turns it up to 11.

If you honestly care about what college costs, you can navigate your way through it. You can take core classes at CC. You can actually know what tuition and fees are. You can get scholarships and assistantships. It is possible to get a college degree without borrowing money or saving up a quarter million dollars first, but it does take work.

Finding out what a medical procedure even costs is well-neigh impossible.

I had a shoulder surgery a few years ago. As I was going through the admittance paperwork, I spotted a clause on the 8th page that said if the patient requested it, the hospital would provide a good-faith estimate for the cost of the planned procedure. What the heck, I'm going to ask for it.

They were literally unable to do it. All I was able to get out of them was a procedure like that would probably bill at about $80,000, but insurance would probably whittle that down to about a $500-1500 out of pocket for me. There were an awful lot of probably's, maybe's, approximately's, and I think's scattered throughout that conversation. They didn't even know how to give a quote, they just had people who worked in billing long enough to make some educated guesses.