Fair point, but I am not saying a transparently priced system could be established over night nor would its benefits be felt right away by everyone in every sit

Fair point, but I am not saying a transparently priced system could be established over night nor would its benefits be felt right away by everyone in every situation. However under the assumption that you succeed setting up such a system, price competition and public reviews would continuously lower prices to attract more business whose success function would have to be truly happy patients expressing their health benefits publicly. This would force rapid medical progress and medical innovation such that a future you in this scenario could easily cover said surgery with your catastrophic insurance at the fraction of today's cost and probably with better quality care - because it will be in the clinics/doctors self serving interest to offer you the best possible care for the lowest price ... And in many cases this could just be a side product of a fast paced procedural and technical progress driven by transparency in price/quality which might lead to X-rays actually becoming cheaper or free and not more expansive then when they were invented which seems to be the current models trajectory - amu ing if it was not so sad.