I volunteered to replace a headlight in my girlfriend's car long ago. The socket was completely buried. No access from above. The assembly looked like it was held in by two screws and a section of 3/8" metal bar, so no problem, I'll remove those, pull it out and then replace the bulb. Nope. You couldn't actually get it out because the hole was slightly too small.

Looked it up online, shops put this model on the lift and access it from below. Ended up laying on a piece of cardboard in a light rain because it was only accessible from below the bumper. If my forearms were any shorter (I'm pretty tall) I would not have been able to do even that.

Meanwhile the headlight on my 10 year old VW went out a couple months ago. There's a twist-on cap, and a twist-in socket. The cap is visible standing up.

I had the replacement bulb in in under a minute. Unfortunately the matching bulb on the other side, the socket was a bit wedged and I spent most of the time getting it out.

The Ford Fusion requires removing the front bumper cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMxBBdMeNho

I rented one once and on a long trip I noticed a headlamp was out, I was going to just buy new bulbs and replace them, but once I saw the procedure, I called the rental place and drove 30 minutes to swap out the car.

If they are going to make it that hard to swap headlights, they should use LED's which (should) never need to be replaced.

I mean that sounds more like "It's a pain in the ass to change a headlight in my girlfriend's car, so I have her bring it to a shop" than a right to repair issue. Or are you saying the shop needs special tooling to get the job done? What kind of car is it? There's usually a few YouTube videos showing how to do things like this.

I have an older gas guzzling SUV on a truck chassis. Lots of repairs are a lot easier than my wife's car, because there is a lot more space. But that is a fundamental tradeoff between two vehicle classes and gas guzzlers versus high MPG crossovers. My SUV is newer than her car too.

I had the same on a 2002 Toyota avensis, and the price of the lights wasn't like 40 years ago either unfortunately.

This is pretty common for modern cars, I'd say post 2008ish or so. Headlights just don't go out as often as they used to so OEMs feel more comfortable making that a bumper cover off, pay a mechanic, type job.