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It is the way that the licensed practice of medicine is so heavily regulated that creates the noncompetitive environment in the first place.

Though I wouldn't expect Republicans to ever admit that, at least congressional ones. If the regulation existed under Reagan its the best thing ever (see: if establishment corporations abuse it) and if wasn't its communism (see: donor corporations don't want to be regulated).

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The services are too expensive, yes, but that's not what I'm getting at. I'm saying that even the inflated sticker price won't prevent tons of random other bills from flying out of nowhere. Once I got an anesthesia bill -- for almost ten thousand dollars -- after an event that didn't involve anesthesia, at which the anesthesiologist was not even present. There was just some stored procedure in their database that fired off bills.

The financial part of medicine seems pretty unregulated. They can charge phantasy prices and frequently charge for services never delivered without consequences. In other industries this would be plain fraud.

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