On August 12, Ellen Brown published a comparison chart on Food is Health — nine biomarker-testing providers down the top, forty-six markers down the side, a green check where the panel includes it and a dollar figure where it doesn't. She called it a decoder ring and said plainly that it was directional, not a source of truth.
It travelled. And the comment thread underneath it did something a static image can't: it argued back. A Function Health cofounder said five of the cells were wrong. A physician spotted what looks like an inverted pair of thyroid rows. Four clinicians made a version of the same objection — that a longer list of tests is not the same thing as a better answer. Someone pointed out that what's collapsing here isn't the cost of a lab test at all; it's the markup between the lab and you.
All of that is worth keeping. So the chart was rebuilt as something you can interrogate: filter it, pick the markers you actually care about, and price your own panel across every provider. The disputed cells were flagged where the dispute lived, not in a correction at the bottom.
Three days later, the argument paid off. The author re-verified the flagged cells and shipped a revised chart: all six contested cells corrected, two providers added, sixteen more marker rows, prices re-checked. This page now runs on that revision — the corrections are in the matrix, itemized in the revision log, and the flag layer now carries the chart's own remaining uncertainty rather than the internet's objections. The argument also sharpened what this category is actually for, which is where System B and System C come in below.
Twelve ways to buy the same blood
Green means the marker is included — sometimes only from a named tier up, and the cell says which. Peach means you pay again for it, alone or inside a named panel. Filter by category, hide the providers you're not considering, and switch on the ? flags for the cells the chart itself marks uncertain.
Twelve columns — swipe sideways, or hide the providers you're not comparing.
A cell like Meno & Peri $155 means the marker is sold only inside that named panel — pick FSH and LH at Quest and the $155 panel is charged once, not twice. Several rows are themselves bundles: the CMP row is fourteen analytes on one line — tap the ⓘ beside a bundle row's name for its full list — which is exactly the counting problem Figure 3 is about. Prenuvo's price band covers whole-body MRI, not only blood work, so it is not like-for-like with the rest. BetterWay is fingertip collection available in Austin only (H-E-B Grocery, Peoples Rx, Sam's Club). Hundred Health publishes no marketed biomarker count and prices its add-ons on request, so its add-on cells carry no dollar figure.
Source: Ellen Brown — the author's revised (v3) comparison chart, supplied August 16, 2026. Coverage and prices transcribed from the chart and not independently re-priced.
The question the chart can't answer
A coverage matrix tells you what each provider includes. It doesn't tell you what you should buy, because that depends entirely on which markers you're actually after — and the answer flips hard depending on the list.
Want a standard annual physical's worth of blood work? Almost everyone covers it, and the cheapest option wins by default. Want fasting insulin, ApoB and Lp(a) — the markers the original piece argues for? The field thins. Want a thyroid workup with antibodies? One membership covers all five outright, another gets there only at its top tier, and the à-la-carte adds still cost less than a restaurant meal — on top of a $185 panel.
So pick your markers.
Build your panel, then price it twelve ways
Choose the markers you want. Every provider is scored on how much of your list it covers and what that costs — membership price plus any marker it charges for separately.
How the cost is figured. Membership providers are charged at their entry price for one year — or at the named higher tier's price when a marker you picked requires it: a Prenuvo Exec pick prices the Exec panel, a BetterWay Premium pick prices the Premium panel, a Dumbo Concierge pick prices the $3.6k concierge year. Quest and Labcorp are à-la-carte: their $299 Elite and $169 Comprehensive Health panels are charged only when a picked marker is inside them; everything else is the sum of listed per-test prices. A marker sold only inside a named panel — Meno & Peri $155 — adds that panel's price once, however many of its markers you pick. Where the chart lists an add-on without naming a price — Function's extended vitamin/mineral, heavy-metal and celiac panels, Superpower's Add'l markers, Hundred Health's add-ons — it counts as covered and as billed separately, but adds nothing to the total, so that provider's figure reads from and is marked unpriced. Cells the chart marks ? Exec count as neither covered nor missing, and substitute cells (✓ Total T4) count as neither exact coverage nor absence. Sex-dependent prices — GoodLabs' $185/$195 panel, Labcorp's $69/$79 testosterone — use the low end and mark the total from. Where a covering selection carries no stated price at all, the card says unpriced rather than pretending to $0. This is arithmetic on one published chart, not a quote.
