How much does Medicare pay for CPT 66982?

Medicare allowed an average of $728.10 per service and paid $576.10 of that, the balance being the patient's coinsurance and deductible (2024 data). Providers submitted an average of $3036.61, which is what they billed rather than what they received — Medicare pays its fee schedule regardless of the charge.

What is CPT code 66982?

Complex removal of cataract with insertion of prosthetic lens. It was billed 223,921 times to 139,511 Medicare beneficiaries by 4,458 providers in 2024.

Does 66982 pay differently in an office than a hospital?

Yes. The allowed amount averaged $55.33 in an office setting and $872.16 in a facility. The office rate is generally higher because the practice supplies the room, staff and equipment out of that single payment; in a hospital those are billed separately by the facility.

Which specialty bills 66982 most?

Ophthalmology, with 109,927 services from 3,129 clinicians. Next are Ambulatory Surgical Center, Optometry.

CPT 66982

Complex removal of cataract with insertion of prosthetic lens

$728.10Medicare-allowed amount per service, averaged across 223,921 services

Providers submitted

$3036.61

Asking price, not received

Medicare allowed

$728.10

The fee schedule figure

Medicare paid

$576.10

Balance is patient coinsurance

Providers submitted an average of $3036.61 for this code and Medicare allowed $728.10 — 4.2× less. That gap is normal and means nothing on its own: Medicare pays its fee schedule regardless of what is billed, so the submitted figure describes a hospital chargemaster, not a price anyone paid. Of the allowed amount Medicare paid $576.10 (79%); the rest is the patient’s coinsurance and deductible.

Office pays differently to hospital

Office / non-facility: $55.33
Hospital / facility: $872.16

The facility rate is higher for this code, which is unusual and generally means the service depends on equipment or staffing a hospital carries. 39,492 services were billed in an office setting and 184,429 in a facility.

Services: 223,921
Beneficiaries: 139,511
Providers billing it: 4,458
Total allowed: $163,036,880

What Medicare pays for CPT 66982

Across 223,921 services billed by 4,458 providers to 139,511 beneficiaries, Medicare allowed an average of $728.10 per service. That is 1.6 services per beneficiary, so this is a code patients typically receive more than once. The allowed amount is the figure that matters: it is what Medicare and the patient together owe, set by the fee schedule and adjusted for local practice costs. What a provider chose to submit has no bearing on it.

Who bills 66982

Specialty	Services	Beneficiaries	Avg allowed	Providers
Ophthalmology	109,927	74,981	$622.32	3,129
Ambulatory Surgical Center	82,373	63,986	$1147.07	1,297
Optometry	31,621	544	$4.38	32

66982 reimbursement by state

Two different numbers. Allowed is what Medicare actually allowed in that state, which includes the local practice-cost adjustment. Standardized strips that geographic adjustment out of the payment, so it is the column to use when comparing states — a difference there reflects how the code was billed, not what it costs to run a practice locally.

State	Services	Allowed	Standardized pmt	Providers
North Carolina	26,202	$133.23	$111.16	135
California	21,336	$1055.98	$707.73	507
New York	14,997	$829.70	$585.22	264
Florida	12,076	$881.08	$726.20	294
Wisconsin	11,009	$229.94	$186.99	85
Texas	10,198	$870.28	$712.50	278
Illinois	8,867	$666.91	$522.71	175
New Jersey	8,258	$991.42	$725.77	166
Ohio	7,751	$666.37	$561.64	164
Massachusetts	7,455	$903.52	$680.01	143
Georgia	6,445	$488.18	$399.75	108
Pennsylvania	6,145	$843.82	$679.95	174
Maryland	5,872	$935.71	$733.06	118
Indiana	5,527	$814.17	$668.75	111
Virginia	4,987	$823.37	$672.44	119
Tennessee	4,331	$825.50	$720.37	107
Arizona	4,195	$922.98	$745.58	105
Washington	4,144	$953.56	$717.94	117
Michigan	4,059	$818.62	$676.74	116
Iowa	4,049	$611.70	$517.94	47
Kentucky	3,695	$504.91	$425.82	58
Oklahoma	2,817	$791.07	$678.79	59
Minnesota	2,390	$885.14	$695.46	65
Missouri	2,277	$811.60	$680.09	68
Kansas	2,176	$774.42	$662.55	45
South Carolina	2,075	$848.79	$712.31	58
Arkansas	2,067	$789.02	$695.28	55
Colorado	2,043	$900.28	$715.33	65
Oregon	2,033	$957.06	$721.73	62
Nebraska	1,925	$763.92	$644.75	43
Alabama	1,783	$804.75	$733.86	47
Delaware	1,739	$914.93	$723.06	21
Nevada	1,668	$942.50	$741.91	37
Connecticut	1,644	$977.80	$724.59	47
Mississippi	1,609	$780.87	$704.68	45
Utah	1,502	$799.31	$658.10	50
West Virginia	1,240	$415.28	$348.75	21
New Hampshire	1,219	$838.79	$661.98	30
South Dakota	1,208	$748.37	$634.22	25
New Mexico	1,200	$880.77	$726.34	28
Louisiana	1,108	$802.97	$696.38	40
North Dakota	1,088	$778.14	$644.27	19
Montana	1,053	$834.85	$689.03	21
Maine	695	$486.00	$396.66	14
Hawaii	647	$1035.70	$766.80	19
Wyoming	596	$806.11	$659.73	11
Idaho	569	$918.08	$770.93	19
Vermont	513	$791.14	$639.26	16
Alaska	450	$1079.11	$724.69	11
Rhode Island	445	$861.65	$679.95	11
Guam	221	$943.75	$769.84	4
District of Columbia	134	$762.02	$549.67	6
Puerto Rico	110	$682.35	$632.37	2
U.S. Virgin Islands	47	$654.82	$546.26	2
Northern Mariana Islands	32	$765.04	$569.70	1

Related codes

66984Removal of cataract$304.21
66991Extracapsular removal of cataract$2193.25
66986Exchange of prosthetic lens$806.71
66988Removal of cataract$1349.13
66989Complex extracapsular removal of cataract$2460.11

Billing this code is not the same as earning it

An allowed amount is revenue to a practice, not income to a clinician. It funds staff, premises, equipment and supplies before anyone is paid. What clinicians actually earn is published separately by the Department of Labor, and what industry pays them is published separately again by CMS — this site carries both.

What doctors are paid →·Look up a clinician →·All procedure codes →

Where this comes from. CMS Medicare Physician & Other Practitioners, by Provider and Service, 2024. It covers fee-for-service Original Medicare Part B only — not Medicare Advantage, not Medicaid, and not commercial insurance, which typically pays more for the same code.

How it is averaged. CMS publishes one average per provider per code. Every figure here is re-weighted by the number of services, so a clinician who billed the code 4,000 times counts 4,000 times more than one who billed it twice. CMS also suppresses any provider-code pair with fewer than 11 beneficiaries, so low-volume practice is missing from these totals by design.