you want to know why we have the health cost problems we have?

I'll lay it out for you - in a way you can't refute or argue with:

1. There are no published prices. In no other line of work is it legal to do this. Nowhere.
You can't sell someone a hot dog and tell them after they eat it what it just cost them. You can't hire a lawyer and have him tell you "I'll tell you what this will cost when we're done." You can't hire an electrician and have him tell you "I'll make up a bill when I'm done." In every line of work except health care, this is illegal. There are even laws for "major" consumer work (e.g. contracting, auto repair, etc) where they must give you a binding written estimate before beginning work!
.......Whether you are paying privately, you have private insurance or you're a Medicare patient if you need to have a breast reconstructed due to cancer the complexity of the procedure does not change.
Yet it is a fact that the privately-billed amounts for uninsured ("rack rate") patients are often ten times or more that billed to insurers or Medicare. Try charging a cash purchaser 10x more for a TV than someone who finances that TV on your in-house credit facility and you would be shut down and thrown in jail.

To put this bluntly the medical industry has intentionally put forward a system by which it can screw you with impunity, obtaining exemptions from the laws that cover every other area of commerce, thereby effectively forcing you to buy overpriced services you do not want to purchase lest an unexpected life event literally wipe you out.
This is an extortion racket and absolutely none of the proposals being put forward have done a thing to address any of it.

Today's rant from Market Ticker.
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/P1.html

industry where they try the same bullshit...

car repair.

ie like a car salesman telling you how many cars and what kind you have to buy to survive.

Most of the examples you gave do not provide you with a fixed cost up front - generally they give you a non-binding estimate based on assumptions about what will be found once the work is started. I am not aware of any "major" consumer work where a binding estimate is legally required. You can certainly attempt to write a contract that creates a binding estimate - but (1) you may not get one and (2) it may be higher than it otherwise might be because the contractor must cover some contingencies that might not occur.

Medicine is as much an art as it is a science. Although you might be able to fix costs for some procedures, some procedures are unpredictable in advance - and what procedures are necessary are also often unpredictable.

No - I am not in the medical industry (but I am well aware how uncertain it is) and yes, I am in one of those other fields you incorrectly suggest it is illegal not to provide the price in advance (and no I cannot and do not guarantee the price in advance).

go argue with him.

You might consider not posting something you don't agree with and/or are not prepared to defend.

all kinds of builders, plumbers, and so on do work without ever telling you what it will cost. Often they seem to do very little, as in the technician who climbed up on my roof for ten minutes, told me my compressor was shot and I needed a new AC. $40 service charge. Not a huge deal really, except that as a $5.5 an hour janitor I had to work about two days to make that much money.

Medical care is sort of the same way too. A recent cartoon showed a doctor talking with a patient saying "I am afraid I have some very bad news" after a few panels of the patient bracing himself for this bad news, the doctor says 'your last check bounced'.

My emergency room visit included a $500 bill for x-rays. Something I knew I did not need. Say good bye to two weeks pay. Was that for my health, or to cover their butt and to pay for their equipment?

will not tell you if they will cover certain prcedures until it has been done and the bill is submitted to them. At least that happened to me.