Trump actually forced hospitals to release their prices during his first admin. There are a few problems. First, quite a few hospitals refused and just took the fine instead. More importantly though, theres no standardization of codes. Your procedure might sound routine but there are usually quite a few different things being billed and there usually isnt a one to on relations hip between codes at different providers. Even if there was standardization a lot of the time unforeseen stuff comes up so you cant just get an out the door price before the procedure.