> Honestly, this isn't necessary, as long as you have single payer (or close to it). When the government is the one paying for 99% of healthcare, they have huge clout enforcing razor-thin margins and high efficiency on the provider side. Just look at how the massive supermarket chains are able to keep the margins of the upstream supply chain at a minimum.

The problem is that governments don't work that way. When a purchasing officer at a business negotiates a lower price he gets a large bonus. What does a Congressman get when he negotiates a lower price, compared to what he gets (from the people he's negotiating with) if he "negotiates" a higher price? What about the government bureaucrat who will be working in that industry soon? That is the problem.

Meanwhile who is more knowledgeable about produce if you have a question, the staff at Walmart or the farmers at the local farmer's market? It's easy to order cost cutting from the top of the tower, but if you don't know what's happening on the ground, you don't know what you're actually cutting.

What you need is for people -- the people who are actually consuming services and can choose to go somewhere else if the price is wrong -- to be able to choose based on published price information. The argument people sometimes make about this is that you don't get to choose which hospital an ambulance takes you to when you're unconscious, but the majority of healthcare spending isn't that, and that doesn't explain why we have no price transparency for non-emergency surgical procedures or diabetes or cancer treatment.