>I still can't believe that you can not call up a doctor/clinic/hospital in US and get a price quote for something routine

You can. Routine, profitable procedures are not hard to arrange in the US. I have personally worked in a clinic where the exact experience described in this post happens every day.

>If you are a working, middle class person, the free market health care works extremely well.

It's pretty easy in most places in the world to get people to do something that makes them money, like the discectomy discussed here.

Managing a system where the poor and the unlucky get care is a little tougher. The US does it lousily, but so does most of the rest of the world. India doesn't do it at all.

edit:copy error