"Lipid panel turns into like 4–5 tests"
That was Jung Hoon Son, M.D., in the thread, on why "hundreds of tests" produces a woahhh that doesn't survive contact with a clinician. A panel is a marketing unit. An assay is a thing a machine does. The gap between them is where the biomarker count inflates.
The original chart is unusually honest about this: it carries two rows in its header — what each company advertises, and how many distinct tests the author could actually count. Plotted against each other, the gap is not evenly distributed.
What they advertise, and what they run
Dashed outline is the marketing claim. Solid bar is the count of distinct tests. Two companies advertise a comparable number of biomarkers and run a very different number of assays.
Where the chart gives a range, the bar is drawn at the midpoint and the range is printed. The claims are the v3 chart's marketed counts — which its own header says include derived results; the solid bars are the author's distinct-test hand count from the August 12 chart — the revised charts do not republish those counts, so they are held and dated rather than silently refreshed. Prenuvo's count excludes the whole-body MRI that dominates its price. Quest and Labcorp are omitted: they sell tests one at a time and advertise no panel count. So are BetterWay and Hundred Health, which market no count at all — and Dumbo Health, which advertises "51–103 biomarkers," a range whose top is double its bottom, with no verified count to draw against it.
Source: marketed counts from the v3 chart (August 16, 2026); distinct-test counts from the v1 chart's "Actual Direct Tests" row (August 12, 2026).
The thing that's actually collapsing
Curt Canales put the sharpest comment in the thread in two sentences: "Laboratory testing was already near the bottom. What's being disrupted is the markup between the laboratory and the consumer."
He's right, and the chart proves it against itself. Eighteen markers carry an explicit standalone price in both the GoodLabs column and the Labcorp column. Same analyte. Same instrument, near enough. The spread is not a rounding difference.
The same test, twice, at two prices
All eighteen markers the chart prices standalone in both columns, sorted by the multiple. Median: 8.3×. Worst: Free T3, 14.8×. And one runs the other way.
Labcorp's published per-test consumer prices against GoodLabs' à-la-carte adds. Named multi-analyte panels are excluded — a $45 three-metal panel against a $269 one is a fair aside, not a per-test ratio. Labcorp's figures are retail cash prices, which are not what an insurer pays and not what the lab's marginal cost is — that difference is the finding. The v1 headline pair is gone: Labcorp's TPO antibodies, $247 on the v1 chart, is $69 on the revised one, so the worst multiple fell from 49× to 14.8×. And the spread now runs both ways — GoodLabs' celiac tTG-IgA costs $191 against Labcorp's $119, and its $145 aluminum test sits against Quest's $52. The disruptor can be the expensive side.
Derived from the same chart. Ratios are Labcorp price ÷ GoodLabs price.
What the thread caught
The comments split cleanly into three arguments, and only one of them is about the chart being wrong.
1. Accuracy — the cells that were contested
Two commenters challenged specific cells of the original chart. The v1 report flagged the challenges in place rather than silently picking a side — and both were borne out: the author re-verified the flagged cells and corrected them in the August 15 revision. The matrix now shows the corrected values, and the ? flag in Figure 1 carries the chart's own remaining uncertainty instead.
"Your chart is inaccurate in multiple places for Function Health. (e.g. Lipid Particle Size, PSA, Free T3, TPO Antibodies, AMH, and more)"
"I'm not sure this chart is accurate. T3 but no T4 for superpower? And I think some of the function and superpower labs are inverted. But your fundamental message is right on."
2. Clinical — more tests is not more answers
The largest cluster of comments, and the one the chart's format can't represent at all: a check mark says a test is available, not that it should be ordered.
