I had some really bad intestinal pain and tons of vomiting a few months ago, bad enough I ended going to an ER because I was passing out.

Do you really expect they'd be able to tell me within a minute or two evaluation of me what everything they'd need to do, based solely on that knowledge?

Maybe all they'll end up doing is giving me some good anti-nausea meds and a saline drip. Maybe I'll need surgery in a half hour. How could they possibly give me a realistic up front estimate they could stick to?

Healthcare isn't a free market. When my family member was puking blood I wasn't shopping around, we just called 911.

My first child, I got an estimate for the cost. An extra day of labor past expectations and half a week under Billie lights in the NICU blew that estimate not just out of the water but out of this galaxy. Imagine if fixing a dented bumper took an estimate from $200 to $60k, and yet that's not uncommon in healthcare.