> So should they explain the pricing schedule while you're still unconcious A lot of hospital care is non-emergency, but they don't explain pricing schedules f

> So should they explain the pricing schedule while you're still unconcious A lot of hospital care is non-emergency, but they don't explain pricing schedules for _that_ either, now do they? I think everyone understands the impossibility of comparison-shopping on emergency care. > I mean, it's not exactly heart surgery we're talking about here No, it's hip replacement surgery. And people _already_ do comparison shopping on things like that as much as they can, including comparing to and shopping in other countries. See medical tourism. More to the point, people do comparison shop just like that for oral surgery. Yes, they may not have all the data they might like. Yes, they don't always make the right decisions. But by and large, dentistry works OK. Again, the "stuff that must be done RIGHT NOW" thing is a strawman: there's plenty of hospital care that is not that sort. > The invisible hand has been after all such a huge success in setting health care prices The invisible hand has absolutely nothing to do with most health care prices today (at least in the US). There are some exceptions: plastic surgery, laser eye surgery, dentistry, some forms of occupational therapy, and maybe family medicine. > and has proven to be the model every modern industrial country has taken because it's so intuitive Various industrial countries have price transparency for their medical care. If want to know how much my hip replacement will cost in the UK not via the NHS, I go to http://www.privatehealth.co.uk/conditions-and-treatments/hip-replacement-total/costs/ http://www.privatehealth.co.uk/conditions-and-treatments/hip... and I get all the data I could want, including prices and the hospitals charging those prices. Importantly, those hospitals publish their prices. If I did go via the NHS, I suspect there is no real difference in the pricing, but would welcome data on how it really works. Anyway, knowing how much medical procedures will cost you is not an uncommon situation. Except in the US, of course, where hospitals will never tell you ahead of time how much a procedure will cost. Note that price transparency is necessary, but not sufficient, for some sort of sanity in the discretionary medical care market.