In an article on CBS Marketwatch, titled Only the poor pay full price, Michael Collins points out from a business point of view, the crazy pricing scheme in the U.S. healthcare "system". I had a similar experience last year when I had knee surgery.  I bargained heavily with my surgeon who wouldn’t take managed care contracts.  For the facility charge, the bill I saw was $20,000 but the facility only collected around $8,000.  Meanwhile a surgeon billed me over $100 for a second opinion, but the PPO only paid $43. I remember this back in 1990 in Alain Enthoven’s class.  Several hospital representatives in the class used to complain about being forced to give managed care plans "discounts".  Enthoven called hospital billing a "fiction".

Collins makes the obvious point that if you do not have insurance, you will be charged the full price.  The provider may not expect to get their money, but if you have any assets, the hospital/clinic will come after you for the money–and you’ll be paying at the full rate, which no insurer pays. 

In fact it may be worse.  If you do have insurance and you pay 20% of the fee, your insurer may make you pay them 20% of the full fee, while they get the negotiated discount that my classmates complained about.  Several Blues plans had plenty of legal problems when they were caught doing this practice in the mid-1990s, including Trigon (Virginia) which in essence was forced to pay large fines several times over in order for the state Attorney-General to allow it to turn for-profit. (I can’t find a reference to this but it was a big deal before they could get their S1 registration out in 1996).

Transparent pricing would appear to help everyone.  But for historical reasons (the need for cross-subsidizaton within providers from rich to poorly insured patients) it hasn’t emerged. Now for business reasons, no one wants to reveal their "deal". This is as true for hospital and physician care, as it is for drug rebates, and it gives the lie to health care being a "free" market.