Health care?

I absolutely love our Health care system! OK, not really. Here is an overview of my latest run-in:

We need to get a test done. We just switched insurance companies, and just moved, so we don't actually have a doctor down here, it's our doctor from SLC that wrote up the prescription for the test. So I call the lab. We get it all set up. And then I asked for a range of the cost, seeing as our insurance company hasn't actually sent us any information as far as what our benefits are, who our providers are, etc. Unfortunately, the lab tech has no idea how much this test will cost because apparently they send it out. So she gives me the number for the billing of the pathologist they send it to. You would think they would know, right? I mean, they are the billers, they should know how much things cost, or at least a range, right? WRONG. They have no idea how much it will cost because they don't actually know what they will have to do. Um, how can you not know what you are going to do? And they had no range whatsoever for me. She said the only way to know how much it will cost is to have it done. So I thought I would call the insurance company to see if it was covered. I called, I asked, and they had no idea. They can't know if it's covered unless they have the exact code for the test. But apparently they don't know what exact test they are going to run. So, really, no one has any idea. Is this worrisome to anyone else? In the end I just asked Alex (who has had the test done before) how much it cost. She knew. The end. It might not be an exact number, but it is a ballpark, and that is all I needed to know. What I'd like to know is how not one person out of the three separate companies I called had any idea of even a ballpark range of how much things cost. I was a bit frustrated, if you couldn't tell, but I'm over it now. Today I discovered that my previous doctor is not a participating provider for our new insurance, so I had to do another run-around, but we worked it out. All is well. At least for now. I'll let you know how I feel when we finally get the bill.