[majormajor]

The people I've known who needed expensive care (high-5-figures or 6-figures) were made well aware of the costs in advance, because at that point the facility wants to make sure your insurance will cover it beforehand. But it doesn't do that much for the patients - comparison shopping doctors and facilities is extremely stressful stuff and a lot of people would rather not think about it, even when some outcome info is available. And the exact details are never known up front, so then you're dealing with "it'll probably cost X more to do it at Y but there's probably a Z percent higher chance of a good outcome..." no-right-answer type serious business decisions.

Emergency care is a different matter, I imagine, insurance-coverage-wise, but pre-approval seems to be fairly widespread for planned stuff these days.

[garmaine]

Except that medical providers don't honor the estimate in the same way an autoshop typically does and is required to do in many jurisdictions. They treat it as just that -- an estimate. You still get charged for whatever procedures are performed, which can change from the estimate when situations change or they deem something to be medically necessary in the moment.