BY ANDY MILLER | Georgia Health News

While the average price for a pregnancy ultrasound is $337 in Georgia, it’s $411 in Macon, according to a study published in the journal Health Affairs.

A new study shows a wide variation in health care prices between states — and often between cities in the same state.

The study, published Wednesday in the journal Health Affairs, found that Georgia health care prices for the privately insured are below the national average.

Some states, meanwhile, pay more than double what other states pay, according to the study from the Health Care Cost Institute.

The HCCI uses commercial insurance to chart differences in prices for more than 240 common medical services. The prices studied are total payments received by a medical provider — both from the insurer and the consumer, which includes co-pays and co-insurance.

Compared with the national average, Alaska has the highest average health care prices, followed by Wisconsin, North Dakota, New Hampshire and Minnesota. In Arizona, Florida, Maryland and Tennessee, more than 90 percent of health care services are priced lower than the national average.

Health care has seen an increasing push toward more transparency in pricing, and insurers as well as other organizations have brought more data into the public realm.