It's not about whether the hospitals are private or not, it's whether you know the price beforehand and can make an informed choice - the most basic thing about the free market.

Funny how everybody began to downvote me after totally misunderstanding my point in muddled fashion.

I wasn't talking about hospitals going private - after all, there are private hospitals in Europe and the UK too. I was talking about poor price transparency in the US being adopted in all of those places by private players. I specifically called out government players in the US, since they engage in the same practice, while government hospitals in all of those countries do not.