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The cost of giving birth at hospital might vary by tens of thousands of dollars, a new study has found. 

The price range varies "largely random" and is unexplainable by market factors. 

According to research, charges for a non-complicated vaginal delivery in the most populated U.S. varied in the range from $3,296 to $37,277. For a non-complicated cesarean section the range existed from $8,312 to $70,908. 

The research performed at University of California at San Francisco noted that institutional and market factor could only contribute to 35 percent to 36 percent in the variation. 

In an another report released in last year, U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported that hospital charges for the same medical procedures varied by thousands of dollars within the same city. 

"The market doesn't work and the system doesn't regulate it, so hospitals can charge what they want," said Renee Hsia, lead author of the study and associate professor at the UCSF School of Medicine, according to Bloomberg. "The scary thing is, as patients, you don't have this information."

I am certain that this variation is not isolated to California,'' she said. "It's 12 percent of the U.S. so for that reason it's somewhat generalizable. The only place where this might be different is certain states where they're starting to put caps on spending like in Massachusetts."

Researchers considered about 100,000 births and set variables like patient characteristics,  hospital characteristics, and market factors that could affect cost. 

"One of the big reasons for high charges is because Medicare and Medicaid significantly under pay hospitals, so part of your premium makes up for the fact that Medicare and Medical don't pay their fair share," Jan Emerson-Shea, a spokeswoman for the California Hospital Association, told Bloomberg. "These advocates never talk about the fact that the government is the biggest cause for overall high charges."

The study is published in the medical journal BMJ Open.