Comment by slt2021

list prices are high to scare Americans into buying [more expensive] insurance plan.

they want Americans be scared of going bankrupt from medical bills.

on the backend, between insurance and hospital, these giant list prices are automatically lowered by factor of 10 to the actual cost of procedure

the business model is: 1. insurance scares people with huge prices 2. healthy americans buy a lot of expensive insurance 3. money is injected into healthcare system from healthy patients 4. money is split among insurance/pbm/providers/pharma