FQHCs are federally funded community health centers — roughly 1,400 organizations running more than 16,000 sites across every US state, territory, and DC. They provide primary care, and often dental, mental health, and pharmacy services, regardless of your insurance status or ability to pay.

Every health center in the program is required to run a sliding fee discount program based on your household income relative to the Federal Poverty Guidelines. People at or below 100% of the guidelines generally pay only a nominal fee, with partial discounts on a sliding scale above that. The exact income bands, the fees, and the documents you need to bring are set by each center — call the one you plan to visit and ask what proof of income they want.

This is the closest thing to an ongoing family doctor available to most uninsured adults, which matters more than a one-off walk-in visit if you want someone tracking your results over time.

Quest and Labcorp both sell consumer self-pay lab panels directly — Quest through questhealth.com, Labcorp through Labcorp OnDemand — and cash prices for common tests are often well below the amount billed to an insurer. Many of the blood tests described elsewhere on this site are available this way.

Whether you can order a test without seeing your own clinician depends on your state. Federal CLIA rules govern lab quality but leave the question of who may authorize an order to state law, and states differ: most allow consumer-initiated testing, a minority require a licensed provider to authorize every order, and the rules change. There is no single national rule, so check your own state before assuming you can order directly.

Both companies handle this by routing orders through a contracted independent physician network, so no separate doctor's appointment is needed where it's permitted. Both also exclude certain states from purchase, and those lists change — check the vendor's own FAQ at the moment you order rather than trusting a list copied from anywhere, including this page.

Many local and state health departments run clinics offering free or low-cost STI and HIV testing, vaccines, and some screenings — in a number of jurisdictions regardless of insurance or immigration status. What's offered and what it costs varies a lot between counties, so confirm with your own health department rather than assuming.

As one example, New York City's Sexual Health Clinics provide low- and no-cost services to anyone age 12 and up, regardless of immigration or insurance status, and parental consent is not required. Other jurisdictions set their own fees and eligibility.

Urgent care clinics and hospitals frequently have a self-pay or cash rate that differs from the amount billed to insurance, and it's normal to ask for it before you're seen. Nobody is required to give you a discount, and whether one exists depends entirely on the facility — but asking costs nothing, and asking up front is far easier than disputing a bill later.

Since 2021, CMS has required most US hospitals to publicly post their standard charges, including a machine-readable file and a consumer display of common shoppable services; the rules were tightened again in the CY2026 outpatient final rule. Compliance is uneven in practice, so treat posted prices as a starting point for the conversation rather than a guaranteed quote.