"This is turning into the lab equivalent of a full body scan. The value of some these test have been established in the context of an a-priori chance, usually by an MD… Testing for the sake of testing won't give the same Sens/Spec for the disease they are trying to identify."
"This is almost exactly what I get on my patients, especially as an initial set. I don't get uric acid and everything under Other (except UA) unless it's otherwise indicated, but I'll look into them."
"…and knowing which tests not to order is priceless :)"
"'Woahhh' — how people react at 'hundreds of tests' until clinicians can see that 'tests' are just bunch of panels expanded to make people feel good. 'Lipid panel' turns into like 4–5 tests."
"Interesting that so few of them include PSA. I know it's an imperfect measure, but with all the other markers (many of which are even more imperfect), it seems suspect."
This is why Figure 1 carries a Highlight control rather than a verdict. Of the 61 markers on the revised chart, 46 fall into the "usually ordered on indication" group — nearly all of the expansion since v1 lands there — a description of how the clinicians in this thread said they order, not a guideline and not advice. The classification is ours, and reasonable clinicians will move rows between the buckets.
3. Market — what's actually being disrupted
"Laboratory testing was already near the bottom. What's being disrupted is the markup between the laboratory and the consumer."
"Gathering the data is the easy part. The real value is knowing what to do with it — translating biomarkers into sustainable behavior change… Interesting data quickly becomes a novelty. Data creates awareness. Behavior change creates outcomes."
Two systems, one blood draw
Why publish someone else's chart, twice? Because a price collapse in measurement is the leading edge of something we care about a great deal — and because this chart makes the two operating systems of American health visible on a single page. At Crusonia we call them System B and System C.
Symptom → diagnosis → billable treatment.
- Reactive by design: the system engages after something breaks, and its economics compound the longer it stays broken — chronic disease is the revenue model.
- The payer is an insurer, so measurement is gated behind indication. There is no billing code for getting ahead of a diagnosis.
- Primary prevention isn't a product here. Which is why none of the twelve columns above is your doctor.
Measure → catch the drift early → act on food and behavior → verify.
- An economy where verified human health outcomes are the objective function: healthy soil → nutrient-dense food → metabolic health.
- The buyer is the person, cash-priced — which is exactly why this category exists at all, and why its unit is a biomarker, not a diagnosis.
- This chart is System C's sensor layer being priced in public, and the price is collapsing.
Held against that frame, two things are true at once in this data. The first is that a panel that cost a mortgage payment five years ago now costs $185, and the marginal assay inside it costs $3. Function's membership works out to roughly $2.85 per distinct test — less than Labcorp charges to tell you your blood type. Measuring a human being is becoming close to free.
The second is that nobody in the thread believes measurement is the bottleneck. The clinicians say the constraint is indication — knowing which question to ask. Michael Roeder says the constraint is behavior — knowing what to do with the answer. Both are saying that System C's sensing layer is arriving faster than its acting layer.
That gap is the whole thesis. System C — an economy that pays for verified human health outcomes — needs those outcomes to be cheap to verify. That is now happening: not because System B decided to change, but because the markup between a lab and a person collapsed.
What the collapse doesn't produce on its own is anything that changes the number. Ellen Brown's own conclusion is the right one: "Our healthcare system is not built to deliver primary prevention — that happens on the grocery store shelves." A $185 panel is a measuring instrument pointed at a food system that isn't yet being paid for what it does to the reading.
Which is the useful way to hold this chart. It is not a shopping guide. It's evidence that the sensor is getting cheap — and a reminder that the sensor was never the hard part. If a system can now see metabolic drift years before a diagnosis, the open question is who gets paid when the drift reverses. In System B: nobody. The economy where somebody does is System C — and you can walk its causal chain yourself, from soil to biomarker to capital, in the System C Explorer.
Questions people keep asking
The chart travelled well past its intended audience, and two kinds of questions keep coming back — from people deciding whether to buy one of these panels, and from people trying to read the market. Short answers to both, pointing at the figures they lean on. None of it is medical advice.
If you're considering one of these
Do I need a doctor's order?
