People argue that the current system works because capitalism is more efficient. But when the prices are hidden from the customer by either fudging prices or hiding costs behind a fixed fee in the form of insurance the system is broken.
This seems to be one of the fundamental misunderstandings people have about capitalism; they like to think of it as a form of virtuous economic freedom. A market system, however, only works with reasonable information. In this case, it is apparently of benefit to the providers to treat them as trade secrets, but the system will operate more efficiently if they are forced not to do so (as they are in most places).
people forget that efficient markets hypothesis requires perfect information and it seems that hiding information about costs is standard business practice.
