I agree that it's pointless for emergency surgery, but there are plenty of other cases where a consumer could shop around (colonoscopy, ACL repair, etc), and I'

I agree that it's pointless for emergency surgery, but there are plenty of other cases where a consumer could shop around (colonoscopy, ACL repair, etc), and I'd argue these are actually the majority rather than the minority of cases. To me it comes down to - if we are going to pretend we have a market based system for health care (that's what we say we have now), we need pricing transparency to have any hope of it working.