According to the FTC, [1], price transparency could supposedly harm competition, and it could drive companies towards price fixing.
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/competition-matters/20...
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/competition-matters/20...
The FTC article you cite is actually in favor of the type of transparency lamented by the comment you are responding to.
> The staff comment explained the risk that the latter type of transparency might harm competition by enabling competing providers to coordinate or collude on price
Where "latter type" referred to "plan structures and contracted fee schedules between health plans, hospitals, and physician service entities." (The "former type" was "actual or predicted out-of-pocket expenses, co-pays, and quality and performance comparisons of plans or providers" which is what would effect parent's experiences; the FTC "encouraged" that type of legislature.)
I don't necessarily agree with the FTC here, but their comment isn't covering the lack of information that causes consumers have no idea what the bill is until they've already incurred the bill.
Most, if not all, health plans in the US have annual out of pocket maximums on the order of $10,000 per individual.
My own experience here is driven by having gone in for what I expected to be a $50-$100 visit (a doctor took a look at my vocal chords); it was $4,000. How that is justified, I still don't know. (Thankfully, insurance covered some of it, but for such a minor visit, it was still way more expensive than I expected.) I don't know that "well, it can't be more than $10,000" is much comfort when you're walking in for something that seems minor, such as lingering effects of a cold (this example) or an infected finger (I was unable to obtain any pricing for this, prior to the visit).
A few years later, surgery would have cost me ~$300. (But that was under an HMO. And I got a quote, in advance!)
(While my initial post specifically mentioned PPOs, as that is what I'm used to, there are also those without insurance, which doesn't have the max out-of-pocket of an insurance plan.)
[1]: Given that a mere c-section (30min, super standard procedure) + 3 days at the hospital can be $85k. It's probably pretty common for hospital bills to exceed a few hundred thousands for anything more complicated or requiring a long stay at the hospital.
For 2020, it's ~$8k for an individual and ~$16k for a family. Most non-high deductible plans are a few thousand for an individual and high-deductible plans can be close to $10k.
[1]https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-maximum-li...
I think Westinghouse was the big FTC price-transparency-can-be-bad case.
That's orthogonal to the post's issue, though: he paid exactly the price he was quoted for services rendered; that he didn't understand the services he was consuming isn't really Amazon's problem but it's great they jumped in to help a $0 account (which, of course, was self-serving)...
Price fixing will only happen if there is no actual competition for customers, otherwise being the cheaper service is the easiest tool to increase your share of the market. Besides, isn’t that already the reality with prices being fixed in partnership with insurance providers?
There are simpler mechanisms for communicating price fixing - like saying "we won't be beaten on price" - that don't need to mention the price at all.
My point was that pricing transparency is not a panacea. It seemed that some people were reacting as though pricing transparency is a magical salve.
AWS: In my experience, AWS pricing has been transparent and great and they generally take steps to keep you from foot-gunning yourself. This article discusses a case in which the author foot-guns himself using a predictable mechanism AWS can't really prevent. I'm unsure of what else AWS could do to protect him from himself... (Anyone can throw out simple solutions without understanding S3's implementation complexity: they could seriously throttle their own product! ... but that might be seriously complicated and might hamper the value of the product to others. Besides, if you buy a M1A1 tank, you should be very careful about using it: it could use tons of fuel... He bought an M1A1, left the keys on the dash and then was surprised when he found got a huge fuel bill...).