Not one you bring. These are direct-to-consumer products: a physician affiliated with the vendor authorizes the order, and a licensed lab runs the draw. A few states restrict some direct-to-consumer testing, so vendors gate availability by state — and BetterWay's fingertip collection is Austin-only today. What you do with an abnormal result is where your own clinician comes back in.
Will insurance, my HSA or my FSA pay for this?
These are cash-pay products, and that's structural rather than incidental: insurance pays for tests ordered on indication, inside System B's loop. Many of these purchases are HSA/FSA-eligible as laboratory testing, but eligibility varies by vendor and administrator, so check both. If a clinician later orders the same assay because your history indicates it, insurance may well cover that order — at which point you are back inside the reactive loop this page describes.
Are these real, certified labs?
Yes. The draws overwhelmingly run through CLIA-certified laboratories — often through the same two reference giants that appear as columns on this chart. That is the irony Figure 4 draws: the $6 test and the $89 test are frequently the same assay class on the same class of instrument. The spread is the markup between the lab and you, not the chemistry.
How is this different from my annual physical?
The Highlight control in Figure 1 is the answer, drawn. Of the 61 marker rows, six are what a standard annual physical typically draws; 46 are markers the thread's clinicians said they order on indication. A membership panel runs nearly all of them by default, every year. Whether that is proactive measurement or "the lab equivalent of a full body scan" is exactly what the clinicians argued — read them above and decide with your own.
Which one should I buy?
The wrong question for a chart to answer. Pick the markers you actually care about in Figure 2 and the field sorts itself: broad memberships win long lists, à-la-carte wins short specific ones, and the tier gates — Exec, Premium, Concierge, Full — tell you when a cheap headline price stops being cheap. Then take the list to someone who knows your history.
The same test costs $6 one place and $89 another. Is the cheap one worse?
Usually no — see the certification answer above. Cash-lab pricing tracks distribution and brand, not assay quality. And the spread now runs both ways: on the revised chart, GoodLabs' celiac panel costs more than Labcorp's. Compare per test, not per brand.
I have my results. Now what?
That is the sharpest unanswered objection in the thread: data creates awareness; behavior change creates outcomes. A drifting number is a prompt for a conversation about food, sleep, movement and follow-up testing — not a diagnosis. Bring it to a clinician. The disclaimer above is not boilerplate.
If you're reading the market
Why do identical assays price 15× apart?
Because the columns sell different products. Memberships sell interpretation and cadence; device-first companies sell continuity between draws; Prenuvo sells imaging resolution; the reference labs and BetterWay sell the assay itself. Each column prices its actual product — the blood is almost incidental. That is why Figure 4's markup collapses precisely where the assay is the product.
What does hardware actually add?
Continuity. An annual draw is a snapshot; a ring or a CGM turns it into a time series between draws — the capability rows at the bottom of Figure 1 show who has it. The quieter tell in those rows: AI connectivity is becoming a spec-sheet line, with MCP connectors already shipping on two columns. That is what plugging your bloodwork into an AI assistant looks like as a product feature.
Why don't marketed biomarker counts match assays run?
A panel is a marketing unit; an assay is a thing a machine does. Figure 3 draws the gap, and the revised chart's own bundles — one CMP row, fourteen analytes — show how genuinely hard honest counting is. Dumbo Health advertising "51–103 biomarkers" is the range doing the confessing.
Where is the whitespace?
Not in measurement — that layer is commoditizing on this page. The acting layer has no incumbent: nobody in either system is yet paid when a bad number reverses. That is the System C claim above, and the first durable business model that pays for verified improvement — food-side or behavior-side — sits on top of every column here. Walk the chain in the System C Explorer.
Sources & method
- The chart. Ellen Brown's comparison chart, first published in "Most people know almost nothing objective about their health.", Food is Health, August 12, 2026 — read the original — and revised by the author on August 15 and again on August 16, 2026 (the current v3 adds Hundred Health and Superpower's "Add'l" add-on markers, drops the locked Fitomics column, restores IGF-1 and removes Testosterone Free and Direct Bilirubin). All 61 marker rows, 12 provider columns, pricing, cadence and the marketed biomarker counts on this page are transcribed from the v3 chart; its own header notes that marketed counts include derived results. Coverage was not independently re-priced against vendor sites; where the chart is wrong, this page is wrong the same way, which is why the v1 disputes were flagged in place and why the chart's own "? Exec" uncertainty is flagged now.
