Good point. But lack of transparency clearly benefits many health care providers, and it is difficult to determine costs given that patients are often caught between providers and insurance companies. For example, one procedure at my local dentist's office has several different "prices": (1) what the dentist tries to charge my insurance company; (2) what my insurance company agrees to pay; (3) what I pay when my insurance doesn't cover the procedure. They are all completely different. It seems that the antagonistic but parasitic relationship between health care providers and insurance companies is one reason why said providers don't have public price lists - they would get in their way of trying to get as much money out of insurance companies as possible. And I'm not sure that I blame them for that, since it is clearly in the insurance industry's interests to pay as little as possible.