I agree to a point. Complications come up in treatment, and of course nobody can know those ahead of time. However I called out your comment as disingenuous because it added a lot of variables to what was originally described, then more or less said "Well, of course we can't know what the cost will be ahead of time."
So let's take it as a given that because we're not prescient, it is not possible to give a 100% guaranteed-accurate price up front[1].
Even in the presence of those variables, the system should not prevent providers from saying "here's what we normally have to do in this case, and here's what those procedures should cost. Less often, we run into these other things - we'll get into them if we need to, but the cost for those can range from _ to _. Of this, your insurance plan will _usually_ cover $_ to $_."
I'm not dismissing the history behind the brokenness, but that doesn't mean it's not broken. The fact that it's broken for complicated reasons doesn't mean it can't be made significantly better.
I'd like to understand, but nobody is really explaining. "Regulations are expensive to comply with" doesn't really explain why those costs can't be predicted and incorporated into the up-front pricing. On the other hand, different prices for different payers seems like something that would add a lot of unpredictability to pricing.
[1] though this doesn't explain why prices aren't disclosed for common, fixed procedures - diagnostics, removing a mole and having it biopsied, etc.
So let's take it as a given that because we're not prescient, it is not possible to give a 100% guaranteed-accurate price up front[1].
Even in the presence of those variables, the system should not prevent providers from saying "here's what we normally have to do in this case, and here's what those procedures should cost. Less often, we run into these other things - we'll get into them if we need to, but the cost for those can range from _ to _. Of this, your insurance plan will _usually_ cover $_ to $_."
I'm not dismissing the history behind the brokenness, but that doesn't mean it's not broken. The fact that it's broken for complicated reasons doesn't mean it can't be made significantly better.
I'd like to understand, but nobody is really explaining. "Regulations are expensive to comply with" doesn't really explain why those costs can't be predicted and incorporated into the up-front pricing. On the other hand, different prices for different payers seems like something that would add a lot of unpredictability to pricing.
[1] though this doesn't explain why prices aren't disclosed for common, fixed procedures - diagnostics, removing a mole and having it biopsied, etc.