>If the grocery store decides to remove the prices from everything, and require its shoppers to first call its billing department only open until 5pm to receive a set of numbers, then call their third party subscription service only open until 6pm to receive a non-binding estimate, for every item in their grocery list,

Good point (buying food would be a nightmare if it worked like American health care!) but that's a different argument from the one made above in the thread, that a profit motive in a vital good inherently creates perverse effects.