That's odd. Dentists, unlike doctors, will in my experience just give you a price if you ask for it... Maybe this varies state to state?

They used to but it's dwindling. A friend of mine is a dentist and he said when he first graduated from dental school some 15 years ago, his father and his practice dealt directly with the patient and had a list of all of their prices on their website and in their office. As customers increasingly wanted to have their insurance cover dental they had fewer and fewer people paying out of pocket and going through insurance. So prices went up due to increased complexity of the business.

At my dental office, they can tell you the total cost without insurance which is the maximum they would charge for any procedure. If you paid in cash in full, they would do a discount (for non-insured).

For those insured, it depended on the insurance you had but they would give you a rough estimate based on the plan you had (mostly because they can’t be 100% certain what the insurance will cover down to the exact dollar amount.

In my experience the estimate is often off but close enough that I am not worried I’d owe an insane amount afterwards.

The current federal administration has mandated the hospitals to publish their prices online since 2019.

I have no illusions, a person without a degree in accounting probably won't be able to decipher these prices, but that could be a step in a proper direction.

List prices are not the whole information: you want to know for your insurance, how much you will get charged. And that is a completely different question.