[xg15]

I get this [1] when googling.

Fair enough. More transparency is certainly a worthwhile goal, however, this rests on the basic assumption that a consumer always has the opportunity to make a rational choice between different alternative products or services (drugs, medical procedures, etc).

From what I've read, I doubt this is the problem in practice. Are you going to compare prices during a medical emergency? If your doctor tells you that you need an X-ray, will you stop him and check the nearby hospitals whether their X-rays are cheaper? How useful is price transparency if your essential medication is only made by a single company that can do arbitrary price hikes? What do you do if the "market rate" for some essential operation is still more than you can afford?

[1] https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2019/11/15/trump-administrati...