While emergency care needs to be taken into account, most medical issues are just not emergencies, they are merely pressing. Even super expensive, life threate

While emergency care needs to be taken into account, most medical issues are just not emergencies, they are merely pressing. Even super expensive, life threatening ones (ie, a cancer diagnosis) allow for a bit of shopping around, second opinions and such. So if most surgery, and near all outpatient procedures are not-pressing and possible to shop around for, why can't I know how much it costs ahead of time?