Data Sources & Methodology
Every price on Wellness Vision names its source and the year its data describes. This page explains which sources we use, in what order, how we label figures that no official source publishes — and what we have corrected.
Editorial Independence
Wellness Vision receives no revenue from hospital referrals, procedure bookings or clinic sponsorships, and names no clinics. No source below has paid to be included.
How we choose a number
- Official price databases first. When a government or national health system publishes a price, we use it and cite the exact entry and its date.
- Then laws, health-policy research and peer-reviewed journals — always the specific document, never just an organisation's homepage, and checked against the document itself.
- Manufacturer announcements only for the manufacturer's own prices (for example a list-price cut or a self-pay price).
- Market estimates, labelled. Many treatments abroad have no official or peer-reviewed price. There we show ranges and call them market estimates — we do not present them as verified.
- Dated, converted the same way. Each figure carries the year its data describes. Foreign currencies are converted at the European Central Bank reference rate of the stated day.
We do not use clinic or hospital websites, medical-tourism agencies, data aggregators, Forbes Health, Healthline, WebMD or Wikipedia as a source of fact.
Official price databases and laws
The National Average Drug Acquisition Cost (NADAC) survey is our source for what US pharmacies pay for a drug, updated weekly. Medicare's negotiated prices come from CMS fact sheets; the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge from CMS program pages.
Official French list price, dispensing fee and reimbursement rate for each pack, with the date of the last update.
NHS indicative price for each pack and the date it took effect; NHSBSA pages for prescription-charge exemptions.
Statutory co-payment rules (§ 61 SGB V), including the increase from January 1, 2027 published in BGBl. 2026 I No. 228.
Research and peer-reviewed literature
US coverage, out-of-pocket and spending context. We cite the specific analysis and its data year, not the KFF homepage.
International drug price comparisons, for example US insulin prices against 33 OECD countries (2022 data: 9.71× gross, 2.33× net).
Graft counts and repair-case shares in hair restoration. The census publishes no prices, so we never attribute a price to it.
For example JAMA Network Open, BMJ Global Health, Obesity, Annals of Internal Medicine, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Global Open and Aesthetic Plastic Surgery — cited by author, journal and year, and checked against the paper itself, not a press summary.
AI Assistance Disclosure
Wellness Vision uses AI tools in production (Azure Neural TTS voice, DALL-E images, Grok Imagine visuals, Soundraw music) and AI assistance in research and drafting. Every figure is checked against the primary source it cites before publication, and those checks are recorded with a date.
Corrections
If you believe a figure on Wellness Vision is wrong, email [email protected] with the relevant source. We review corrections within 7 business days and log them here.
- Nov 2, 2026 — Turkish Ministry of Health price tariff (hair transplant, rhinoplasty, IVF): it had been described as a "legal minimum"; it is the Ministry's base (floor) price for international patients, in force since Feb 23, 2026, set by ministerial approval rather than by law. Hair transplant: the sentence "our $2,800 estimate sits above that floor" removed — the tariff does not define a follicle as a graft, so the two cannot be compared. Rhinoplasty: an unsourced "US ~$8,000" removed from the title; lira converted at the ECB rate of Oct 30, 2026. IVF: "packages cost more" replaced by what the tariff excludes (travel and hotel). LASIK: the same "legal minimum" wording corrected; lira converted at the ECB rate of Oct 30, 2026 (~$270, previously ~$290 at mid-2026 rates); Femto-LASIK and SMILE tariff lines added.
- Oct 25, 2026 — Source audit of all 25 articles (Oct 22–25): every figure re-checked against the source it cites. Figures credited to bodies that do not publish them (for example dental, rhinoplasty and hair-transplant prices) are now labelled market estimates or removed; outdated figures were moved to the latest data (for example US health spending to 2024, NHS dental access to the August–September 2026 survey wave, Eliquis to its January 2026 list price); unverifiable claims were removed; source lists now point to the specific documents instead of homepages. Each article shows its own “Updated” date.
- Oct 22, 2026 — Insulin: production cost corrected to $48–71 (BMJ Global Health); KFF “1 in 4 paid above $35” dated to 2018, before the caps; rationing figure attributed to Annals of Internal Medicine (2022, 2021 data).
- Oct 21, 2026 — Hair transplant cost per graft: “$4–$10 per graft” had been credited to a peer-reviewed US survey that publishes no per-graft price — now labelled a market estimate; journal name corrected to Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.
- Oct 21, 2026 — Ozempic: “$28–140 per person-year” had been credited to JAMA Network Open; it comes from Levi et al., Obesity (2026). Two unverifiable claims removed.
- Oct 21, 2026 — Hair transplant Turkey vs US: a per-graft price wrongly attributed to ISHRS removed; prices labelled market estimates.
Each article shows its own “Updated” date. Drug-price pages were last refreshed in October 2026.