This is a completely rational price given that none of the prices are published, and that the prices tend to be set more on who is doing the paying than anything related to the actual cost.

Do an experiment sometime. Pretend that you need an MRI of your head. Call around to the various places that provide MRIs and see if you can get (a) the price, (b) a description of the equipment that will be used so that you will know if it will be a good MRI or an ancient one.

It's pretty laughable that we just had a major "reform" of our health insurance system, with lots of lip service paid to cost, and yet there is still no information available to allow people to make decisions based on cost and quality, and this appears to be by design.

Rational ... way more oxygen than a person can consume costs a couple of bucks ... you need a valve and a drinking straw ...

somewhat related: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1205455...

"Your medical care would be paid for by others. And therefore you would gratefully accept, on bended knee, what was offered to you as a privilege. Your role being responsible for your own care would be diminished."

I've paid (either directly, or by an employer having paid money that otherwise could have gone to me) about $60,000 into the medical insurance system since leaving college. (That's 10 years times $500 per month, which is a low estimate.) I've also paid several hundred thousand dollars in taxes to a government that prioritized blowing up Iraq over protecting us from things that might actually kill us, like cancer and heart disease.

Given the amount paid, I see health care as a right, not a privilege. We already have high taxes and high insurance premiums. Yet we live in a society where it's pretty much random whether your insurance even covers you when you get sick.