← Crusonia Research
Interactive report · August 14, 2026 · Revised September 1, 2026

The Biomarker Decoder Ring

Thirteen companies will sell you a picture of your blood, from $88 to $3,999. A chart comparing them went viral; the argument it started was better than the chart, and the author fixed what the argument caught. This is the revised chart made interactive — a living decoder ring for the measurement layer of primary prevention, updated as the market moves.

Figure 1

Thirteen ways to gather insights that include blood

Green means the provider offers the marker — included in the price, from a named tier up, or priced separately — and the cell text says which. Every provider and category starts selected; click a name to hide it, or search the rows.

Find
Category
Providers

Thirteen columns — swipe sideways, or hide the providers you're not comparing.

Offered — included in the price, from a named tier up (✓ Advanced, ✓ Exec), or priced separately; the cell says which Blank — not offered / not listed

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. Superpower now splits into a $199 Baseline ($399 in NJ and NY, per the chart) and a +$189 Advanced tier — its ✓ Advanced cells need the upper tier, and eight markers stay unpriced Add'l add-ons. Fitomics is the newest column and the starkest business model: a $299/yr Insider membership, then every assay at its listed per-lab cost — prices with cents, because they are pass-throughs. Prenuvo's tiers sit in the Pricing w/MRI row — $1,199 Core to $3,999+ Executive, every one including whole-body MRI, so they are not like-for-like with the blood-only Price row; Function's with-MRI packages (to $4,364) sit on the same row. BetterWay is fingertip collection available in Austin only (H-E-B Grocery, Peoples Rx, Sam's Club). Hundred Health markets its count as Custom and prices its add-ons on request, so its add-on cells carry no dollar figure.

Source: Ellen Brown — the author's revised (v5) comparison chart, supplied September 1, 2026, plus Function's with-MRI package prices, supplied directly by the author on August 27, 2026. Coverage and prices transcribed as supplied and not independently re-priced.

The thing that's actually collapsing

The sharpest comment in the thread under the original chart ran two sentences: "Laboratory testing was already near the bottom. What's being disrupted is the markup between the laboratory and the consumer."

It'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.

Figure 2

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, per test GoodLabs, per test

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. The v4 chart adds a floor under the whole figure: Fitomics lists the same assays at per-lab cost behind its membership — TSH $4.90, TPO antibodies $5.50 — which is roughly what the chemistry costs when nobody marks it up.

Derived from the same chart. Ratios are Labcorp price ÷ GoodLabs price.

What the thread caught

The comments under the original chart split into two clusters — clinical and market — and both are worth keeping.

1. 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.

Clinical
"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."
Clinical
"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."
Clinical
"…and knowing which tests not to order is priceless :)"
Counting
"'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."
Coverage
"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."
On the v1 chart, PSA appeared in exactly one membership panel. The revisions change that: Function carries it (total and free), GoodLabs includes it for men with a $12 free-PSA add, Prenuvo runs it across all tiers for men, Hundred Health includes it, Superpower's Advanced tier and Dumbo's Concierge pick it up — and Fitomics sells it for $4.50.

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.

2. Market — what's actually being disrupted

Pricing
"Laboratory testing was already near the bottom. What's being disrupted is the markup between the laboratory and the consumer."
Figure 2 is this comment, drawn.
The missing layer
"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."
The one objection nothing on this page answers — and the one that decides whether any of it matters.

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.

System B — the allopathic loop

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 thirteen columns above is your doctor.
System C — the prevention loop

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.

Not medical advice. Nothing here is a recommendation to order or skip any test. The classification of markers as "standard annual," "common baseline add," or "usually on indication" is our reading of how the clinicians in the source thread described their own ordering practice — it is descriptive, contested, and not a clinical guideline. Decisions about testing belong with you and a clinician who knows your history. The FDA notes that some direct-to-consumer tests are reviewed and others are not, and advises treating DTC results as information rather than a standalone diagnosis.

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 2 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?

Of the 61 marker rows on the chart, 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. Read the markers you actually care about across Figure 1 and the field sorts itself: broad memberships win long lists, à-la-carte wins short specific ones, and the tier gates — Advanced, 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, BetterWay and Fitomics sell the assay itself — Fitomics literally at per-lab cost behind a $299 membership. Each column prices its actual product — the blood is almost incidental. That is why Figure 2'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 top 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. 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

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.