A primary consumer benefit of free enterprise is competition. Not happy with the service/quality/price of something you want to purchase? Compare one merchant’s offer with that of another, and take your business where it makes most sense to you.

A few months ago, we wrote about a Florida law requiring urgent care clinics to post prices. Unfortunately, knowing the cost of a medical service in advance generally isn’t possible in the health-care market. As noted by Merrill Goozner on his GoozNews blog,

“For all the talk about consumer driven medicine …, why doesn’t anyone talk about pricing transparency in health care? Did you ever walk into a doctor’s office where the prices of various services were posted? A hospital? At the drug store’s pharmacy counter?”