> One take-away from this is the old "if you have to ask, you can't afford it", and another is that they're automatically filtering out lower-value or price-sensitive customers.

I have stopped government buying processes (yep, plural) because the price isn't available and they weren't priority enough to spend months on price research. With some companies, it is a larger time waster than the entire documenting the requirements, publishing it, answering questions, and watching the auction.