- The comments. Public replies to Ellen Brown's LinkedIn post of the chart, retrieved August 13, 2026 — the thread. Quotations are verbatim, including original punctuation and typography. Commenters are quoted as participants in a public professional discussion; none has endorsed this report.
- Ranges. Where the chart publishes a range ($99×2–$499; $1,199–$3,999+; 51–103; 60–120+), figures use the low end for cost and the midpoint for ordering, and always print the range. GoodLabs' sex-priced panel uses the $185 end. Distinct-test counts are the author's August 12 hand count, held and dated — the revised chart does not republish them.
- Cost arithmetic. One year at the entry price for membership providers — or at the named tier's price when a picked marker is tier-gated (Exec, Premium, Concierge, Full). Quest's $299 Elite and Labcorp's $169 Comprehensive Health panels are charged only when a picked marker is inside them; everything else sums listed per-test prices, and a named multi-analyte panel is charged once however many of its markers you pick. Prenuvo's price includes whole-body imaging and is not comparable on blood work alone.
- The marker classification. Ours, informed by the clinician comments in the thread. Not a guideline. See the disclaimer above.
- FDA, Direct-to-Consumer Tests — cited in the original piece.
Corrections are welcome and will be applied in place, with the change noted in the revision log below. If you are one of the providers on this chart and a cell is wrong, we would rather fix it than flag it — the v2 revision is the proof.
Revisions
This page will keep changing as the chart's author re-verifies cells and the market moves. Major changes land here, newest first; a machine-readable copy lives in this page's #report-data block.
- August 16, 2026 · v3 Hundred Health joins as a twelfth column — a $199/yr membership with no marketed biomarker count, its coverage split between included markers and unpriced add-ons (selections that lean on the add-ons price as floors). Superpower now marks 22 markers as unpriced add-ons ("Add'l") and gains TSH outright. The locked Fitomics column is gone from the source chart, so the omission notes retire. IGF-1 returns (GoodLabs $27 LC/MS against Labcorp $139 — an eighteenth markup pair, moving the median from 8.8× to 8.3×) while Testosterone Free and Direct Bilirubin leave, landing the row count at 61. Function's whole-body MRI is now listed as an add-on with Ezra and its cadence detailed as one full + one partial draw per year; Dumbo's Concierge tier notes an included MD.
- August 16, 2026 · v2.1 Oura's CMP cell, transcribed as a partial bundle ("not Glucose, …") from a truncated cell in the source chart, was re-reviewed by the chart's author and confirmed complete. It is now a plain check and counts as exact coverage in Figure 2.
- August 15, 2026 · v2 Rebuilt on the author's corrected and expanded chart. All six thread-disputed cells corrected at the source — Function gains LDL-P, PSA (total & free), Free T3, TPO antibodies and AMH, and the Function/Superpower thyroid inversion is unwound — so the dispute flags retire in favor of the chart's own ? Exec uncertainty flags (9 cells). Two providers added, Dumbo Health and BetterWay; the chart's new Fitomics column is omitted, its panel list locked until purchase. Marker rows re-based to 62 in 11 categories (was 46 in 8). GoodLabs' panel moved $125 → $185/$195; Labcorp's TPO moved $247 → $69, dropping the worst paired markup from 49× to 14.8× — and one pair (celiac) now runs in reverse. IGF-1 left the chart; Quest's $6 draw fee left the pricing; Quest's $299 Elite and Labcorp's $169 Comprehensive Health panels arrived; capability rows expanded to five. Added the two-systems section, the FAQ, and this log.
- August 14, 2026 · v1 Initial publication: the August 12 chart rebuilt interactive — 46 marker rows, 9 providers, the panel builder, the claim-vs-actual and markup figures, and the thread's objections attached in place.