“the biggest problem is the insurance companies get deep discounts that you don’t get if you don’t have medical insurance. You get to pay list price. Lucky you.”
Absolutely. They pay .30 cents on the dollar or less. Some even negotiate with the providers to just write it off their taxes as a loss and get billed nothing. This causes providers to greatly inflate and pad their bills. But you are still paying your copay... And your copay for an office visit is the cost the provider wants to receive anyhow, so the insurance company is coming up with nothing for these visits. Your copay covered the cost and you still have to pay the insurance premium on top of that.
The insurance companies are absolutely making a killing despite their false complaints. It is a huge crooked price fixing scam...
Now I have no idea if a reasonable cost for the tests based on labor, supplies, office overhead and reasonable profit is $75 or $1500, but a 20x difference is ridiculous.