[atmavatar]

Before you hold the US system in too high esteem for its price "transparency", consider the following:

* Often (perhaps most of the time), a hospital will be unwilling/unable to quote you a price for a procedure.

* Even if they do quote you a price, it's a BS price: every insurance provider negotiates their own prices for procedures.

   * To further illustrate this point: while working on software to bring visibility regarding lost income, prospective clients were downright indignant that early versions calculating loss figures using the prices in their own system were useless because the prices themselves were meaningless.

* There is significant administrative overhead on costs. Take this with a grain of salt, but I've heard there can be as many as 10 administrators for every doctor to handle dealing with thousands of insurance providers, potentially also spanning primary, secondary, tertiary, and even quaternary insurance for a given patient.