There's a law called The Funeral Rule[1] that, among other things, requires that funeral homes provide a General Price List and quote prices over the phone without the consumer being required to give contact information.

The equivalent is sorely needed in healthcare. One of my biggest (indeed, one of my only major) complaints about the ACA is that neither the GOP nor Democrats saw fit to make any moves towards requiring pricing transparency in the law. Its a travesty. This is a free-market reform that would have completely on its own transformed the economics of the industry, even for consumers that couldn't do the research under acute circumstances.

Even without that, the ACA is far from a trainwreck. I'm guessing you didn't have to spend a lot of time dealing with procurement of individual policies prior to the ACA. I did, and its a godsend.

[1] http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0300-ftc-funeral-rule