The other industry that's even worse at pricing is health care. Nearly every time I go in for something I'm either told it's covered, when it's not, or given a price that's completely wrong. My wife ends up spending 3 months after any medical procedure more than just a checkup fighting with billing departments and insurance.
The real tragedy of the health care industry is that as a consumer, you have practically zero ability to price procedures and materials and to select a competitive provider based on that price. Instead, you select a provider based on "does my insurance cover them yes/no". At least with car dealerships, you can make them fight to give you a better price than the guy across the street.
The insurance industry has practically eliminated the pressure of competition from the part of the medical industry that they care about, which allows them to effectively fix prices.
100% agreed. The time/money/stress burden this places on people is incredible.
IMO health care providers should be forced to charge one price, regardless of who's paying. That way it wouldn't take a lawyer and a quant to figure out with even 99% certainty what something will actually cost, and the insurance companies would each fight to lower prices for everyone.
It's totally nuts that there is no-one in, say, a hospital, who can tell you what you're going to pay for a given procedure. They can (sometimes) give you numbers, but they'll practically never even be what ends up on the bill, let alone what you'll personally pay.
