policies were built for. Start with hospital charity care, then read how to negotiate medical bills and pull an itemized hospital bill so you can see the drug and administration lines separately. Our negotiation script tool gives you the wording.
Check the price against a benchmark before you agree to anything. Run the quote through our fair price checker and the charity care check to see whether the number you were given is anywhere near what the service actually costs.
The Bottom Line
The chair time in an iron infusion is worth $60 to Medicare, $67.32 to a self-pay patient at one hospital, and $734 to another. The drug in it is worth anywhere from $22 to $2,108 at Medicare’s benchmark and up to $7,339 at a hospital’s cash price. Those two facts explain every confusing quote you will see.
Price the drug and the setting as two separate decisions, and ask every hospital for its posted self-pay rate by name. A cheaper formulation in an independent clinic and an expensive one in a hospital outpatient department are separated by more than ten times the money, for a procedure that looks identical from the chair. If you are also budgeting the surrounding care, our guides to IV therapy cost and hospital stay cost per day cover the adjacent line items, and blood transfusion cost covers the different procedure that “iron transfusion” searches sometimes mean.