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Let's go back to basics. We can estimate the price of a given surgery prior to providing it but that estimate is misleading due to the frequency with which it is wrong, often to the degree of orders of magnitude. You might say "yes you can give me an average that's an estimate" another person might say "an estimate is only meaningful if it is reasonably correct."
In my experience people get pissed if they ask how much it is going to cost to renovate their kitchen and they get a bill for 3 million dollars instead of the initially stated 30,000.
So
Estimates cannot be provided in the same way they can be in most other industries due to an intrinsic excess in variability secondary to the complications involved in human health.
Giving estimates reduces bargaining power with insurance companies and is therefore disincentivized.
Estimates have no value to patients because your insurance is going to be paying not you.
Please pick one or more of these you disagree with and explain why.
Let's go back to basics. You already gave a vastly better answer. Did you forget what you said two days ago?
Dawg I have no idea what you are saying, I've been consistent in my messaging with you which is that this stuff is hard and complicated.
You don't seem to want to engage with any of the most important details here which include things like "medicine is not like other fields, maybe it could be but it is not allowed to be - and we have evidence of this!" and "the specific cost is not relevant in any practical sense."
You appear to have forgotten your answer from two days ago. I suggest you go back and re-read your prior comments.
You have made this accusation multiple times, I have consistently maintained that it is fundamentally unknowable (because it is) if you loosen your definitions of knowable you can know some things about it. Additionally, it ultimately is not relevant and not our job, but we do know some things about it anyway.
If you think you "got me" in some way you will need to clarify.
This tack is not helpful, unlike last time I've tried to give examples of things you don't know and would need to know in order to understand the complexity at hand, but you need to actually engage with them. Every example I've given you about how healthcare is not like a car repair shop has been ignored.
Can you remember what your answer was two days ago?
Yes. Please see above. Thank you.
If you had a lottery-type game as an option that you could consider playing, and they said, "The payout is $5k with about probability p, and the payout is $1.5M with probability 1-p," would you say that the payout is "fundamentally unknowable"?
Yes.
Expected payout does not equal pay out.
In car repair your estimate may be off by a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. Maybe more than a few thousand dollars at maximum.
In healthcare your estimate can be off by hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.
This impacts the wisdom of giving estimates and the validity of the practical validity of those estimates.
And AGAIN you have yet to establish why cost matters. As previously stated repeatedly healthcare workers are often prohibited by law from making decisions based off of cost and often by necessary convention when not prohibited by law. Patients almost never pay cost and are rarely charged it. Why does it matter?
Engage with the substantive and relevant portions of the discussion.
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